Deer Valley report

photo stolen from here

The weather finally broke sometime in the night, woke up at 5am well before my alarm, oh well.

Headed up to DV and got a shorter warm up in. The race was delayed a bit for the grommets. The start was not really too hard, i got a good spot, probably about 5th going up little stick, got into the first descent and felt great, it flowed and was really grippy due to the rain. At this point we had already caught all but the top 3 19-29's. Got around Adam on a doubletrack descent and we all got a bit slippery in a short tight singletrack spot. At this point I was still in around 5th. Mad Dog Tim had some sort of technical, put me in 4th. We were all pretty close together. There was quite a gap behind us. 1st lap time was around 39.5 minutes.

Caught on to Chad H. somewhere up the 2nd little stick climb, got around him going up snow top, I could see BP and Wimmer comin. I pushed it a bit and came through the second lap in about 38.5 minutes.

3rd lap i was just focussing on keeping the pedals turning smoothly, getting up the climbs and railing the DH, well railing for me. Chad H was dropped but BP and Wimmer were closing on me. 1/2 way up Snow Top, BP got me, I stayed on his wheel up and over and down most of the DH towards the Gap cut-off, a bit before the guardhouse, Wimmer comes blowing past me, man he was going fast, It kind of shocked and awed me and i slowed a bit, but not wanting to drop back further than 5th, I regrouped and put as much into the cranks as I could on the Gap cut off, Bartmang came off the 12 and under right in front of me, that made only 2 pros who finished before me (they did do an extra few miles).

I ended up 5th for my best result this year. 3 races ago i was 17 minutes off the winner and 12 off BP. Today i was a bit over 2 minutes of 1st and 30 seconds behind BP, today was a good day. Preparation met opportunity at the right time.

On a shitty note, strong man, power master, defending national champ (expert 45-49) Dr. Rob Westerman broke his leg in the race today, heal up brother.

Tonight, sushi.