I had a great weekend of riding so I thought I'd share. 2 for 1 deal.
My wife had a friend that wanted to visit us for the weekend. Turns out that her new boyfriend is a pretty avid rider so while the ladies kibitzed and sight-saw, Carl and I got to ride. It worked out perfectly.
Saturday was the Hereford Fall Festival / Biketoberfest sponsored by Racersedge in Hereford, MD. We all met up there. The kids got to play around on the moon bounce and eat cotton candy.
The Biketoberfest included a dual race and a DJ comp. The dual course was amazingly well done. It was my first dual so I entered the beginner/sport open class. I got there and started practicing around 10:30 am. My goal for the race was to qualify in the top half and go from there. After watching the other riders in my class throughout practice, I had a pretty good feeling that I would at least meet that goal. Quals started about 1 pm. I had a pretty fast qualifying run and when the times were posted, I found that I had met my goal by qualifying 9th out of 22. I never really got comfortable carrying my speed through the berms. I could really rail them about 50% of the time, so I knew my actual race run was going to be a crap shoot. The actual race started by eliminating the lower seeds to fill a field of sixteen. As ninth seed, that put me riding against number 8. It should be a tight race. We dropped the gate and were neck and neck through the first 2 berms but then I blew the third berm and had to dab a foot. I just got nervous and forgot to really lean it to it. I lost a lot of momentum and the other rider pulled away when the track merged to obtain a pretty sizable lead. I made up a lot of time in the next berm, and rallied through the rhythm section and last berm, hoping he would make a mistake, but in the end I ran out of track and he won by about 2 or 3 bike lengths. Well that was my race.
Probably the most exciting race of the day was in the pro women's class between Hillary Elgert and Gale Dahlager in the semi-finals. Gail pulled away from Hillary early in the race with Hillary struggling through some of the tight berms at the top of the course. Gail was ahead in the last rhythm section but she made a mental mistake and took the slower inside line into the final berm. Hillary used her full suspension bike to pedal through the rhythm section rather than roll it and came into the final berm really hot. She used the berm to slingshot past Gail and passed her on the final table top right at the finish line. It was an amazing come-from-behind win!
Time to put away the bike and break out the camera!
Practice / Qualifying action:
Patrick Stewart (rm's JiveFoolSucka)
Hillary Elgert (rm's onetime)
Dave Schall (rm's jdschall i.e. ME)
Race Action:
Between the quals and the actual race, there was a Mongoose sponsored DJ competition. It was invite only and there were some big guns showing their stuff. Aaron Chase, George Ryan, Jim DeChamp and others were throwing down some huge tricks. I think Jim won it with a big front flip. George Ryan was throwing down some sick nose dive threes. Pictures will describe it better.
George Ryan, nose dive three:
Gail wins the biggest balls competition in my opinion. (even through she's a girl). She tried a couple of backflips with bad results. 50-50 casing the lip each time, but each time getting right back up to try it again. I don't think she ever landed one but it wasn't for lack of trying. Here she is warming up with a one-hander:
Jim no footing:
Chase backflipping:
Well that was it for Saturday.
Sunday, the ladies and kids wanted to explore downtown Bal-da-mer (Baltimore) so Carl and I decided to head to Patapsco State Park for an XC ride. I haven't been on a real xc ride all season and I was a little nervous that Carl would kick my ass on the climbs. (He's coming from Asheville, NC and rides Bent Creek, Pisgah, etc. and I live in the flat lands). Turns out that he smokes so it sort of evened out. I decided that the most fun thing to do would be the "Tour day Patapsco" which involves linking all the park perimeter trails for a loop of around 13-14 miles. We started from the I-195 Park-and-Ride which starts out with a nice long DH with lots of small jumps and berms, a big wall ride towards the end and a bunch of creek and log crossings to keep it honest. Then we headed west up Saw Mill Branch. My climbing legs were missing at first, but after I got into a grove, all was good. After a while we settled into a great ride. The first half on the north side of the park is characterized by techy climbs and rock garden descents. After a nice break at the Buzzards Roost over look we dropped down the river and headed to the south side of the park. After one more techy climb up the Cascade trail, we were up on the ridge line on the opposite side of the valley. We sessioned a little free-ride jump section for a while. I just had to hit the big creek gap! Then headed to the mellow, twisty, jedi landspeeder DH back down to the river. Somewhere along here I broke my rear shifter and I was stuck with a 2 speed (36:28 and 22:28) so I spent the rest of the ride spinning out on the DH's and trying to pump corners and bumps for as much speed as I could. After the last DH we rode out on the road and then hooked up with the short section of single track that runs a long the north side of the river and prepared for our last climb of the day back up the DH that 3 hours before seemed so short. After another 20 minutes of grinding we were back at the truck. I think some hikers passed us on the climb. We were pretty beat but spirits where high, "Tour day Patapsco" complete. Christine, my wife called as soon as we hit the parking lot saying they were waiting for us with chocolate milkshakes.
No pictures to show. We were too busy riding. I was running the GPS so at least I have a nice track to prove we were there:
Here it is:
Vitals: 13.4 miles, 2:19 minutes moving time, ave speed 5.7 mph, max speed 23.5 mph, elevation gain (estimated) 1200 + feet, which isn't too bad considering we were almost at sea-level.
My wife had a friend that wanted to visit us for the weekend. Turns out that her new boyfriend is a pretty avid rider so while the ladies kibitzed and sight-saw, Carl and I got to ride. It worked out perfectly.
Saturday was the Hereford Fall Festival / Biketoberfest sponsored by Racersedge in Hereford, MD. We all met up there. The kids got to play around on the moon bounce and eat cotton candy.
The Biketoberfest included a dual race and a DJ comp. The dual course was amazingly well done. It was my first dual so I entered the beginner/sport open class. I got there and started practicing around 10:30 am. My goal for the race was to qualify in the top half and go from there. After watching the other riders in my class throughout practice, I had a pretty good feeling that I would at least meet that goal. Quals started about 1 pm. I had a pretty fast qualifying run and when the times were posted, I found that I had met my goal by qualifying 9th out of 22. I never really got comfortable carrying my speed through the berms. I could really rail them about 50% of the time, so I knew my actual race run was going to be a crap shoot. The actual race started by eliminating the lower seeds to fill a field of sixteen. As ninth seed, that put me riding against number 8. It should be a tight race. We dropped the gate and were neck and neck through the first 2 berms but then I blew the third berm and had to dab a foot. I just got nervous and forgot to really lean it to it. I lost a lot of momentum and the other rider pulled away when the track merged to obtain a pretty sizable lead. I made up a lot of time in the next berm, and rallied through the rhythm section and last berm, hoping he would make a mistake, but in the end I ran out of track and he won by about 2 or 3 bike lengths. Well that was my race.
Probably the most exciting race of the day was in the pro women's class between Hillary Elgert and Gale Dahlager in the semi-finals. Gail pulled away from Hillary early in the race with Hillary struggling through some of the tight berms at the top of the course. Gail was ahead in the last rhythm section but she made a mental mistake and took the slower inside line into the final berm. Hillary used her full suspension bike to pedal through the rhythm section rather than roll it and came into the final berm really hot. She used the berm to slingshot past Gail and passed her on the final table top right at the finish line. It was an amazing come-from-behind win!
Time to put away the bike and break out the camera!
Practice / Qualifying action:
Patrick Stewart (rm's JiveFoolSucka)
Hillary Elgert (rm's onetime)
Dave Schall (rm's jdschall i.e. ME)
Race Action:
Between the quals and the actual race, there was a Mongoose sponsored DJ competition. It was invite only and there were some big guns showing their stuff. Aaron Chase, George Ryan, Jim DeChamp and others were throwing down some huge tricks. I think Jim won it with a big front flip. George Ryan was throwing down some sick nose dive threes. Pictures will describe it better.
George Ryan, nose dive three:
Gail wins the biggest balls competition in my opinion. (even through she's a girl). She tried a couple of backflips with bad results. 50-50 casing the lip each time, but each time getting right back up to try it again. I don't think she ever landed one but it wasn't for lack of trying. Here she is warming up with a one-hander:
Jim no footing:
Chase backflipping:
Well that was it for Saturday.
Sunday, the ladies and kids wanted to explore downtown Bal-da-mer (Baltimore) so Carl and I decided to head to Patapsco State Park for an XC ride. I haven't been on a real xc ride all season and I was a little nervous that Carl would kick my ass on the climbs. (He's coming from Asheville, NC and rides Bent Creek, Pisgah, etc. and I live in the flat lands). Turns out that he smokes so it sort of evened out. I decided that the most fun thing to do would be the "Tour day Patapsco" which involves linking all the park perimeter trails for a loop of around 13-14 miles. We started from the I-195 Park-and-Ride which starts out with a nice long DH with lots of small jumps and berms, a big wall ride towards the end and a bunch of creek and log crossings to keep it honest. Then we headed west up Saw Mill Branch. My climbing legs were missing at first, but after I got into a grove, all was good. After a while we settled into a great ride. The first half on the north side of the park is characterized by techy climbs and rock garden descents. After a nice break at the Buzzards Roost over look we dropped down the river and headed to the south side of the park. After one more techy climb up the Cascade trail, we were up on the ridge line on the opposite side of the valley. We sessioned a little free-ride jump section for a while. I just had to hit the big creek gap! Then headed to the mellow, twisty, jedi landspeeder DH back down to the river. Somewhere along here I broke my rear shifter and I was stuck with a 2 speed (36:28 and 22:28) so I spent the rest of the ride spinning out on the DH's and trying to pump corners and bumps for as much speed as I could. After the last DH we rode out on the road and then hooked up with the short section of single track that runs a long the north side of the river and prepared for our last climb of the day back up the DH that 3 hours before seemed so short. After another 20 minutes of grinding we were back at the truck. I think some hikers passed us on the climb. We were pretty beat but spirits where high, "Tour day Patapsco" complete. Christine, my wife called as soon as we hit the parking lot saying they were waiting for us with chocolate milkshakes.
No pictures to show. We were too busy riding. I was running the GPS so at least I have a nice track to prove we were there:
Here it is:
Vitals: 13.4 miles, 2:19 minutes moving time, ave speed 5.7 mph, max speed 23.5 mph, elevation gain (estimated) 1200 + feet, which isn't too bad considering we were almost at sea-level.
