Race Season Started

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This past Sunday was the start of my race season with a race in Rockford Illinois, known as “Do the Rock”. This was only the second time riding singletrack since last season due to the terrible winter weather we  have experienced this year.  Luckily, this was the case for almost everyone putting us all in the same boat for the start of the race.

The day started out with a 5:45 wake up to pack up the car to head up to Rockford from Chicago. On the way up I met up with many local Chicago teamates from the team xXx Racing AthletiCo, and at the race site I met up with Jesse and Marko who were racing as well. Going into this race my goals were to improve on my time from last year and use this race as a fortune teller for the rest of my racing season.

At 11:00 I lined up at the start for the 2 lap 25-30mile sport race. As the time counted down to the start the pre-race jitters began to get to me. But, once I heard “Go” the jitters were gone and I was put into race mode. The first section of the race was a road lead out into a tight double track section, which than lead to a climb which was bassicly a bog. This section already began to split the massive pack of 90+ riders up. I hammered the first section of the race passing many riders and eventually settling to the front of the main group. Our first laps pace continuously increased in an effort to drop as many riders as we could which helped end the lap with a 3 man pace line which was just behind the leaders. As we crossed the start finish line the pace increased some more. When we reached the boggy section for the second time it was 2x worse and almost unrideable. Right after the bog sections we reached a series of log jumps and log triangles. The three of us made it successfully through the first two but on the last one I flated because a a jagged rock on the backside of the log which had been exposed by one of the other riders. This falt initially signalled the end of my race because of the fact that i did not have a spare tube! After walking for about 10 minutes I realized how large of a gap we had created on the riders behind us. Eventually a rider caught up with me and became the savior of my race. He threw me a spare tube and a CO2 pump! I was so lucky. After another 5-10 minutes i was back in the race and had a lot of catching up to do to catch back up with the main pack. All i could do was hammer and try to make up as much time as i could. I ended up finishing the race in the main pack and taking second in my age group. To me this was not a bad way to start of the season of racing.