6 Hours of Power

Finally broke the 3rd place curse at Ellicottville. The past few adventures I finished 3rd and thought that I was destined for another one yesterday. In a weird prize arrangement, I was given 1st place in my age category. Technically I was 2nd, but 1st had won the overall so is ineligible for age base prizes. I finished either 4th or 5th overall out of 75 or so competitors. I'm pleased about that as I thought I was having a really bad day (more on that in a bit). Finished with 7 laps at 6:41, 1st overall was 7 laps at 6:05?. With the placing I pretty much wrapped up the NYSERS race series title as its only 3 races long and best 2 count. Looking forward though to the Suicide Six at Spencer Park and hopefully I can keep the streak going. I haven't raced there since it was an xc race and looking forward to going back.

6 HOP breakdown.
After a shitty Lemans style run that seemingly goes on forever, I was dogging at big time I slammed it up the climb to end up 3rd wheel into the singletrack. Had a tough time getting a decent rhythm in the woods. Coming down the 1st descent and out onto the super fast ski slope descent, I forgot it was a hard 90 immediately into the woods; carried way too much speed and to the photographers delight ended up tangled in some bushes and trying to get back onto the course. Came through the line around 5th place, about a minute down. 2nd lap was more or less the same as the first; lost a little more time, by the finish of the 3rd lap my lap time had dropped off by a few minutes and I was dying hard. Thought I was going to pull a "Levi" as it was feeling like my worst day ever. I finished the 3rd lap and wanted to just lay down and die; my stomach was a little bloated from drinking a bit too much gatorade in the heat and every inch of my body was aching, I grabbed some advil and a little caffeine and by the end of the 4th lap was feeling much better and saw that I was on par for 7 laps. I continued to push hard and my body started to come around and with the switch to water so did my stomach. Lap 6 I was chasing a few riders around the course and almost killed myself on one of the infamous waterbars. I had forgotten that the last one was pretty major and hit it full on with as much speed as possible. As I soared about 15 feet through the air, I was wondering how they were going to get a stretcher up her into the woods. I could feel the front end of my bike lowering down a bit too much and just figured I was going to kill myself at this point, but luckily I leaned back just enough and pulled it out. I let out a big "whoooo" when I landed. The rider on my wheel gave a "Holy Sh#t; how did you land that one?". Lap 7 was just a final run around, but I must've pulled out a few passes as I moved up quite a bit in the overall. I did manage to jam my chain in the spokes, was passed by a solo rider but fixed it quick and gave it everything to get up and pass him back.

Right now I'm just looking to recover, My man Casey wants to do some scouting for a 100 mile off-road route down in Naples and has some nice new singletrack that he's found. I'm sure that'll be a bitch of a day; 100 miles on the dirt with 15,000 feet or so of climbing. Might get us ready as were going to attempt to pull off the Mountaineer/Highlander Double in September. 35 miles/7,000 ft climbing off-road followed by 100 miles/10,000 ft climbing on the road.


Later
~J