First Summer Series Race

Last night was the first race for the Red Jersey Summer Race Series, which is in it's 12th year. The venue was Whitaker Woods and it was a good course, fairly SS friendly. It was my first mountain bike race on a fully rigid SS- and it was a good eyeopener. I signed up in the expert class as I won the overall in Sport Senior last year- so I figured I'd be sandbagging if I continued in Sport- so up to expert I went. Of course this year racing on the SS, so that just adds to the fun. That being said I was glad I raced expert as we did three laps where sport only did two- and I felt I got my moneys worth!

A1 was there as well, as was fellow 29er SS rider Derek Griggs (who is damn fast). When we lined up I chose to not put myself to close to the front as I don't like going that hard right out of the blocks- that being said it was a mistake as the course was flat for 200 meters then went uphill- that meant I was fighting a lot of elbows on the climb . It was hard to climb in a big group when you're tendency is to climb much faster, I think it was harder to go a bit slower and I was rapidly loosing ground to the lead group, what was amazing to me was that when the trail opened up and you could pass how quickly you could accelerate past other riders- that was a good feeling!

The descents were fun but keeping up with all the guys on the dual suspension bikes on the rooty descents was entertaining. I didn't loose to much ground there, but there were a couple of sections you could see the geared guys grabbing their big ring and then they'd start to roll away. There was one descent where you came down a fairly smooth trail and then launched over the train tracks- there was a crowd on the tracks and that made it fun to rip through. I had pre-ridden the course a couple times before the race so I knew I could just like the bike roll- and hitting those tracks at top speed and doing a small manual over them was a pretty cool feeling and got the crowd pumped. I wanted to fully jump the tracks but I'm not that good with the whole air thing- and hitting the ground at that speed didn't seem like such a good idea!

Any the long and short- lap one was pretty good, lap two- not so good, lap three got a whole lot better. I haven't seen my final placement but I know it wasn't top three! A1 did well as well, but again I don't know his final placement.

It was fun, and a good way to kick off the dirt racing season. I hope I did my Team Bikemancolors right.

The Great Glen series starts in a couple weeks, will need to look at gearing for that series!

later,

DEA