Tsali race report

Got down to Tsali on Saturday about 3:30 and it was beautiful. A little overcast but not enough to make someone think it would rain soon. The trails were real dry. I rode a few miles out on the big loop then turned around and did the small loop. I was amazed at how fast that place is. It's real pretty too with the blue ridge mountains surrounding ya and a beautiful little lake type water hole you ride around with emarld green water.

After the pre-ride Brian Schworm (anthony is still recovering from tuberculosis) and I head to the Sleep in hotel and relax and eat the rest of the evening. Wake-up sunday morning and look out at the parking lot to find it soaked and drizziling rain still coming down.

We get out to the course and I start to realize it's going to be kind of muddy. At first I was thinking that sandy dry soil would just drink it all up but I guess it rained more than I thought and it was continuing to rain off and on. I started warming up with a steady drizzle coming down. By the time we were sitting on the starting line it had stopped but I had ridden around enough to know that I prolly wouldn't be able to wear my glasses because they were gonna get caked with mud. I put them in my jersey pocket just in case I wanted to put them down on the bridge of my nose to shield my eyes from upsplatter.

So, we're sitting on the line Sport 19-29 and there are at least 30 of us. The guy asks who wants it, Regan Woodall (Ryan's little brother) and Eric Davis are the only two to raise there hands. I actually said, Not me. Not that I wouldn't love to win, I just didn't have the confidence or arrogance to say I was going to. The whistle is blown and we take off, there is about .5 mile of road section. I held my own on that and got into the woods in 4th position which is fine with me. I was on woodall's wheel. Every time I got close though I was getting mud all in my eyes and would temporary have blurred vision with a lot of blinking to try to clear it up. Since woodall won reddick and got second at chickasaw I knew that his was a good wheel to be on. For the first few minutes of the race I'm having no trouble keeping up so I'm thinking, "alright, I can handle this." Then we caught up to someone and both passed but as soon as woodall got around he sort of opened it up a bit and was quickly away. I try to keep it steady because the first climb is right around the corner. Start going up and one guy comes around then up a bit futher in the middle of a switchback some jackhole tried to pass on the inside. That would have been okay had he made it, but he falls over in the apex of the turn and knocks me and another rider over. I was pretty pissed as I struggled to get back up and run the remainder of the climb till it flattened out a bit and I could get back on my bike. That took more out of me than making it through the climb would have.

After the crest of that climb there is some fast descent type stuff. I put the glasses on the bridge of my nose to help shiled me from splatter and turned my rear shock on. I had to brake a little more than on the pre-ride because there were a couple times I was getting a little squirrely due to not being able to turn and lean as much as I wanted for fear of wadding it up. We then make a sharp left to go down a little more on a section of trail that is pretty rutted out. At the bottom it flattens out. I keep seeing four guys ahead of me. So I try to stay focused and get back up to them. Eventually I do. After catching up with them I think the front two guys might have taken off. Next thing I know, the guy in front of me and I are passing Eric Davis. I was pysched about this because I've never beaten him. The whole rest of the race whenever I looked back and saw a red and white jersey I was worried it was him so I was trying to keep him away. turns out it was some guy from an older class.

A lot of the riding was some flat kind of fast stuff with sharp right hand turns thrown in. Coming out of one of them I got caught up in loose stuff and went down. That was bad because it made me ride overly timid on the rest of the sections like that and there were a lot of turns like that, I think that is what hurt me the most. I was doing fine on the climbs and catching people or passing them but then they would pass me back after being on flat curvy stuff for a while. On one of the climbs I put it in granny because I wanted to ride it all the way up and catching the guys walking at the top but as I caught one guy that was walking I said, "rider back." He just stayed right in the middle of the trail and didn't budge. I was forced to unclip and walk/jog up the rest of the climb. When I unclipped I said, "well I guess you don't care." What an assface, if you're walking up a climb and someone else is riding up it and they catch up to you, please give them some room to get around.

The rest of the ride just consisted of me passing a few people and a few people passing me. I was thinking that most of the people passing me were from the older class. So, on the finishing lap I was feeling pretty good thinking maybe I was going to have my best Serc result yet, maybe 5th or 6th plus Eric hadn't caught back up to me.After finishing though I saw the results and somehow I got 11th. That was definitely disappointing and I found out Eric had dropped out of the race soon after I passed him so that was doubly dissapointing. I was covered in mud though and everyone I rode passed was just kind of looking at me and laughing. I had someone take a picture with my cell phone.

The pros and experts had to start a little late because someone had broken their collar bone and couldn't walk out of the woods. They were supposed to do 3 laps but after one, the race was shortened to 2 laps, it was so muddy that a lot of people were having nasty crashes. Earl bradley supposedly broke a rib, some guy broke his leg. I heard another guy saying he got knocked out, tons of people were dropping out.

On the first lap though when they came through for a feed Brian Schworm was out front and had a good gap on two chasers behind him. He rode up the last climb on the lap while a couple were off their bikes running up it. He saw he got a bit of a gap so he opened it up and held it till the finish. 3rd year in a row he has won.

Anna Jean Daliere (nikkie) from schellers- won the womens expert race, she actually caught all the pro women and passed them and quite a few of the expert men.

Keith Lucas got 4th in the Expert men 40+

So kentucky had some good results down there but I wasn't one of them.

After looking at my hr data and I don't think I pushed myself hard enough. I guess I thought I was doing well and got a little too complacent. When will I learn?