Junior MTB Camp, Keweenaw Chain Drive and WORS #4

I fought through finals week and finished my first year of high school,  unfortunately I could not find a ride in time for the first day of Brian Matters MTB camp but lucky I got a ride up from Madison to Hayward with the Jacksons. I stayed overnight at their house and we left for Houghton after lunch. Me and Jeff rode the Michigan Tech trails in the evening despite the mud and had a great time. In the morning I met up with the camp to pre-ride the Keweenaw chain drive course. The course was a little damp but the trails were great and I couldn't wait to race. After lunch we headed over to the Michigan tech trails for the Trek demo. I test rode the full suspension superfly 9.8 and a few others on the awesome trails. Going big on jumps was a lot more fun on a full suspension bike!

The race started at 10 the in the morning and the start was just out the front door of where I was staying with the Jacksons. I didn't have to warm up to much because there was a neutral roll out for the first few miles, I stayed at the front of the pack and once we got to cemetery hill the pack broke apart. I was the first 16 miler into the single track and about 20th overall behind other 32 milers. I was feeling good and hunted down 32 mile racers and had a couple minute gap on the rest of the 16 milers. I would have won overall but unfortunately I flatted and crashed. I put CO2 in it but 6 16 milers got ahead of me and I was never able to close down on them again. I won my age group and my dad got 3rd in the single speed division, my dad and I also won the father son division. The camp was awesome and it was great to hang out with everyone but my dad and I had to hit the road. We went to my cabin near Minocqua which is about a hour and a half away from Sundays race in Wausau. My cousins were at our cabin so we had a nice evening with them and left at 8:30 the next morning. My legs were completely fried but I persevered. I pulled the hole shot and after a few minutes only my friend Sam Spende was still on my wheel. For the whole first lap I tried to drop him but I just didn't have the energy or the power. Also the course was less than 5 miles a lap there was nothing technical what so ever on the whole thing. For the second and third lap I tried to conserved my energy for the finish. I stupidly lead out the sprint and Sam managed to get by me for the win but I was still content for how tired I was! It was a great week and next up is the red flint fire cracker in Eau Claire, after a bit of Tour of Americas Dairy Land!

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WORS #3 Battle of Camrock

For this race compared to the last race the travel time was greatly diminished from 4 hours to 25 minutes. Finally WORS had arrived at my home course! I slept in late, had a big breakfast and jumped in the car. I got dressed on the way and jumped right on the bike as soon as we parked and started warming up. I could see the storm clouds rolling in as I warmed up on the road and about 15 minutes before the start it began pouring. Unfortunately it turned a lot of the trails to mush, but luckily the rain stopped right before the start. The first few waves went and I got my call up, Don did the count down and we took off, I pulled the hole shot and was first up the big start hill. My friend Andy and another guy passed me on the first flat and I tried to stick with them. We immediately started to catch lap traffic and we slowed down to a stand still. Most of the first lap was like that and I stayed within eye sight of Andy. It was quite a struggle to not be able to go full speed on the trails that I know like the back of my hand. I had to be very aggressive with my passing which led to a few slide outs in corners. Towards the end of the first lap my right shifter gave out and I could only use 2/3 of my gears. This made it pretty hard to climb the monster climb at the start. The second (and final) lap continued to not go well as another racer crashed me into a spectator on a straight away, luckily he sort of caught me and I continued on my way. The rest of the lap was a struggle with minimal gears, the muddy trails, and the numerous crashes really worked against me and I was feeling very discouraged but I finished strong and ended up 2nd in my age group and 5th out of 210+ starters. It was not the race I was hoping to have on my home course but it was still pretty fun!