Bear Creek is a tough course. It's one of those courses where you go up faster than you descent and I was starting with a head cold looming. The gun went off. I took the hole shot and was feeling pretty good. I love the uphill starts. They suit me well. About halfway up the first climb I looked back and saw Joel about 40-50 yards back in second. "Did I start off too fast?" I thought to myself. I was still feeling good but I decided to back off a hair. Joel, TJ, and Shawn quickly caught up to me in the singletrack. I've been having lots of problems in singletrack this year. I've been picking bad lines, pressing too hard, or just losing focus at the wrong times. Bear Creek was no exception. I bobbled and Joel got around. I quickly got on his wheel and we flew up the hill trying to break TJ (US National Expert Champion). It was not to be as I bobble in a technical rocky section and Joel, TJ, and Shawn hammered on. I put it in full pursuit mode trying to keep in contact with them only to see them getting farther and farther away. I backed off as I felt my lungs starting to get a burning, wheezy feeling. Tim Collins caught me on a climb. He's a super rider and does really well at solo endurance races.
After he passed me I was completely out of it. My lungs were fried. My head was out of it and my butt was, well, raw. I told you Bear Creek was rough. I pulled out after one lap and spent the remaining laps handing water bottle to those guys and tripping the other riders (just kidding).
Final results...1st TJ (duh) 2nd one Mr. Tim Collins and 3rd (drum roll please) Tom Fenush of Allied Milk Cycling. His previous best finish of the season was 10th. Nice ride Tom. Joel 5th, and Shawn 6th.
That put Tom in 7th (9 points from 6th), Me in 5th (99 points from 4th), Shawn in 4th (15 points from 3rd) and Joel in 3rd (21 points from 2nd) for the season in the Senior I Expert field. The team was 7th overall (223 points away from 6th) but not too bad since we only have 6 riders on the MASS roster and one did 3 races while the other did one.
Our sponsors will be back for next season and we are looking for a few more riders. The mountain team will max out at 10 riders so e-mail me if you are interested. The road team is looking for 3 or 4 riders as well (prefer cat. 3 or 4's so we can race in the same field). If you can do both mountain and road, cha-ching.
Next...'Cross is boss...
2 comments:
Dan, you have to post all of our results from this year.. how many top 10 and so forth.. i think we did a great job for a first year team.. next year we will do even better.
Congrats guys, and congrats to Tom on that great finish. Good luck with cross and good luck next year.
Post a Comment