And so it began . . . .

Well, it actually began two weekends ago at the MASS relay. Met a large group of racers on the way to the MASS relay at the Wawa in Lancaster, which is a favorite meeting place when heading into Central PA. Quick run to use the bathroom, get some food, and we were on the way. Set up camp quickly among the C3 and Fast Forward Development team and rode a quick lap. Learned how much harsher the bike feels with a rigid fork and was surprised by the roughness of the trails as I remembered them to be pretty buff.

My team all rode well and came within 20 seconds of getting our last relay rider out for another lap. Next year . . . . . I felt good on the bike and as always, loved the trails on the Osterling farm. 16 minute laps with 45 minutes of rest made for some dead legs on laps 2 and 3, but 4 felt pretty good. Fully rigid on the rooty trails in Marysville, not so much (although my front tire choice was not so cushy either).

Sunday, April 11th was the first official cross country race and the venue was 15 minutes from my house, which is always a nice thing. Team Bike Line, along with Mother Nature did a great job in getting the course ready for the race. Just six weeks ago, the course had a foot of snow in places, so it was nice to have a superfast course to race. 62 guys lined up at the start of the Vet II sport race, the largest field in quite some time. I did my best to hold back at the start to avoid overextending myself. As we approached the first turn, I started to move up through the field, but there was still a very long way to go before we would hit singletrack. I could see my teammate Barry up ahead in the crowd and worked to get up to him, which took some time, ½ a lap actually. We then did our best to pass folks and move up in our field. We passed a lot of guys and ended up 9th/10th for the day, crossing the line together and letting the timer decide the winner. It was great to be racing with a teammate, because we both kept each other focused on moving up in the field. I suspect by the time we passed our team tent (first section of the course on the fireroad), we were in about 25th place, so it was nice to keep moving forward all race. Pass and zoom, pass and zoom. Lisa and Isabella made it out the race as well and enjoyed being outside. It was nice to see them at the start of the race and at the end of the first lap as well. Hopefully they can make it out to more races in the future. Props to Mark Sanford who won Vet I Sport on Sunday. You deserve it dude.

Now it is time to work on more training and conditioning in order to improve my placings. I am looking forward to courses with more climbing and technical sections. The Secret Henry’s Team had a good day, although I am not sure how good because I have not seen final results yet.