Mountain Biking at Catamount

Williston, Vermont: home of the Catamount XC ski trail system and home of the best Wednesday night mountain bike group ride in New England. Also home of an amazing B&B where myself Proko, Ravster and Winston are staying. Winston keeps talking about how hungry he is and Proko continues to geek out on his computer. I think he is looking for an i-phone on Ebay but most of the phones are fake. Just like a good pair of jokeleys eye wear, there are a bunch of fake i-phones. At first glance they look great. A second glance reveals that they are pieces of crap.

On the race note: I raced in the Wednesday night Catamount worlds. It was a huge deal! Really. I was riding Adam Craig's old bike that now belongs to Jeff Davison, Lea Davison's dad. It had a broken front break lever but Jeff and I rigged it up with some zip ties and epoxy. I knew I would have to be delicate with it but that wouldn't matter, at the start it was drizzling and it made the mostly grass course very slick. Jeff's bike has good tires on it but not so good on wet grass. Keeping it upright would be my biggest worry.

At the start I saw a ton of people I knew. I underestimated the popularity of the Wednesday Worlds and knew that I would have my work cut out for me. Especially because some of the fast guys were on cyclocross bikes. There was nothing too technical about the course and was mostly on hard packed grass and dirt. These guys would be flying. Four laps of pain.

Lap one started apparently really hard. That's what everyone was saying after the race. I have nothing to judge it against because I have not started a mountain bike race since last fall. I was right with Josh Dillon and his teammate Jaime from the Fiordifrutta team. They were so smooth on the first lap while I was all over the trail. I was clearly rusty. Coming around for the second lap I slid out on an uphill corner and ended up in the tall grass. My cleat was full of grass, chain fell off, and it was just a small skid out. To make matters a little more difficult I was on road pedals that were full of grass and the cleat did not want to clip in.

I finally got up and going but they were gone. The rest of the race was chase chase chase. I never caught the two Fiordifrutta cyclo crossers again. Being able to race on fat tires again cleared my head from all of the hectic travel schedules that have been controlling my life the last two weeks.

This weekend: headed into New York City for a race in Central Park. Oh yea!