First Race of the Year!!!

Oh man it feels good to strap a number on the front of my bike and get back on the race course! Not only that but I am on a rad new bike and that always gives a little extra motivation. The race was out at Black Diamond, which is the most twisty, bumpy and technical race we do all year and I was glad for all 5 inches of travel on the Shinobi.

Not sure what the thought process was on the start... but the fastest guys started at the back of the feild... about 2 min behind the SS and all the other age catagories and there is very little passing on this course to say the least. Can anyone say passing clinic! To all of those who let us get by without hesitation I'd like to send out a big THANK YOU! There weren't many of us racing in my cat. but those who showed up were quick, I was able to stay with Spencer while we were trying to work our way through the group but once we hit open trail he was gone. Spencer's a world class rider so I definetly didn't feel too bad when he was gone, at that point I was in second and was just hoping to stay there. Tim started to bring me back lap 2 and I was getting a little worried becasue my back started to bug me. At the end of lap 2 on the only road section I opened it up a little bit and streched out my back, I must have been going pretty fast becasue there was a train of guys behind me that I was passing on the road and they all looked to be hurting... sweet! We hit the singletrack and opened up the gap. The cool part about this course is that it twists back on itself a lot! So you can see where the guys are behind and in front of you, sometimes its hard to tell how far back they are but at least you can see them. I had opened the gap on third to about 45 sec to a min and felt pretty comfortable with that knowing I was going faster in the technical stuff. Towards the end I could definetly feel myself getting tired and making more mistakes, I dumped it once but was able to hold off a charging Tim and take 2nd! Sweet if that's not motivaiton for the coming year I am not sure what is.

Thats all for now! Late!