So I had a Good Race.

Place Bib Number Name Time
1 11 Joshua Rosby 1:56:22
2 7 Eric Simolke 2:15:24
3 16 Leonard Service 2:17:27
4 8 Ronald Leazer 2:19:33
5 5 David Hollowell 2:22:13
6 12 Cary Beene 2:22:47
7 1 Andrew Neilson 2:25:27
8 15 Paul Eveleigh 2:25:31
9 47 Scott Hargrove 2:35:16
10 27 John Stout DNF
11 37 Brian Frise… DNF
12 49 Jason Ham DNF
13 69 Vaughn Cavanaugh DNF

1 48 Adrieane Anthony 3:17:25


The results say it all. What is not told is all the pain that was involved in this race. I know it was not a sanctioned event I also know that the really big Whigs did not come out. However, it has been a while since I have had a really convincing win. This race was not as hard as I would have hoped off the line. It was slow in-fact. Vaughn C launched off the line and quickly opened up a gap on the field that I was stuck in. These guys had no idea whom I was so they were not very friendly. I must admit that I did not really go out of my way to be extroverted in their presence.

Well Vaughn is their local or should I say formerly local bad ass. He is on the TREK VW regional team and I have to hand it to him he is tough. So to me I felt like everyone off the line just knew they could not keep up with him so they effectively were blocking for him (i.e. stopping me from advancing my position.) Well after powering around a few racers Vaughn was out front followed by Jason Ham. I have to had it to Jason this guy is a great all-around cyclist. He is fast on the dirt and also fast on the road. He wanted to close the gap to Vaughn but he was not on his own machine and also had not had the opportunity to touch his MTB this year. I think I supprised him when I went around him. He did not hear me behind him on the course. So I was in second place around 1/4 into the race.

I was having a few technical difficulties in that I realized that I had too much air in my tires. So at that point I had a couple choices 1) I could continue to race on over-inflated tires, 2) I could stop and let some air out of my tires, which would allow me to traverse the trail faster and deal with the time loss by putting out a large effort. I chose the latter. When I had just finished letting air out of my tires Jason was bearing down on me hard so I had to attack every corner and every straight and the entirety of the trail to drop him and catch Vaughn. I managed to catch up to V ~ 2 miles from the finish of the first lap.

So heading into lap #2 I knew I was running low on fuel. I missed breakfast and dinner was nothing to speak of. I forgot my bag with my jersey and energy gels at home along with my salt capsules. So I had one shot to win. I had to attack hard because I would not have the energy to fight off counter attacks later in the race. I attacked the first 6 miles of lap 2 as strong as I was capable of. I was railing the corners and attacking the straight. I needed a good time buffer to second place so that I might mentally weaken who ever it might be. Heading into the last 3-mile techy section I was starting to feel the effects of a hard effort early that lap. I some how managed to get through that section just fine. I slowed down cause when you are in the lead with a good buffer it is stupid to take unnecessary risk railing sketchy corners for nothing. So I rode very conservative and crossed the line in first.

Unknown to me Jason flatted on the second lap I think I had a 10 min gap on him when that happened; Vaughn dropped out after the first lap, he crashed and shook himself really hard. So there I was winner of my first race of the year. Damn it felt good.

JR