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Team Bikeman Sections: Race Report Archives | Team Rider Profiles |
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US MTB Nationals Report #1 |
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Team Bikeman -
Race Reports
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Written by Matt DeMeis
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Tuesday, 24 July 2007 |
USA Cycling National Mountain Bike Championships
Mount Snow, Vermont
July 17-22, 2007
Expert Men 30-34
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This is the race I have been training for all year. When I spent 1/2 hour layering up to go ride for 3 hours in the 10 degree weather of January, this is what I was thinking about. Very bizarre when the time actually comes. LT and I booked a condo right at the mountain to alleviate any added stress. Totally worth it. We had a sweet set up with the team tent off of the rear porch, work stand, compressor, the works. We did it up right. Perfect setup for an epic weekend of racing.
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The weather in the days leading up to the race was crazy. Pouring rain, not showers, RAIN. I had come out about 3 weeks prior with "Flyin' Brian" Pierce to do some recon of the course and it was like a totally different animal now. What was a bone dry completely rideable course was now a mud romp. Major sections of the climb that you could just roll up before were now a hike-a-bike.  | | click to enlarge |
The descent had some pretty treacherous sections now with all the mud but all in all it was still really fun to ride, but that's just me because I'm from New England. Anyways, I made the call to run a full on mud tire to get maximum control on the muddy downhills and climbs. I figured the little bit of added rolling resistance on the fire roads would be more than made up for in the slop. I think it was a good call.
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Race day came and the weather was killer. NO humidity, sunny and the temp was nice and cool. Couldn't ask for better weather. We went off at 8am for 3 laps. Off the start I was in third spot as we hit the base of the opening climb. Holy jeebus did they push the pace up that climb. I thought to myself as I hung on for dear life through the feed zone steep "I can't do this pace for 3 laps". It was fast.  | | click to enlarge |
I sagged back to about 10 as we hit the first woods/ downhill. I went too hot into a trench and laid it down, not bad, but I lost my bottle and didn't notice until I had left the scene. Long climb, no bottle, argh. Good thing it was still pretty cool out. So the main climb was a giant walkfest for the middle 1/4 with ankle deep mud. There were sections where I was able to hop on and paddle my way for a bit with the mud tires, good stuff. By 3/4 up I had worked my way into 8th or so according to Chuck and LT who had set up a motivational encampment complete with boom box and Slayer. Proper.
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I just tried to pick away as much as I could on the climb and ride the downhills smooth, no mistakes. Well, that didn't happen. There were some spots toward the bottom that were so crazy messy, steep and clogged with people that it was faster and safer to run down them. It was really fun blasting around in the mud.  | | click to enlarge |
So over the course of the 3 laps I would gas it up the climb and hold it steady on the descents. There were some guys on dualies that were riding the downhills so fast it was amazing. It was so rutted out from the past days races that by the bottom your hands and feet were just rubber. So they'd get a bit of a gap on the downhill and I'd catch them again going back up. This means it was going to come down to a last lap dig.
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Last time up the hike-a-bike I tried to run my bike as much as possible while everyone walked and pedal the mud tires as much as possible. This worked great and I managed to drop a bunch of guys before the open climbing. Once in the open I gassed it as much as I could all the way to the top and still got passed by a ton of crazy fast guys from the older classes!!! Seems like the older guys get in expert, the faster they become.  | | click to enlarge |
So, heading into the final downhill it was myself and a Yeti rider from WA. I knew I didn't want it to come down to a sprint since my legs would be toast so I put in a few good digs on the last few short uphills before the fire road to the finish. Emptied the tank and it worked. Yeti guy was gone. Under the bridge and 44x12 down the fire road to the finish. I rolled in 5th although I wouldn't find this out until after the podium. They mistook me for 6th but I think it was just a mix up with a rider getting pulled (if you didn't lap through for your final lap before 2 hrs you got yanked).
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So 5th place and first guy from new england in my age group. For nationals, I'm happy with that. You'll always think afterwards that you could have gone harder etc... If there is one thing I think I could have done different it would be ride the descents faster. I was pretty careful. Probably could have picked up a few more spots, who knows.  | | click to enlarge |
All in all it was a fantastic race. Great course and great support from my friends and family. Once again the Salsa Moto Rapido was flawless. I had no drive train or brake issues thanks to the sram bits and new Avid Juicy Ultimates. I slathered the chain with good old Phil Wood "Tenacious Oil" and it worked great. Tires were the Maxxis Medusas in 2.1 (probably about a 1.9 in reality) which just RIPPED in the slop. New to the rig this time was a Fox F100 RLC fork. I don't know how I raced this course 3 times before with only 80mm of travel. Then new RLC is sick.
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A huge congrats to all the riders who finished this one. It was a brute. LT in the sport race and the semi-pro guys (JB and Art DeGraw) had some pretty extreme conditions on saturday. Hopefully he'll post a report of that madness. Thanks for reading!
Matt
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