Rippin' Crashin' Wrenchin' & Racin'

It's been a while since the last update! Here goes.....less than a week left in Tucson, which means sometime last week the countdown was on. Usually that means time to hit every mtb trail in town one last time. This year however it meant get an even bigger bike and really let it rip! So I borrowed a Slash with a full 6 inches of suspension and took it out for a few final downhill runs! Man that was fun until....I just clipped my bar on a rock outcrop and took a big time crash....oops no more downhill runs for this guy! Check out this video from the day before the crash when I went for an awesome ride with Josey Weik.  My bar looks like it was millimeters from the Rock that caused the crash.

Even though I wanted to do more DH runs it was time to make the transition thanks to the UPS man and all my sponsors! On Thursday all my goods for the season arrived including some new Oakley Racing Jackets, a full slew of Shimano XTR components, a new Superfly PRO SL hard tail frame, and a couple of Rock Shox! That's right...a new sponsor for the season. Rock Shox is on board w/ full support! Good thing too w/ new 29er bikes its nice to have the lightest suspension forks out there...

I spent all day Thursday waiting for the UPS man and once he arrived the wrenches started turning! By evening a had a Superfly 100 built and a Superfly Po SL half built.

Friday I had time to get in a shakedown ride on the SF100 w/ Momentum Endurance athlete Mike Carney who is down in Tucson getting in a solid week of sunshine and good miles. Everything felt great...after an awesome dinner it was up to Phoenix to stay the night w/ Brad Palumbo and family.

Saturday morning it was off to the races in Prescott! The Punisher....and yes the course lent itself to a punishment. It was a very open fast race course w/ lots of false flat climbs, big headwinds, and then ripping fast descents. There was just a few technical singletrack sections per lap.  You could pedal as hard as you wanted and really 'punish' yourself.  The race was almost like the start of Ore To Shore....a big group of guys battling for the 2 lines on the 4 ft wide section of trail. After the first climb TJ Woodruff opened it up and it was a mano y mano battle! Even though we are great friends we battled until the end. Trav made one mistake with about 5 miles of lightning fast racing to go and I got the slightest gap on the following climb and pushed hard to extend that gap every chance possible.

I took my first win on the SF100 and was pleasantly surprised with how it rode....especially in the tight singletrack. It was fast...it felt smooth...it definitely got the job done!  Andrea scored another podium in the Womens Open race finished 2nd and 5th overall.  A few more days and then off to California!