TMBRA #7 - Double Lake
This past week ending up being pretty intense. The semester came to an end and that meant FINALS. Woohoo! Any ways after being battered with test all week this weekend also proved to be an important and taxing one. This was round #7 of the TMBRA spring series, and while most of the country is just starting to get into the swing of MTB racing, our series is coming to a bitter end until fall.
The Big ring Challenge is my ‘home’ race. It’s a course that suits me pretty well with all the pedaling. It also suits my large wheeled bike real well since it’s like a road race on dirt with big sweeping 15+ mph turns. I had the course pretty dialed from the last week or two of riding it. From the gun I was where I wanted to be in the top five with all the usual suspects. Ray Hall, Scott Henry, Billy Kurtz, Bryan Fawley. Billy towed us around for the first lap. As we came through the start finish line, it wasn’t long before I realized that the feedzone had been moved since the start of the race, and then an even shorter time span before I realized that I had missed my feed. So I preceded to run with the leaders for a 90 degree lap with zero ounces of water. Bryan Fawley attacked at this point and the rest of us chased. I just sat on the back in frustration and tried to focus on following wheel and staying consistent. The second lap passed and I got a feed this time. Raymond Got on front from here and put the hammer down, closing the gap to Bryan very very quick and then attacking, putting my in the hurt locker quite a few times. On the fourth lap my body decided that it hated me and the legs began to seize pretty hard core! Unfortunately there is no way to replace a water bottle of fluid that you missed in the middle of a race. So suffer I did after getting dropped and Worried I got as I expected any minute for someone to come flying by me in my class. That person never came, but I did manage to loose a minute and a half to the leaders by the end of the lap. I guess that’s how it goes sometime and I have to be happy with riding in such elite company. The first couple laps I felt stronger than the people I was riding with, TOTALLY COMFORTABLE. Maybe they were too.
I get a break for a weekend and then I focus on some road racing before I head off to Alabama’s Bump and Grind, Wisconsin’s Subaru Cup, and Tennesse’s SERC #7. Then hopefully I can cap off the summer with a decent result at U23 Nationals in Vermont.
I am happy with my fitness so far and looking forward to hopefully a productive summer break. WOOHOO!