Friday night we headed out to Zach's place so we could help out with his Michaux Mash race on Saturday. We got there around 6 or 7 and started loading all of the trucks up with race supplies, gallon upon gallons of Chili, Hand Cut French Fries and a ton of other stuff. After watching Lords of Dog Town (awesome movie) we went to bed for a 4 am rise the next day. I am usually okay with getting up early but this one really killed me, the combo of having one of my last really hard blocks of training for now and staying up until 12:00 the night before wasn't helpful. So we made our way to Dunkin D where the lady hadn't turned the ovens on, so we left to go to Sheetzs gas station. I got a donut and a Shmagel which was actually really good. We finally got up to the venue and started unloading, did I mention it was still dark out? I was put on parking duty for the morning and course marshall for when the 4 hour endurance race started. This was the first time I had to course marshall and it isn't the funnest of jobs, long and boring. I spent my time laying around, practicing my trackstands, wheelies, etc, and taking stupid pictures with my camera. The most excitement I got all day were 1 or 2 endos and some guy destroying his man parts.
Afterwards me and Gun went out to sweep and tear down all of the arrows and pick up whatever trash we found. The trails were broken in nicely and at the top of the course on one of the pine tree surrounded fire roads I could have mistaken for being in Colorado which I found to be awesome, wish I would have gotten a pic.... Gunnar decided that he wanted to slice open his sidewall right before the last downhill to. I have never seen a tubeless tire deflate that fast, no stan's shot out or anything. The best part was is that we had to put a road tube in, sketchy. The tire wasn't seated into the bead at all except for a small section and the tire wasn't centered at all. We made it back down and finally started breaking down the venue. Gunnar and I didn't get back home until 9:00 or so, and I still had to eat, get my bike, clothes, bottles, and everything else ready for fairhill the next day. I ended up going to bed at 10:30. Do the math it was a 18 1/2 hour day, not the best thing before a race, let alone the first XC race of the season!
My dad and I got to Fairhill at around 8:30, my race goes off at 10:30 so I had plenty of time. Set up the pop-up, got registered and ready to race. Warm up I wasn't feeling to hot, flat feeling legs and just tired. I went to staging and luckily this year since I am racing sport senior 1 men we get to go off first, don't have to worry about traffic or anything. Last year I would have to start at the very very back of the sport class, it was bad. Start went pretty well sitting about 5th or 6th into the singletrack. I knew there would probably be a lot of group racing since Fairhill is basically a road race and thats how it ended up. There was a group of about 5 or 6 of us that formed half way through the first lap, I was feeling a lot better then I was expecting and the course was amazing, fast swoopy and no real climbs, which is good for me this early in the season. The group split going into the 2 and also last lap. I was able to pass two people and gain some ground on some people in front of me. I eventually made it up to the guy in front of me and rode with him for about a third of the lap but he eventually just rode away from me. I got passed by one or two other guys and luckily the finish came. I was able to sprint past some guys. But I made a bad mistake and didn't look behind me, I was only looking ahead, I should have been in an all out spring because some guy was closing in on me. Once I realized this all I could do was give it my all for the last 20 feet, there was a lot of bumping between me and the guy and I think he ended up getting but it couldn't have been for more and the deepness of my tire. I was dead and ended up in 8th, didn't seem right to me but the timing isn't exactly down and I guess a few guys could have gotten away early that I didn't notice.
^ Finishing stretch and the guy I didn't know was sprinting me... So pro
No comments:
Post a Comment