Having a national event where you can sleep in your own bed at night, is a good thing!  Last weekend was the Fontana National, and thanks to Donny Jackson, and the Sho-Air crew for putting on a solid event. 

I headed out Friday mid morning to catch the 2pm pro DH practice.  Since my Intense 4X bikes weren’t quite finished, I was going to race DH and Super D on the weekend.  After dialing in my Intense M6, I was ready to shred a few runs on my local track!  Donny had laid out a few new sections on the top ½ of the course, which were fun and challenging.  It was a tough choice on which tires/tubes to choose, because the course had a little bit of everything in it.  After doing 1 run on 2.35 single ply Invaders, I went with the 2.5 dual ply Edge up front with the 2.35 dual ply Invader on the rear.  I did 4 practice runs, and I felt solid from top to bottom.  After doing some tuning on my Fox RC4 rear shock, my setup was feeling awesome!

Saturday was Super D.  I managed to get 1 practice run on Super D, and one run on the DH.  For some reason both practices overlapped, and not too sure why?  The Super D wasn’t what I’d expected, with some major climbing to be done!  This would be my 2nd ever Super D race and I knew it was going to hurt!  There were 20 pros with some of the best XC racers ready to throw it down.  For the start, they made us sit down with our backs to our bikes, about 20 feet away.  With a count down of 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, …GO!  We were off.  I tried to pace myself in the beginning, but my competitive side got the best of me as I tried to stay within sight of the leaders. Bad Mistake!  ½ way up the 1st climb, I was toast.  Tongue dragging on my front tire, legs burning, lungs wheezing, I slowly watched the riders ahead of me just pull away.  At the top of the 1st climb I was a good 30 seconds behind the pack!  I decided to just grind it out, and see if I could catch anyone on the decent.  I managed to catch up to one rider, who kindly got out of my way, only to blow right back by me on the next uphill.  My goal was to not get last place, but I didn’t accomplish that.  I was 20th place out of a field of 20.  Man was that a tough race!  I had fun though and appreciated the cheers as I crossed the line!  I’ll be back! 

Photo by: Craig Glaspell

Sunday was DH race day.  I managed to squeeze in 3 runs during practice, and I had my lines dialed.  My Intense M6 was working so good, sucking up all the rough stuff with ease!  Race run went like this; Started off steady, and hit the first section pinned. I got into a nice groove early on and tried to maintain my speed through the rough sections.  Approaching the waterfall / Rock section I could hear the crowd screaming!  It was pretty dang loud as I went thru, and man that feels good!  Thanks to local fans cheering me on, definitely a cool feeling having that kind of support!  I hit the bottom road section pretty fast, and my legs were feeling surprisingly good.  I tried to save enough energy to really throw down a mean sprint on the wall.  When I hit the wall, I stood up and gave it everything I had.  All I could think of, was my brother EC, and how fast he’d be going, which gave me some added motivation!  I came thru the finish with a solid time, putting me in 8th place for the day.  Super happy about my run, and also stoked to see EC take the win! 

Next event is Sea Otter….See you there!

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