Raced the G3 event in Keystone in Colorado on the weekend, what is a G3? Basically its 2 differenbt Dh courses, and one super D, run over 2 days, and the best overall time wins, and there was a $10,000 purse for the pro categories....
It was never going to be easy with the length of the runs at Keystone and the courses starting at near 12,000ft altitude, i headed up with Justin on thursday night to get in some practice on friday, and after a couple runs on each course was feeling ok about the race, got in a couple more runs on the saturday morning so that made me feel a bit better about racing, still didnt really know where i was going on the courses though....
So the 1st of the dh runs on Saturday ended up being the most painful experience ever, it was almost 11 minutes long, very stop-start and pedally, but a good fun run, it was just very painful to race on..... With most of my training being based around 30-40 second races these days i didnt have the legs for 11 minutes flat out..... Justin killed it though and put 15 seconds into me, i took 2nd though, and Curtis Keene took 3rd about 5 seconds back from me. It was a weird run, from the altitude and pedalling my whole body turned to jelly by 3 minutes into the run, then i was just trying to survive, i felt so much slower in sections than in practice coz i just couldnt breathe at all, i had one off that i could have saved but was just too tired to try, haha.
we then had about 5 hours rest before the super D.... it was more like a long pedally DH than a super D, but i rode the Yeti 575 anyway, a lot of guys went for the DH rigs though, the 575 felt awesome the whole way down, and it was super wild on the fast rough stuff! we went off at 15 second intervals with seeding being based from the morinings DH, so i was off 2nd behind Justin, this was quite an intersting run, everyone had learnt from the suffer fest in the morning that pacing yourself was going to be the way to go, so that was the plan, I got going and got into a good rythum almost straight away, and i was just trying to reel justin in where i could, and make the most of the small bikeon the flatter bits where Justin was on his 303, but everytime i'd catch him up a little, a fast rough section would come up and he could get a gap again, and by the finish and 15 minutes of super D he had maintained his 15 second interval and put another 2 seonds into me, it was a super fun race though, i could just see him the whole way but just couldnt shut down the gap, we both put a bit of time into the rest of the pro field and consolidated our positions of 1st and 2nd....
Only the last leg to go early Sunday arv, and that was the usual Keystone DH course used at all Dh races held there, it was a fair bit more Dh like and shorter than the 1st course at just over 8 miuntes long, still a leg and lung burner though, but it could be pinned the whole way,
i was feeling pretty hammered from the day before but once i got going i felt good, i just wanted a clean run, coz i had to make up 17 seconds on Justin for the win which was going to be very tough, and had about 30 seconds on Curtis keene in 3rd by this point. On my run I ran into a tree about 5-6 turns into my run....just not thinking at all, it kinda pissed me off, so i just pinned it from there, probably should'nt have, i felt the rim hit rocks a few times and could have easily flatted, but i got down in 8.14, for a new course record, and i got 8 seconds on Justin, he was just trying to get down in one peice to get the overall, the smart plan it was and it was enough to get the overall, after 35 minutes of racing it came down to just 10 seconds between us, Kain Leonard rode super solid all weekend and got ahead of Curtis for 3rd overall, Curtis took 4th, and Eli Krahenbuhl took 5th overall....
it was a real fun weekend all up, lots of suffering was had, but really good training, maybe they need to make the courses just flow a bit better, take out some of the little tight uphill lines would be my advice, but then again it is meant to be a differnt kind of event, not just pure DH, so maybe its good just how it is......
anyways, im back in Denver now packing for the world cup in Austria this weekend, so more reports from there.....