Visit PA MTB Festival...

This weekend was the Visit PA MTB festival weekend. Since I had some time off earlier in the month for a family visit, I was unable to get some extra time off to suffer the 9 hr endurance race with my friends.

I did however get to spend some time at the farm on Friday night for the Night Time Trial. This event is really cool, with the Visit PA team riders starting at 9pm and everyone else going out at 1 minute intervals. I had a chance to pre-ride the course with VeganRob, DanK, Pete, Scott Alden while it was still light (or almost). We finished up at just before 9pm, without lights and it was pretty dark in some of the sections. Our pre-ride data showed 6.37 miles and a kinda easy pace of 48 minutes.

Since I had determined late I was gonna race, I had the 2nd to last start time of 10:38pm. I had heard some times of the fast guys A-ron of 34'ish minutes. I felt really good out on the course, passing about 7 or 8 people that started before me. I finished in 38:23 - 6th place in the solo field, I'm happy with my ride there.

I returned back to the farm on Saturday night to do some partying with everyone, who suffered out there all day. They had great weather for the endurance race, though not as great as the weather in my comfortable office with fast internet :)

Sunday's events were some slow downhill race, kid's race, bike toss, and short track xc. Seems a lot of people didn't stay around for the Sunday festivities. Because of the attendence, Kuhn did just 3 STXC races, with no A, B categories. We started at 12:30 for our 30 minutes on the course. The leaders did 13 laps, and I did 12 laps - ending up in 12th place. The speeds were really fast, 7.5 miles in 30:22.

After cleaning up and sticking around for some raffle drawings- I won a Feedback Sport Alpine digital scale. I hope to get out to either the Lewis Morris Challenge (where I won in Sport last year) or Long Pine Classic (michaux state forest). It might also be time to start getting ready for the W101?? I've been considering this race this year for a few weeks, we'll see how that works out. The 2-5-10 century is coming up and I'm gonna try to get that Monday off of work to do it.

Time for some sleep. Later

-matt

Vacation rides...

______________________ Friday ______________________

Friday I hit up the Rodale lunch ride - which ended up doing Sauerkraut long. After a small altercation between Bill and some angry construction worker shouting for us to single up, X2 and I split off and went of for some more miles. We took a right turn up towards tower road (ouch!) We ended up with 33 miles for the day and just over 2 hours.

Then there was some happy hour fun, followed by a 100 lap Madison at the VPCC aka velodrome. I had my family in town from SC, and they had never seen track cycling, what better race for them to attend. I chilled out with my family till around 1am. I had to crash to get up early for a Saturday morning mtn ride.

______________________ Saturday ______________________

Yozell, Boman and I met up for a Salsbury ride from Emmaus. It was nice to actually warm up before a ride. However, I wasn't really fellin' it. I was really warm, high HR and legs feeling really heavy. The trails were a combination of completely ridable and super slick. We did a 30 mph paceline back on Emmaus Ave, which also had my HR cranked. 20 miles just under 2 hours.

______________________ Sunday ______________________

Six of us headed out from Emmaus to hit the Pagoda ride. The were a few scheduled stops along the way, Oley grocery store on the way out & Oley Diner/Creamery/Petting Zoo. This is my longest road ride of the year, and 3rd day in a row on the bike - vacation is nice! 75 miles 4.5 hours and quite a few feet of climbing. We had a quick apple fritter and coke stop at the Oley shopping center followed by some climbing. After we hit the Pagoda (one hell of a view) and some really sweet decents we stopped at the Oley Creamery for some ice cream and a little zoo tour.

A great day on the bike with some lunch at Armetta's and some dinner at the Strickland's. This has probably been my biggest (8.5 hrs) few days on the bike and I feel great! A few more days of vacation before reality begins again.

Next racing stop - Neshaminy. See ya there.

-matt

Iron Hill Enduro...

I had originally planned on doing the Expert XC race at Iron Hill in Newark, DE. However, with a 2pm start time I thought it would be a better idea to do the 4hr enduro race. Weather leading up to the day was looking great, so I mounted up a new Stan's Raven (which is almost a slick with some side knobs).

As it turns out - maybe not the best choice as the only bit of rain on the east coast happened to be in Newark for about 2 hours before our race. This really caused some sloppy conditions, thankfully not nearly as bad as Granogue. The big benefit of this type of tire, is that it doesn't hold mud, but every little slimy rise was difficult.

I started the race 3 minutes late after going back to the car to remove a base layer, since the rain stopped and while riding around I figured I be hot. I had to move my way through many of the beginner racers, and caught up to Fernando about 2/3 through the first lap and we rode together for a bit. I caught up to Pete on the 2nd lap feeling pretty good I passed him up one of the climbs. I knew it wouldn't stick, because I always start too fast, and fade as time goes on. I stayed away for about a lap and half then Pete caught up to me and we rode together for the next 2 laps or so, going back and forth.

On the 5th or 6th lap I started to cramp up a bit, so I tried to just take it easy and spin a little easier. They subsided pretty quickly. Pete made a pass on one of the shorter steep climbs and got around some of the Sport traffic, I couldn't keep up with the pace so I backed off just a bit. I thought he was gone for the day, but apparently he crashed and cramped up finishing on his 6th lap.

I rolled through the clocks with about 19 minutes left, so I went out for my 7th lap. No more cramps and felt pretty good. The last two laps were about 2 - 3 minutes slower.

4:19 total race time, 35 miles and 7th place out of 28. After the race Pete, Chuck and I headed over to Iron Hill Brewery for some food and beer. That was good call, but I was definitely pretty tired by this point. Pics to follow soon.

Next up maybe the Highbridge XC race in NYC.

-matt