Shawn raced the Tour of Lancaster and had some bad luck in the form of a broken fork. I've finally gotten back on the bike after about 3 weeks of intestinal infects and overtime. There are two possible races tomorrow but I'm still undecided if I am really ready for the intensity. I've had a solid week but before that I was hurting.
The Dream Weaver did a downhill race and here's his side of the story...
Link to website of Series;
http://www.verticalearthpa.com/blue_mountain_cup
I
drove up to Blue Mountain friday night. I met up Todd and some others
friday evening. They had practiced friday. I worked. Sat
morning at the breakfast table they were filling my in on the Saturdays Super-D
course; same as last time, and also the totally different DH course for
Sunday. The DH course sounded gnarly,lots of chutes spilling into
rockgardens which would become "yard-sales"(bike parts strewn about from bicycle
dismemberment), drops, jumps, step-downs, rocky-rooty-offcamber, typical east
coast terrain we have all grown fond of, or, at least accustom too. I did
two practice runs on the Super-D course, good enough for me. This time I
left my hardtail at home and brought the full-suspension for the Super-D
race. The previous Super-D race, May 30, I rode my On-One 456 hard
tail. It is a 1X9 with a 34tooth Chainring, and a 160mm fork up
front. The course was very difficult to get up to speed. All the
rocks were pointy, and are aimed at the riders with intentions of
inflicting cruel and unusual punishment. There are only one climb, and it
was a doozy of a steep, loose fire road, but other than, that one could use
a DH bike for the course if they were willing to run their bike to the top
of that hill. Many actually did just that. Like I
said earlier, I brought the dually, I took a minute fifteen off of my
May run. The rain came in hard and heavy early sunday morning. We
awoke to pouring rain. Packed our gear to leave the motel and set off to
the mountain to do what we seem to have been doing all season in DH this
year; ride in the rain and muck. Hey, whatever, beggars can't be choosers,
I ride in the rain all the time anyways, just that this time, there is a
stopwatch running. The ride up the chairlift was a wet one, I forgot
my rain jacket, and I don't wear goggles. About 300feet from the top of
the lift, lightning started. The lift sped up to warp factor 9 to get us
off the lift. We did a practice run, surprisingly awesome conditions,
better than the day before. At the bottom we took note that the lift
was shut down due to the lightning. We went back to our EZ-UP to
wait. An hour past and lift was running again. We were able to
squeeze in one more practice run, it was my best run of the weekend! I was
pinning every corner, skipping ever so lightly across the rocks, and roots,
floating the off-camber-ness(it's not a word, I know) and drifting
magnificently(in my minds eye) through the loamy corners. Too bad it
wasn't my race run. At the top we were informed the that there
were a lot of "DNS"'s(Did Not Show). Competition was going to be tight,
Everyone there, were the serious, of serious regional racers. The official
began my count down, I sprinted out of the gate into the darkness of the
course. For some reason I was making stupid mistakes with my lines.
That's DH racing though, you only have a few minutes to make your best run
count, and each "little" mistake adds up to be a lot of seconds. I made it
to the finish line, stayed upright the whole time, and had a blast!Ben will be racing a 5k downhill at the end of August in Wilmington, NY.
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