So I don't know what happened with my last post but I can't see it... if you can please tell me so I don't repost it.  Anymahoo... April 13^th marked the opening XC race for the Mid Atlantic Super Series, the premier mountain bike series in the Mid Atlantic Region.  The race was organized by the local Bike Line team and held at the Fair Hill Natural Resource Management Area in Elkton, Maryland.  Fair Hill has an extensive network (50+ miles) of well-maintained, mountain bike friendly singletrack which makes the most of the rolling northern Maryland terrain.  The course was 7.5 miles long and mostly singletrack.  Judging from my previous riding at Fair Hill I knew it was going to be a fast race.

I lined up with the Sport Senior 1 (age 19-29) class for my first XC race of the season.  The start took us up a short gravel road then down a fast fire road, across a stream, and into the singletrack.  At the bell our group sped off up the course and I found myself in the lead group.  At the top of the rode a rider from C3-Sollay broke off down the dirt road and never looked back.  I hit the singletrack with a group of about six riders, with the leader about ten seconds ahead of me.  Eventually I took charge of the pack and got a little gap, trying to minimize the damage done by the leader in hopes of a second lap attack.  Halfway through the lap the rest of the group reeled me in.  During the second lap a Shirks rider appeared out of no where and broke free from our group to try and catch the leader.  The group of four I was riding with split up, and I drifted into 5^th place, spent from my hard effort the previous lap.  I attacked when the guy following me bobbled the one technical section of course and held a small gap for the rest of the race to finish 5^th.  I am happy with this effort as I am in the process of preparing for my larger goals this season: the MASS Endurance Series, the Wilderness 101, and the Shenandoah 100.

All in all, I had a good race.  The course was fast as predicted; I finished the 15 mile race in 1:04:58.  My bike worked great, which was a blessing.  My next race will be the Greenbrier AMBC race and Nationals Qualifier on 4/27.

Pictures are up now... but I want to change my profile pic but forget how to.  Anyone want to drop me a line here??????????

The official relay results are our from last weekend.  Have a look at them yourselves here.  Look for team 3 Beans and 1 Old Fart.  Yeah.  Fun.



So I think I'm going to actually include my daily training into my blog from now on... so I have an excuse to update more often...



I did a 65mi road ride on tuesday with lots of long hill repeats.  Once up Waggoner Gap (2.2 mi average 8%) and thrice up King's Gap (4 mi average 4%).  It was good and it hurt by the end.  Then I rode MTB for 2 hrs on Wednesday.  Today I trained by sitting in the lab cutting rocks... or a rock to be more specific.  Even though it was warm (hot maybe?) and beautifully sunny and clear.  That's all I have to say.

So before talking about my first race, I'm going to try and recap, hopefully in some semblance of chronological order:

• Super Week was super... but not as super as I thought it was going to be.  I did take my Spider completely apart, and rode my roadie a lot, but not nearly as much as I said I was going to.  I suppose laziness and poor weather got the best of me.  I will say, though, that my Super Week was supplemented/enhanced by a Super Training Weekend with Zach.  We did 4hrs on the road Sat 3/8, followed by a meal and an hour of Super Training X, then I rode for about an hour on a trainer instead of doing a mtb ride because it was really, really, really, REALLY windy out.  The next day was a 5 hr mountain bike ride.  It was good
  
  


• Zach's camp was awesome, even though JB didn't show up.  We had Rob Lichtenwalner instead, which was equally as cool.  And we did a nice long mountain bike ride that rode most of the kids into the ground.  The last day of the camp was a race in Michaux which Zach organized.  We had a good turn out.  After riding the 6 miles from the site of the camp to the site of the race (with the youngest among us pulling the line the entire time).  I managed 7th in the race, which was the first spot behind the pro's/eilte's/expert racers... right where I should be.  Then a few intrepid survivors joined me for a 10 mile mtb ride back to the camp.


• This week of a lot of riding was followed by a week of not riding due to my school schedule... damn it all...


• I have been riding 3-4 days a week since then... as much as school will allow unfortunately.  That is about to increase very soon.


• A few weekends ago my bike went from looking like this:

• I got sponsored by Crank Brothers last week!!!!!!!!  This is super exciting as I have been eyeing a pair of those Ti Candy's for a while now... I just need the form.  I would like to thank the fine people at Crank Brothers for sponsoring me this year.