Even though I'm not quite finished with the building of the base miles, this week is filled with lots of races. It started last Wednesday with a trip up to Houghton, MI for a JR mtn bike camp. Doing the camp was the best decision of my season so far. I had a blast and we rode some awesome trails at Michigan Tech and in Copper Harbor. The campers also had a blast, learned a lot in the lectures and killed it in the race. Some of the juniors had better bike handling skills than me! I really hope to do it again next year. The area is perfect with 4 major trails systems in the immediate area, and the lodging in the dorms at MI Tech. The cafeteria food on the other hand leaves little to be desired....
All except 2 campers participated in the Keewenaw Chain Dr race including myself. It turned out to be another battle royale with another sprint finish! This time I think it was even closer than Wausau with my ankle chip timer crossing just ahead of Mike Andersons ankle chip.....the chip time was actually identical in the results and it was sooo close that I actually might have got the 'W' because the 'B' in Brian comes before the 'M' in Mike in the alphabet.
The race course was amazing, but it was a shock to the system to race full speed ahead at the end of a rest week and after cruising around pretty slow all week working with the jr's more on skills than fitness. It took me more than half the race for the shock to subside as I hung on to Mike's wheel for dear life. He was killing the fast technical singletrack and I could tell he had ridden there many times before. Once I hit the last 10 miles I was much more confident as I had pre-rode that section of trail with the JR the previous day. With 6 to go there was a huge descent to a slippery river crossing....Mike took a bad line, I took over on the climb out of the river bed then crushed the 2 track for the next 4 miles, I couldn't drop Mike though and I didn't really like my odds in the up hill paved sprint. We came out on the pavement...I gave Mike a few words of advice and then bit down...the rest was history.
Saturday night after the race we watched some fireworks in downtown Houghton to celebrate a succesful camp. I came home Sunday night blown out after one last ride with the Jr. campers. Monday was a busy day at work preparing for the downtown Sheboygan TOAD race. Tuesday was an even busier day with lots of racers stopping by the shop for last minute repairs and the regular customers who were buying bikes for the summer. At the last minute I decided to jump into the race and help out my old buddy Jonny Sundt and his team mates on the Kenda pb GearGrinder Team regain the yellow jersey....I think I turned left over 200 times. The Fisher Cronus killed it and with the Easton Wheels it must have weighed in right around 14 lbs!
This weekend is the NORBA at Nordic MTN...can't wait to see some old hommies....last time I did a NORBA was 2004!
1 comment:
That Jr camp looked so cool! If they could ever use my help, let me know!
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