Pro Men

4th/20

5 laps; 22.5 miles

My favorite course of the series was covered in a thick blanket of

snow when we arrived at the venue.  It seemed like part of my warm-up was having snow ball fights with some of the other kids from Hemet, which was pretty awesome.  On the starting line, everyone sat there freezing in the 45 degree temperatures after being soaked by all the water, snow and mud that was covering the road that everyone used to warm up on.  Five minutes before the start, the announcer let us know that we would be running a totally different course consisting of 5.5

miles of paved road and fire road, rather than the 25 miles of sick singletrack and road.  The race took off and everyone jumped onto the paved road and immediately, Adam Morka, and Manny Prado were out front of the peloton.  I gradually made my way up to the front and eventually got on Manny’s wheel.  I sat there until we turned off of the road, where there were 3 stream crossings!  Adam got through with plenty of momentum but everyone else got bunched up in the middle of the first 3 foot deep stream.  At this point, there were guys all over the place and I managed to get cut off by some dudes taking bad lines in and out of the water crossings.  After the streams, everyone was completely soaked as we hit some singletrack that was more like tight doubletrack.  I managed to get bottled up in the field through the streams so I had to make my way back up towards the front.  I started passing riders here and there and by the time the trail opened up to fire road, I could see Manny and another pro a ways ahead of me.  I poured it on and made my way up to them.  I passed Manny and saw that he tried to jump on my wheel but when we hit the feedzone about 30 seconds later, he was a ways behind me.  I could see Adam Morka not far ahead of me, meaning I had made my way up into the second position.  I did everything I could to catch him, but I could only close the gap to 10 seconds.  By the start of the second lap, my hands were so numb and frozen that I couldn’t squeeze my bottle or tear my Gu, so I gave up on drinking and eating for the rest of the race.

Dana Weber and Vincent Lombardi had caught up to me and we took turns pulling on the road, which really, really helped me recover.  All the while, Adam was still only about 10 seconds ahead of us, and we could see him just a ways up the road.  We basically stuck together for the next two laps, until the 4th lap...

I took a bad line into the river to avoid traffic and ended up hitting a deep spot that forced me to get off my bike while Dana and Vincent rode away.  At this point, it was almost impossible to get back up to catch back up to them.

Between the traffic and me getting stuck in a mud pit, they got out of sight and that was it.  I rode the whole fifth lap solo, and came in to the finish 4th spot.  

Congrats to Keegan on his dominating win!  Everyone was telling me after the race how he was killin’ it every lap.  Way cool.

Overall, it was an pretty rad race.  I had so much fun, but I couldn’t use my extremities whatsoever for about half an hour after the race!

There was a group of riders parked near us that couldn’t get their helmets off because they couldn’t use their hands, it was pretty funny to watch, considering I faced the same dilemma.

During the race, it was so gnarly that I had to downshift with my palm because I couldn’t shift with my thumb!  I’m hoping the upcoming races won’t be that cold or wet!