Huntsville and Squirrels

The Dirt Derby last Tuesday was only slightly more productive than the previous one. I didn't fall, but Rick still beat me in the sprint by about a bike length. Neither of us were going all out, and would kind of attack just for the sake of attacking. We would kind of half-heartedly downshift, crank for one straight away, look to see if the other was a foot off your wheel instead of an inch, and get a complement like: "That was a pretty good one", or, "nice smooth shifting there", or "check out my driftage in this next corner." It was still fun, and I think it got a bit more serious on the last lap, when he started throwing down some real stuff. I think we've both come to the conclusion that neither of us is going to drop the other on this course, and we might as well just ride some good hard tempo together, and throw in a sprint at the end. Come on out Kevin, we need a bit of stimulation!

Huntsville was yesterday, and I was SUPER relaxed the whole weekend. After pre-riding the course, I went and watched way too much Man vs. Wild and College Football. At around eight or nine I remembered all of a sudden that I had a for real XC race tomorrow! Quickly got the bottles together, lubed the chain, and settled back down for another couple hours of T.V. Can you say "LAZY!"

It rained tons the whole weekend, and on any other course it would have been bad, but it just made the Huntsville sand pack in, and the course was super fast. I was racing Junior Cat 1 due to the new rule, but still started with the Pros. I wasn't feeling like going all out for the race, but didn't want to look too silly either. I rode the first two laps with Golden Bike winner Ryan Dorsey, and we rode around at the equivalent of fast group ride pace, and had fun gapping the multitude of roots, and drifting the super sweet corners. Craig Kunz and Wiley Mosley had been hovering at about a minute in front of us for the whole race, so I decided to do one lap pretty hard and see if I could get them. This was a race after all. I took the speed up literally by about 2 mphs and passed them. Got one or two more Pros also. My last lap was more than three minutes faster than my first or second, and was really fun, especially on this course. So, I ended up top half in the Pros, and won Cat 1 Junior by 10 minutes. Also made $250 which is nice. All in all a nice fun weekend with the whole TMBRA family. Sweet!

This stuff and Huntsville always go hand in hand. The total Cat 1 purse was $12,600, thanks BikeLane!!

My dad got his first podium since his "comeback". On his first lap he crashed, lost his Garmin, found it and got rolling again. Later he found out 2nd place beat him by 5 second and first by 45. Seriously?! He was still very happy and got some swag, along with this...

Yeah Pa!!

I think I am going to convert the race bike to singlespeed for a week or two to have some fun. If we go, I'll race BTU on singlespeed, and a few Dirt Derbies, before it's time to get a bit more serious. At the moment though, I'm kinda liking this!

Oh, and congratulations to Rick for beating two sinlgespeeders in the sprint finish for the Pro win. No Rick, I'm never going to drop this...

Squirrels are cool. This one was sharing dinner with the dogs.

They like to relax...

...but still have the cojones...

...to get things done.

Sorry for the extreme strangeness to the end of this post, but some of us lose a bit of mental concentration during the off season.