Windham World Cup

Nate-

I have been waiting for this race for half of the summer. I have been to this course a couple of times before and thought that it was a lot of fun since the climbs and descents suited me very well. I arrived the day before to preride the course. On the way to the mountain I heard a pop from the back of the car and thought that the car hit something. When we got to the parking lot, I found out that my front tire was sitting in front of the muffler, and the tire blew out due to the heat. I was frustrated that I forgot to check the wheels before we left, but I was partly happy that it did blow out. I would have been more frustrated if the tire was weakened and blew out during practice or even the race. I went up to a vendors tent and got some new rubber for my front wheel.

Practice that night went very well. The course was fairly beat up from the elite races that took place earlier in the day and some of the rock armor was kicked around. Overall the course was still fairly smooth. To my surprise they changed up the later half the track which was the downhill portion. In the middle of the downhill there was a super steep climb that only lasted about twenty seconds, but could easily cause someone to crack.

My group was the first to go off the line with two other classes. In the picture above, I am in the dead center of the front row, and having a front row start was key. I was battling for second place for the first half of the climb. I tried to ride a nice consistent race,since I could not keep up with the accelerations. I stayed in third until the top of the climb on the second lap when forth place caught me. At that point I was about 20 seconds behind second place. Forth place passed me and then covered the gap to second. They battled for a bit, and by the time I realized that I should have accelerated too, but it was too late. Their battle put some distance on me. I hoped I would be able to pick up the scraps if they blew each other up. I could not catch up to third place, no matter how hard I tried, the gap never seemed to close. I could see him on all the fire roads, but would lose sight in the single track.

I was fairly happy with my overall performance of a forth place, while racing people from all over the United States. Here is a picture about a half a second before I crossed the line. The finish was bitter sweet since I was about two minutes from the leader, and 30 seconds from third place. I had my sights set on a podium which did not happen. On the other hand racing against this many people who are so close to my ability caused me to push myself to the limit. I was happy with my performance and left everything on the course, I just needed that extra half a percent and I could have placed on the podium. Now it is time for some well deserved rest and some TLC for the bike.