Victory Hill Enduro
Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2018 1:21 pm
Posting in the hopes we can up the membership in the club's Enduro Team....
Pare, Cactus and I headed up to Victory Hill (think: back side of Burke Mountain) for what I think is the best race of the year. The race was contested over 6 timed downhill stages and ended up being about 20 miles including transfers and about 3700 ft climbing. We practiced the stages Friday and Saturday before the race on Sunday.
My race went pretty smoothly, modulo a rear flat halfway through the first stage. I'm not sure what exactly happened, but with each corner I could feel it getting softer, so I pedaled as hard as I could hoping to get to the end of the stage before it was totally flat. I failed miserably in this, but managed to only lose 11 seconds on the stage despite the rear end totally washing out in the last few corners. It turns out my rim tape was somehow cooked, so I had to throw a tube in and transfer to the second stage. I put the pressure higher than I would have liked to try to prevent flatting again, and luckily that worked as I didn't have any problems for the rest of the day.
The rest of my race was pretty uneventful. My cornering is still not up to snuff with the top guys, and I lost a bit of time on all of the stages but overall had a pretty clean race. I ended up top 7 in all of the stages, with a second on the fourth stage that was super pedally and suited me well. I ended up in 5th at the end of the day and clung on to the wide angle podium. Final time was 31:20, with first place in my category at 30:33. Definitely still lots of work to do on fitness and cornering, but happy I put together a solid race.
I highly recommend checking these trails out if you are ever up at KT.
Oh hey Pare BTW, How did YOUR race go???
Pare, Cactus and I headed up to Victory Hill (think: back side of Burke Mountain) for what I think is the best race of the year. The race was contested over 6 timed downhill stages and ended up being about 20 miles including transfers and about 3700 ft climbing. We practiced the stages Friday and Saturday before the race on Sunday.
My race went pretty smoothly, modulo a rear flat halfway through the first stage. I'm not sure what exactly happened, but with each corner I could feel it getting softer, so I pedaled as hard as I could hoping to get to the end of the stage before it was totally flat. I failed miserably in this, but managed to only lose 11 seconds on the stage despite the rear end totally washing out in the last few corners. It turns out my rim tape was somehow cooked, so I had to throw a tube in and transfer to the second stage. I put the pressure higher than I would have liked to try to prevent flatting again, and luckily that worked as I didn't have any problems for the rest of the day.
The rest of my race was pretty uneventful. My cornering is still not up to snuff with the top guys, and I lost a bit of time on all of the stages but overall had a pretty clean race. I ended up top 7 in all of the stages, with a second on the fourth stage that was super pedally and suited me well. I ended up in 5th at the end of the day and clung on to the wide angle podium. Final time was 31:20, with first place in my category at 30:33. Definitely still lots of work to do on fitness and cornering, but happy I put together a solid race.
I highly recommend checking these trails out if you are ever up at KT.
Oh hey Pare BTW, How did YOUR race go???