My finish only six weeks earlier in Vail revealed how much work I had to do to be competitive at Sol Vista. This time back to the mountains it all came together and pulled off a 3rd place finish! It was a great feeling to have the COO of USAC ask me to step up on the podium as he hung the bronze medal around my neck and said “Congratulations!”The course was absolutely awesome and is everything that mountain bike racing is supposed to be. The course was not groomed. The singletrack was a path cut through the trees with rocky…REALLY rocky climbs with sandy, rooted, rocky fast descents with sweet berms and switchbacks that I was able to make up lots of time on the other riders with. Most of the climbing was done on fire road or double track that worked perfect for good passing areas.
At two laps and about 18 miles total, I figured my time to come in around the 2hour mark. So, from the start I didn’t burn myself up on the ridiculously steep climb which was about ¼ mile long.
Once to the top of that section we rode out onto a fire road and flat singletrack for ½ mile before starting up another ½ to ¾ mile climb. This process repeated itself about 4 or 5 more times until the top of the mountain and held strong in 2nd place, catching and passing riders from other classes that started minutes before mine - thats always motivating. The next rider caught me a few miles into the second lap. I kept him in my sights for a while but my back muscles couldn’t keep up with the legs and started to fatigue too much. Once at the top of the mountain for the second time, I knew he wasn’t too far ahead even though I couldn’t see him,
so I was hoping to catch him on the downhill as I was REALLY fast on that – I was taking more chances than others were...the "jumps", berms, and swtichbacks were just so sweet! It's always fun to fly into a turn and stab the brakes so both tires slightly spinning and drifting through to the apex and then jumping on the pedals out of the turn. All was looking good to regain second place...Well, I only had trouble once the whole race…about 2 miles before the finish on the last 3 miles of downhill I crashed harder than ever before. One larger rock had rolled into the middle of the course on a section where I’m going fast but not real fast (maybe 25 mph?).
I couldn’t see it around the corner until it was too late – washed out the front tire and pile-drived my right side into the ground. Already gasping for air before this I now had the wind knocked out of me and cheese-grated my right forearm. It took some time to make sure nothing was “injured”, get up, straighten my handlebars (cranked hard to the left side), and start rolling down the mountain – this little mishap cost me easily 3 minutes off my total time, maybe more. About a mile before the end though, I regained a fast rhythm and speed and finished real strong across the line. Luckily I had gapped the 4th place rider enough! ...even with the crash I still had 2 minutes on him at the end.
The people cheering, and encouraging you to pump harder and ride faster, cowbells…the event was just amazing! I loved it all. I worked hard for this in training and during the race. I’m stoked it all paid off. I’m planning for more great finishes this year now in Minnesota, Colorado, and Nebraska...and plan to compete at Nationals again next year!
I’ll post about the rest of the weekend later – more riding and crashing tales to tell…
1 comment:
Congrats Dave!
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