Coffee Classic

It was another scorcher at Alterrra....it seems every year at this place is rained out then re- scheduled for the hottest day of the year. The sun bakes you on the climbs and then you get lost in the maze of never ending singletrack...unless you use the force.

I used the force alright, but it was only enough to propel me to the top of the course on the prologue lap for the $100 King of the Mountain. As soon as I got into the first singletrack my 15 +/- second gap disappeared. We lapped through on the prologue lap 15 minutes into the race.

The three of us(D.B. and N.G.) headed out into the start of the 2nd lap together. I was fine until the gap opened to 1 second. 2 seconds...3 seconds...I better close that gap....oops too fast into that corner and too big of a gear to go 364 degrees around that tree then up a hill...oops 10 second gap can't see them anymore...try harder....bomb more corners....35 seconds by the end of the singletrack and race is over.

Starting the 3rd lap Mike Phillips caught me and almost did the same thing to me in the singletrack...I was suffering and paying for a million small mistakes. We came out of the never ending singletrack and I suffered up the clim, but recovered as Mike was have shifting/chain problems up the steepest part of the climb. He flicked me through on the flat section and I told him I was hurting too...I went really slow through the upper portion of singletrack, but then started to feel better riding my own pace(slow).

Starting the climb on the fourth lap I had a small gap over Mike, so I stood up and went...I didn't take much and he was gone. I rode horrible once again through the singletrack by myself, but felt pretty good finishing the race on the last two climbs.

Cross bike arriving and built by the end of the week! No more road bike! Vegas or no Vegas??

This weekend is MTB WORLDS in Mte. Ste. Anne! I went to Mte. Ste. Anne back in 1998 for Worlds. I was a student at Washtenaw Community College along with training partner Skyler Reeves. I ran into him after one of my classes the day before the races and said hey what do you think. After class we loaded up the car and a tarp and headed to Canada. I remember arriving late at night with no place to stay and we ended up crashing under our tarp on a helicopter landing pad. The next morning we ran into Klement Capliar who was out chanterelle mushroom hunting. He let us crash his place, fed us some amazing fresh wild mushroom soup and then later that year invited us to Tucson where it all started for real. We watched the race and cheered on the doped up Euros to victory. It's funny now to look back at MTB WORLD'S......it makes you think...