Big Jim has carved out himself a great race. I went and watched last year, and this year I was able to race.
Masters 3/4
I got an ok starting position, I was lined up next to Gwadzilla. I wanted to keep it smooth and see if I could not hurt my back too much. I got an ok start, and had Bruce B. in my sights. I don't know if ever passed him, but by DCMTB teammate Brian caught up to me. I had a bad remount, landing on the tire/brake. I losed some time there. After the first 2 laps it was just going into maintaining mode, since I couldn't really get any power out of my body. I got passed by a good many people, but the only saving grace was that I was able to get the guy who caught up to me on the last off camber(almost wrecking there). I liked the double logs where you could jump them or dismount. I think bigger logs would be better so it was more of a question. Reminded me of the Swiss worldcup I watched, the barriers are not as high as the ones we use cause most pros were bunny hopping them and it didn't look 40 inches high.
Tandem
There was a tandumb race happening, and this time I made sure the pedal was on ok. I had Tyler from Family Bikes pack a pedal tap so that I could clean out the threads. That did the trick Matt's pedals went on fine, and we were ready to roll. We started in the first row, and were able to get the lead after the first corner. I knew the Padam team was coming behind us. They got us on the off camber downhill, and we never saw them again. We were riding good together, and had our shinning moment/almost disaster when we did a planned move that we talked about in a practice lap. After a downhilll there is a U-turn then an uphill rise. The Tom team was in front of us and Matt kicked it in going out of the turn and we stood for the whole hill. The almost disaster happened at the turn where we passed and hit a root I never saw in the Masters race. When we hit the root is sent our bike into the tape, but luckly I was able to control it. We did ok at the barriers, but we were not as insync as we were at DCCX. After the first lap we were in no-man's land, but our luck changed as we saw the Toms team have a mechanical with their timing chain having fallen off. So we caught them at the double logs, and tried to get them at the berm, but we were running out of trail. We got them on the off camber, and on the pavement for a 3rd place. We made the podium DCMTB's second podium of the day.
Thoughts:
- Jim put on a great race, cool prizes I got some of the sausage and ate this week-yum.
- The vibe pretty awesome.
- I found the Elite race a lot more fun to watch since Joe D. started 2:30 down on the whole race, and he came back to win big.
- The team support was out there today
- Tandem races are great! I mean pretty cool motivating, and dieing out on the course with a friend.
- Right now My favorite races for Mabra are Ed Sanders, DCCX, and Rockburn. I didn't do the one in Winchester, but I have seen the course so I will try that next year.
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| An artsy version of a shot I found online |
