I have to say that I was very nervous about this race. Not really about the race itself, but how my shoulder would hold up. I heard TONS about the race course and just how rooty it was, and it did not disappoint.

I got there a day early and did my normal pre-ride of the course. Nothing too tricky, but it certainly was rooty. The one nice thing was the lack of elevation gain on the course. I think total, for the 7.5 miles, it was less than 450 feet of total climbing. I will take that any day of the week.

The race started at 8am, which is a little different than the races I am used to, but not a big deal. They staggered the start times, as the course was about 95% single track, so there wasn’t going to be much time to pass. My wave went off about a minute or so after the solo riders. When the horn went off, a quick lap around the campground and I was 3rd into the woods. Not bad. Within minutes, we were running into the back of the single speed group, so there were bikes all over the place…on your left, on your right, through the middle. It was a mess and people passing all over the place.

The key to this race was pacing. Since the first part of the lap was a little bit more technical, and had most of the elevation gain, the key was to keep the throttle turned back a bit, so during the second half, you could really ratchet it up and fly through the second part. And that is what I did.

As I was racing a 2 man team, the planning was a little different than normal. I going go a bit harder than normal, as I knew I would have some time to recover back at camp and get some solid foods into me.

Pretty much the day went without any issue. Nothing major to talk about. My partner and I took turns riding laps to keep the legs fresh while Kelly kept an eye on the leader board. Through out the day, the lap times were close, with us in first most of the time, but mid afternoon saw us playing second fiddle and not liking it. But with experience and more then 9 different 12/24 hour races under our belts, we knew that if we stuck to our plan, rode consistently, we would be able to pull it out. With that plan, and the fact that the other team started to slow down at the end, we regained the lead with a few hours to go. Once we were back on top, Kelly kept using the whip and kept us riding strong.

On my last lap, Kelly told me I needed to turn a 59 minute lap to win. My previous laps were in that same area, so I knew I had to ride as hard as I could to keep the lead. Of course, she was lying to me, but I was too busy concentrating on what I needed to do that I believed her. After the race, I checked it out and I needed to pull an hour thirty to keep the lead. Fortunately, I was under the 59 minute mark and we got the top spot of the podium.

Over all, quite a good race. We stuck to the plan, stayed the course and game home after a quick trip to the top box on the podium. There ain’t nothing wrong with that……Plus, I didn’t notice my shoulder for most of the day, so that is a positive thing..

Sorry about all the lousy photos, but that is the best we could do with the cell phone we had.  Our regular camera battery died on the drive down.  DOH!!

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Ok, I know that isn’t going to happen, but felt like it needed to be said.

Speaking of training, yesterday I hit the final “open” notch here in the valley.  There are 2 notches that the state of NH allows to be snown shut for snow mobile users, and there is still a tad bit of snow on them yet.  I have a feeling it will be a while until I get to those.  Either way, 4.5 hours in the saddle with more than 30 minutes at one time of concentrated climbing left the legs feeling alright for todays ride.  Today’s plan was t head out for 3 hours of easy, endurance type effort.  The major problem was the constant down pouring of rain.  Why is it every time I am in a groove the rain comes?  Ohh well, nothing I could have done about it.  I grabbed all my rain gear, my fixed gear so the cables and gears wouldn’t be completely trashed, and went out.  3 hours and a few layers of soaked clothing, ohh yea, it was 35 degrees too….forgot to mention that, I got back and was ready to call it a week for training.

Tomorrow is a nice recovery day, then its time to start laying down a bunch more power…

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Tonight, the plan was a little cross training.  As the weather is completely awful, because of the sleet and rain we got all day, doing something in the woods, skiing or snow shoeing, was really out of the question.  So I grabbed the doggy and off we went for a little more than an hour on a little hike.

When I got back, it was all down to business to clean some bikes.  The road machine was a little dirty, mostly the drive train, from the weekend, so a quick dunk in the parts washer got me rolling again.  Now I need to get back out there to dirty it all up again.  The joys of riding in March in New England.

On the “team front”, GT released the rest of the names of the Dirt Coalition team.  There are a few people from my area, so some meet and greet time might be in order to grab some face time ith the team members.  Nothing like a mini team camp here in New Hampshire.

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