Right so forgive me for my lack of updates but life has been busy (RBST) and it's easy to forget about these things.
Going back in time here a wee bit as this race was over a month ago but here's the race report anyway.
Did the preride with Adam Morka who took me over all the course obstacles and showed me some good lines. The course is very cool and lots of fun. Nice mix of techy-y obstacles and double track sections so you can make passes. On the prerace intensity I have a few stumbles on some terrain I should be pretty smooth on but even if I can't make it over that stuff so easily, my legs are feeling good enough to make it all up.
So waking up the morning of the race brings a grim weather forecast. It's amazing how a little bit of rain can completely change a course and Hardwood didn't get just a little, it go a lot. I was so glad I brought my wet weather tubeless tires to the race otherwise the whole race would have been an exercise in futility. The opening stretch to the race is very long so even with my bad starts I am able to move up to just off the front very quickly. As soon as we hit the first singletrack section it all goes to hell. The course is so wet through this section and so torn up as we're the last category to go through. Traction is at a minimum and although I have the legs, I don't have the ground to lay it down on. That was a trend for pretty much the entire race.
One section of the course is called Boneshaker. The aptly named downhill is intimidating but I was feeling pretty confident about it after Adam showed me a fast line down it. During the race however I was thrown a curveball. My category was originally supposed to ride Boneshaker from the top with an option to take a slower detour that enters halfway down. I didn't find out until it came up in the race, but they forced us to take the detour - I guess they didn't want people killing themselves. This completely messed up my speed so I came out of the detour way too hot and hit the second half of the descent with twice as much speed as I would be carrying from the top entrance. Hard on the brakes almost sends me over the bars and into the watching crowd. Fortunately I avoid the embarrassment and pull out probably the fastest clear of the section.
All the other downhills on the course are an absolute mess - no grip is available, they feel more like sledding your bike down rather than riding it. Brake inputs, steering inputs, there isn't really much point. You get your initial aiming at the top and if you got it wrong then tough shit. When you combine that with other people on the course who get it wrong then it leaves no room for error. In fact I don't get some of them right until the the last lap and there's no one around. On more than one occasion I have to bail into the bushes to avoid running into the back of another competitor who went down in front of me. As I mentioned earlier this wasn't a race you could really push at. I finished just outside the top ten feeling super fresh.
Post race was spent trying to get all the mud off of me and the bike. Mud was everywhere and it made me think of the 24(12) hour summer solstice a few years back. This didn't make me like racing in the wet anymore...
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