Raceday came this past Sunday. Two weeks previous of hard work and only two days on the mountain bike. I hadn't preridden the course, but from reports, I knew it was tight and twisty. I left tire selection to my heavy but trusted Rampage front and newly mounted and new favorite Racing Ralph Snakeskin. I pre-rode everything and felt pretty good, but never end up doing well with a pre-ride on raceday.
Plans for the day were to take the holeshot seeing how at Banner Lakes it had a huge outcome in the results. I had a "bad" day that day anyways (felt great, just didn't have it type day.) I got in a decent pre-ride, but knew that the legs probably didn't have a top spot effort in them. At the start there were a lot of unfamiliar faces. About 5 of them were from the Peoria area Guinness team. I could tell that they were going to be my main competition.
The start chute was about a 250-300 meter section of grass that was board flat. I kind of wrote off my chance for the holeshot. At the start the official asked if the distance was ok and there was a lot of mumbles mostly in the direction of us only doing 4. Myself being an idiot said we should keep it at 5 since it was an expert level race. Bad idea.
I definitely surprised myself and held off the rest of the field pushing a measly 36-19. From the pre-ride I knew things were loose in the first 1/4 of the course so I rode kind of conservatively. I couldn't hold the pace of Aaron McCombs and let him by probably around 2 miles into the lap. Shortly there after his team mate was tailing me and I just didn't have it and let him by as well. I just couldn't keep the pace as high as them through some of the technical stuff. Those guys were just plain shredding.
Anyways I held decently steady for the first three laps which was a terrible idea. I knew I'd have to back the pace off and it was getting warmer all the time it seemed like. Finally at the end of lap 3 I took my second bottle. I had a stupid fumble that lap and had a minor bobble (ok yeah I crashed trying to Gu in a way too short double track section) and lost some time. At the end of every lap was a super technical section. This would hold to be the descisive section to keep me in my place.
Anyways I held onto third overall from a hard charging guy on another SuperflySS. He rolled a tire no less than 20 feet down the trail after I let him roll through. I held him off all of lap 5. He caught me going into the last section on lap 5 but I had been saving my energy most of lap 5 and laid it down. He looped out again due to the pace/time/distance combo and came in a strong 4th.
I had higher hopes for the weekend, but the base I have going into the final stretch of the season is good. I took the overall lead in the IMBCS Expert series this weekend which I had no hopes of ever achieving. Cam won't let me hold onto that one for long, but I'll take it while it lasts. Not bad for my first season racing expert.
I also want to thank the QCFORC guys and gals for putting on an awesome race. They seriously do the best job out of anyone in the whole IMBCS series. I love going to their races. Plus they build and maintain ripping awesome trails and do wonders for trail advocacy in the Quad Cities area.
Holeshot.
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