Holiday Farm Fun

Nate- Holiday Farm Recap

The nice people at Holiday Farm put on a Wednesday night race series that is very relaxed and fun. The loop was about three miles of fields, single track with plenty of climbing. The entry is also very cheap, at six dollars for about an hours worth of fun. I have raced there multiple times before including the Root 66 Series, and a six hour race. I was excited to see if we would be racing over some of my favorite trails on the farm.

The first lap was very fast as Mike, two others, and I flew off the front of the group. I had to say goodbye to Mike since he was holding too fast of a pace for me. So our group split into two groups of two, but we then united near the end of the lap. He set down a massive acceleration going into the second lap, but all four of us up front got confused since a course marker had not been moved from the kids race, so we took off down the driveway in the wrong direction. We slowed down and regrouped out of fairness because no one in our group of four knew which way to go. By the second lap everything was taken care of, and there were no more problems. I had to settle into a nice pace on the uphills and do some damage control for the rest of the race. The downhills on the other hand were wide open and full of fun. There were plenty of rocks to hop over and small drops to launch off of. In the end I held a pace that was set for a respectable 4th. I am looking forward to competing up there again in the future.

Mike- Holiday Farm Race

Nate, Robyn (Nate's very helpful girl friend), and my self made the 1.5 hour journey today, it was was the nicest weather we have had in a while. It was about 75 degrees with some slight cloud cover, which was a great relief from the 90 degrees and humidity we have been fighting recently. As we suited up the atmosphere was great, pretty casual and to my surprise the kids race had what looked like 10 or so kids. As we lined up there looked to be about 40-50 people there, with about 15-20 in the "3 lap" field (which was the longest). As the gun went off one guy really went for it, so for the first 5 minutes the pace was pretty high, so I was trying to be as smooth as possible. The pace slowed a bit at the top of the hill, so I jumped in front to keep things in check. At the end of the first lap there was about 4 of us together, including Nate. At this point I had recovered nicely from a downhill and went for a sprint to mix it up, however as soon as I did this the course marking got a bit confusing and I had to slam on my brakes! After the four of us determined where to go, it was back to racing. As we went through the second lap I stayed up front, and had a small gap on the others. But as we came around for the third lap I put a little more pressure on these guys and was able to put more time in. I crossed the line first, and Nate battled it up for a nice 4th place finish.

Overall it was a great time, with awesome weather, a really fun course, and to my surprise I had pretty good legs and thus was able to keep myself from going too hard. Another awesome Wednesday race series, I suggest you check it out!