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What Keith saw:
Result: 8th
Teammates: None
Got a room and shuttled the family up to Fairfax Ca. for the weekend. Fat Tire Festival was on Sat with the race being on Sun.
The town of Fairfax is an amazing place where pedestrian, cyclist and motorist all work in harmony...great thing to witness.
Festival was well done and had a great vibe about it. There was live music, beer tents, vendor tents, and an aerial show put on by some crazy lads on a ramp. Not to mention a jumper for the kids
Made friends with Fat Tire Beer tent and made sure I was never a stones throw away...
Headed back to the hotel with the family and took the kids for a swim in the pool...topped off the evening with a steak dinner and a tall Japanese beer. Stalled for the kids to go to sleep as I had to do some wrenching on the bike - new pedals were going on and my directional tires were mounted backwards heh oops.
Morning of the race I wake up before I needed to like usual, I was excited to try my first MTB race. Went for a quick spin on the bike which felt and shifted great thanks to Cyclepath in Hayward, props to the quick work that was performed on my bike to get it race ready!
Seems you have to either hike or ride up as the road was washed out...got a good warm-up and met up with another bloke looking for the race. We decided to head up as we knew it was atop the mtn somewhere. Got nice and lost before another guy showed up who happened to be racing the pro class showed us the way to the race...rather quickly =o)
Onto the race!
Organizer gave a quick rundown of the course...blah blah 2 Laps blah no where to pass blah blah...no really - no where to pass.
Ok got to get to the front, in usual kj style im chilling in the back. "GO" I start accelerating immediately to try to get closer to the front. Passed a handful of people before the single-track. Went flying through some great sweeping banked singletrack.
We then started up the switchbacks up the side of the Mtn. very tight and technical riding. Roots and rocks abundant with trees criss-crossing the trail. There was a small rock waterfall ledge that stepped to the right that I almost endoed over but was able to clip out before disaster. Good stuff
After climbing for a while we start going down, basically the same technical singletrack but now strength was out the window and bike handling skills and balls came into play.
The guy in front of me immediately started pulling away as he bombed down the trail on his fully suspended rig. I did my best but realized the few times I have ridden my mtb this season coupled with the hard-tail factor knocking my ass out of alignment, I had found my weakness. I eventually let 3 riders pass me as it wasn't fair holding them back.
Funny I should mention that because then we hit the flat valley on a fire road that slowly went uphill and I caught and passed every guy that I let by earlier =oP
2nd lap was actually much better, knew what was coming and got into a nice rhythm - caught up to the guy in front of me and basically paced him backup all the single-track, hit the downhill and he pulled away from me like a bat out of hell. One nice thing was I was able to gap the next group of riders behind me enough so that I was not passed again on the downhill in fact I didn't see them again.
Passed the finish line with a smile on my face and in 8th place. Hauled butt down the hill to meet up with the family to head home. Great weekend, will be trying some more of these =o)
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