A Couple More Elings Race Reports

Mike Abbott, who is Mr. Mountain Bike has a quick race report below followed by Mr. Sproul (dirt boy) and some photos. The photo credits go to Pete and Gabe. Thanks for sending them in guys.

it was a great weekend, got to see a lot of ranchers out beating the trail, thanks to matt and the feed zone we were all in good supply fluids, I was able to catch the first place rider in xc on the decent of the second lap, but on the end of the second lap climb he got by, i kept him in sight on the last lap up the pavement but did not see him till i was going south and he was crossing the line for the finish, he got me by more than a minute. the down hill on the other hand I got first!!, the super d came in fifth, due to the rule i did not know(you are suppose to drink a few beers shortly before the start if you want to claim a podium spot) that rule may need some tweaking to fine the proper mount of courage fluid!! Great job everyone.

Mike


Hard?!? Yeah, that was hard, one of the harder races I’ve done in a long time. I blew so hard on the fourth lap I wasn’t sure I was going to finish. Actually, maybe that was the second lap? I started off with what I though was a pretty mellow effort but after checking my first split and seeing around 27:30, I knew I needed to back it off a bit. I was sitting in 8th or 9th and had to figure out how to slow down and still pass people! Fortunately, that turned out to be quite easy as guys started popping big time about halfway through the second lap. By the end of the lap I’d moved up to 5th and just tried to maintain. The laps got harder and the lap times slower; 28 something for lap two, 29 something for lap three and about a 33 minute final lap. On lap three I was seriously overheating so I decided to roll around in the dirt for a bit. Didn’t really help but made for some good pictures. Best part was forgetting I was cramping in both legs and could hardly pedal and being able to pretend I was racing and sprint the last 100 yards with Matt! I’m sure it wasn’t nearly as fun to watch as Ramirez and Blinger but we gave it a shot. Fun times, too bad we have to wait three months to do it again!!



Great job to everyone else who was out there racing or just hanging out and yelling. Especially Jelly for talking me into racing SuperD on Sat. I’d forgotten what it was like on the podium and the 8 min race effort didn’t affect putting one foot in front of the other like I’m having trouble doing today!

Pete