So with a party in mind, this weekend the icing occurred in our own back yard. And it consisted of deep moon dust, concealing tire eating holes and covering everything that came in contact with it. The Race the Ranch track was by race time, aside from piled in aforementioned powder, extremely rutted, variable, slippery and delicious drifty. On my walk of parts of the track before my race run I was forced to change 4 of my lines to those I hadn't practiced, that hadn't even existed a few hours before. And at the top of the trail, for the parts I hadn't had the opportunity to walk, I changed a few more in my mind, envisioning disintegrating corners laden with invisible tire eating holes, like ones that had developed in practice, only with larger teeth. And I was right, although due to the difficulty of accurately practicing imaginary ruts in your mind beforehand I had some heavy bobbles hitting new lines blind at speed. Overall though I was pretty happy with how my run and the strategy entailed came together, the gongshow of speed logistics and all other things considered. What fun it is to compete, especially in your own hometown. My new key to balance, agility and traction is riding super low, and it played out well in the race, enabling me to sniper lines through everyone else’s wedding banana peels and pin corners on the pedals. I ended up 11th in elite men by a small margin, which as Taylor excitedly pointed out is definitely in the top 12, and this just puts me on the blood trail in the hunt for a podium kill. The second layer of icing, which I won’t get into too much this time around, is how my coaching has been going. All I am going to say is look out for the kids I am coaching through the rest of the circuit…
Until next time,
J
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