Laurel Classic

Since both my dad and I did good here overall last year, we decided that it was probably a good decision to race expert. I had fun and I’m pretty sure he did too. The race started off well, and I realized that for the first time in a while, I needed to just let the leaders go. I knew that I would get burned out if I tried to keep up with TJ Mosher, Ray Adams, and the super fast rider from State College, Jean-Luc. So as people started to split apart, I ended up in a group with Julian, Rich Straub (another State College), and one other rider. I tried to avoid setting the pace, but eventually I had to. After the long road climb, there is a gradual downhill to the famous Stinger trail. Stinger is loose and steep, so there are a lot of people that come out to watch it. At the bottom, it turns onto a dirt road. There is a lot more people down there, just incase anyone gets hurt. But just my luck, I ended up hitting one of the cars that were parked on the course. Eventually I fought passed the pain in my wrist and caught back up to Julian. He was setting a really fast pace into the next downhill. Coming into the second downhill of the course, I thought I caught a stick in my wheel. I stopped to pull it out but couldn’t find it. Turns out that I had a broken spoke. Got it fixed and raced down the trail with the hope of catching Julian at the bottom. Right when I saw him, he was getting off his bike to fix a flat. I felt sorry for him since he always seems to have bad luck, but I also knew that I needed to ride strong to the finish. After the downhill is a fun little section of stream crossings, followed by a not-so-fun climb. And then across the top of the mountain, through some mud, and down the last downhill of the race. It’s about 3 1/2 miles long and is really fast. It’s hard to describe how fast it is for a singletrack trail…lets just say that 34 mph felt way too slow, and that another rider that we know had no problem reaching 45mph. On the long sprint down the road to the finish, I saw Julian walking back up the mountain. Turns out that he had another flat shortly afterward and decided to DNF. Again, I feel bad since he always breaks stuff in races. My goal for this race was to break 1:45. I got set back a bit with the bad crash and a broken spoke, but had a 1:46, so I’m happy. I didn’t think I’d do this well overall racing expert, but I guess that having to keep up with the riders around you makes you go faster. I can’t wait for expert next year, although I’m getting some thoughts of racing elite just for the fun of it. We’ll see…

My mom also came to the race. We told her that there was a lot of climbing in the Sport course, but she decided to do it anyway. She had fun, although it sounded like she hated it at first.