Monday, June 14, 2010

MO State Championship Race, Castlewood

So close, yet so far away! What a suffer fest this one was! JP and I headed down to St. Louis this last weekend to try our luck at the MO State Championship mtb race. How nice would it have been to bring home one of these puppies! Nice!

Was not a lot of "West" side of the state folks down there for this race. Ethos crew as down there, Travis, Garet & Steve. Saw Tim from smithville and some others, but that was about it.
It was a hot & humid race and the start was insane! They had us go up this gravel double track about 1/4 mile. That was pretty gnarly, good for me on the SS, I hit the top of the hill 3 back... Then proceeded to lose ground bit by bit until the finish!
The course was pretty fun, considering I am not a big fan of rocks, I would like to hit it up sometime when I can slow down and appreciate it a bit more.
After the initial climb at the start there were two other significant climbs in the race, other than that it was smooth single track.(I'm the second one with the chicken legs) my race went as follows: Pass guys climbing in there granny gear up the climbs, they catch up at the end of the decent and pass me on the open grass section and repeat! For all three laps! It was a little frustrating but what can you do. 2 of the 3 guys I was playing leapfrog with ended up getting the better of me. I ended up 8th overall and 4th for the Cat 2 30-39. After looking at the results, I was about 6 min shy of 3rd and 20 F-ing min out from 1st. Yes, 20 MIN!!!
JP had a good showing, he pulled a 9th place on his first ride back from trying to injure himself. Also good considering he had some mechanicals along the way.

I am pretty sure that the only guy from our area to Potium was Garet from Ethos Racing. He killed it...
All in all I am very happy I went, but let me tell ya, it was a painful one. Hard course, the field was stacked with good riders, I loved it!
Here are some other points of view from guys who did much better than I did:
Dan Miller - won SS State
Johathan Schottler - Won Cat 1 State

1 comment:

GMapes said...

killer job Jdoug and JP! I can't believe your racing those guys on a SS and killing it. Bad#%@