Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Dilworth to Ducktown


I had been looking forward to racing in the Dilworth Criterium for a couple of weeks now as it was my first race ever last year. The 3/4 field was very large, it was just myself and Chip representing MOB in the field. Chip had just raced the Masters 45+ with Kelly and Daryl who made the break and finished a strong 3rd and 5th. Chip told me on the way to the line that he would help me all he could, I needed help but there was nothing he could do for me. We rolled up to the line at the back of the field which is, as you all know, not a good thing in a large field. When the race started I had trouble getting clipped as I was avoiding a guy in front of me struggling getting clipped in. I started off in the hole and made it back to the field in the bottleneck going into the fourth turn but it was all bad from there, I ended up dropping off the back with a few others, got lapped and retired, I'm not sure how Chip finished. Enough of that... on a positive note I did hear Sirena, Rip and Theresa tore up the field in the womens race! Good job ladies! Curious to find out how the rest of the team did in their respective races.

My good friend and coach had called me on Thursday and told me he was racing in Ducktown, TN at the Kenda US Cup and invited me to come along and bring my mountain bike. I'd never been to a mountain bike race let alone raced in one, I was hesitant but thought I would give it a shot. My son and I left directly from Dilworth and made the 4 1/2 hour trek to Ducktown hoping to arrive in time to pre-ride the course but didn't make it in time. It rained the entire time we were there and the 11 mile course was shortened to 8 miles for fear of tearing up the trials. My race went off at 11:30, Geoff gave me some pointers about the course before rolling off, he had raced and dominated the Single Speed class earlier in the morning. They had a motorcycle pace the field of 14 to the start of the climb, I got the wheel of the motorcycle on the start and after he pulled off I put the hammer down and didn't look back until about halfway up the climb and there was no one in sight. I continued to push hard through the rain, mud and down a super fast and slick descent, I won the race and put the MOB kit on the top step of the podium. Sweet!

2 comments:

Chambers said...

Sounds like some very Chambers-style racing at Dilworth, and some very unChambers-like racing in TN. Nice!

Rodney Simpson said...

Great job and awesome result there in TN. Michael. Rodney