you know me, i love racing ocp. it has everything; rocky white-knuckle downhills, gut buster climb and just all out fast single track - a great power course. last years first lap ripped tire was a heart breaker for me so i really wanted to some retribution this year. things did not start well. during my pre-ride, my freehub body started freezing up. crap, it worked fine saturday. no time to do anything about it now as we were beginning to assemble around the start.
there was a pretty decent field on hand for the pro/ex race. the start was a grassy flat sprint with a hard right and then left into the woods. the dewy grass and horror stories of the first downhill and a new switchback allowed me to easily take the holeshot as i guess the others figured my mangled torso would make a soft landing should anything happen. the new section of the VOT trail rocks. super fast, flowy and fun which leads into the original section with an awesome downhill with some nice big rocks and a couple sweet, banked sweeping turns. i was riding and feeling great. the freehub was proving problematic though since it was causing my chain to wrap up and at times come off.
second lap, chasers were down to one and after aforementioned downhill, i was all alone. i kept the pace the same as i had first lap, feeling good. since my drivetrain was acting up, it was nice not to have somebody right on me, that way i had some breathing room in case the problem caused me so slow down or crash (i did have to stop to upwrap it from the cogset once and i came out of a few rough corners sans chain on rings - suprise, your freewheeling!).
so the VOT downhill was the star of the day since on lap 3, thats where i blew all the oil from my fork. i could hear the ti spring in there workin and i was feelin a bit nervous about some catastrophic failure that may come. well, that came one lap later when i stuffed the front wheel in a rocky section at speed and heard a "pop." i thought it was my tire burping air and also figured thats why my front end felt loose. in the end, i was 1 minute per lap slower on laps 3 &4 over laps 1 & 2 trying to ride less aggressive and keep the bike together. only after the race did i realize my frame now has a new bend in it and that "pop" was my fork actually breaking. good times.
after all the smoke cleared, i won and it felt great. this year has sucked pretty bad and to win against some decent compitition on a favourite (i forgot to be euro when i mentioned tire, er tyre, earlier so i'll make up for it with a favourite) course feels nice.
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3 comments:
Anthony forgot to mention that we played dominos on the switchback
Sounds to me like Tonyboob needs to dump the technology and roll it rigid. All that squishy stuff is keepin' my man down. A nice rigid hardtail, less stuff to fail, less stuff for him to destroy with all that power.
i didnt mention it because i paid stevens to take you out right there. if you got back up and tried to pass me he was gonna put your face in his pit. lucky for you you "fell back"
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