The Beginning of a New Era

The Bike Line Fair Hill race was the first race that I've done as a senior. No, I'm not 19 yet...I just left junior to get some experience racing a bigger group of tough competiton. It's completely different. Junior racing was just hammer to the finish and hope you don't burn out. These starts actually involve some strategy. I realized something was wrong when we climbed the first wall and I already had a big gap on everyone else - they were sitting back and let me set the pace, and they were drafting behind me on the long dirtroad downhill. It's a bit more crazy with more people...I almost got taken out when someone passed me and hit my bars, sending me almost off the road. The start of the race went good; I got passed by some people but eventually settled into a rythem and caught most of them. But then, on a kinda technical log crossing, the person in front of me hit a tree. I was following so close that they moved out of the way, and then I hit the tree. And then another rider came bombing down the trail and hit me, slamming me and my bike into an even bigger tree, and twisting my breaks and shifters so I couldn't reach them. But thankfully I didn't tighten them too much, and I eventually got them back to normal. After that, the race went really well. I was able to keep my speed through every section of trail, and was really happy except for the finish. Another senior snuck up behind me and rode my wheel to the finishing sprint. I didn't hear him behind me, and by the time I saw him, he had already passed and we were 5 feet from the line. The course was really fun. It was unlike anything I'm used to riding, and it was so fast. I'm just really happy to be racing again.

THE Open

Last weekend was the visitPA.com International Intergalactic Global Open Mountain Bike Team Relay Championship of the Universe Including the Anti-Matter One. (There, That Should About Cover It). Formerly the US Open Relay or Marysville Relay. It's a really fun event with handycap points so that you never know who will win. The point is to get as many laps as you can within 4 hours, and when those are added to the handycap points, the team with the most points wins. I was stuck with going first, so I had to do a long run and then hop on my bike for the lap. I never run, so you can imagine how that went. I was about middle of the pack during the run, but I was suffering to keep up. Half way through the lap the pain from the run started to go away, and I finally finished the lap. It felt like the longest one that I would do that day. Second lap went great - I was 30 seconds faster than my first. 3rd was also good, since I kept myself consistant and had almost the same time as my first lap. Going into the 4th(last) lap, I knew that to get a 3rd person on their 4th lap, we needed to keep the times consistant. So I rode hard and came out with a time that was within seconds of my 1st and 3rd lap. My dad finished his lap with 20 seconds left in the race, and we barely got 15 laps. Added in the points and that got us 2nd place for the day.

Finishing just in time (above)













Yeah...my heart was racing when I saw 1 minute to go...