Sunday, July 24, 2011

Chris Allaire Memorial - Solitude 2011

The 2011 course was a good one, Thursdays pre ride had me smiling. I have always loved this venue, mostly cause Solitude rocks.

Lyna's race started at 8:30, so we got up there early. Hung out with Ryan at the tent. ot to see Scottie and Subie.

Lyna took the win in Sport women by 9.5 minutes, crushed it. So happy for her! Her first Sport Class win ever.

I got in a 30 minute warm up, for what i guessed was going to be a sub 1:45 effort. Not many people a this race, must be the holiday weekend, their loss. I took off kind of hard, wanting to get the hole shot, surprised by the gap i built, ramped it down a bit once I knew i would hit the one track first. Jason came by me on the Honeycomb road. I stuck with him and passed him back on the short paved service road. I held the lead through the lap zone and back up to honeycomb, where John came by me, I stuck with him for a lot of lap 2, but he could go faster on the medum grade climbs and we were pretty equal everywhere else. I lost site of him about 1/2 way through lap 3 and then saw Mikey coming up on me, so I punched it on the remaining climbs to gap him. I then rode the DH to the finish a bit off my limit, for safety's sake really. And finished like 10 seconds up on him, but he took a spill a few feet from the finish, so it woulda been more like 2 seconds.

Super happy with my result, considering the previous weeks pain and the race promoter training plan, which has precluded doing many hard XC efforts this year. 2nd is my Solitude theme as well. John had a reat day for his first expert win.

Sunday, Ty-Bo bailed on me, so instead of the planned Mill creek to Canyons and back ride, i drove up to PC and did Sweeneys-Johns-Johns99-Kings Rd-Keystone-Apex-Puke Hill-Crest- COnnector- Mid Mountain-CMG. Ran into Lyna, Sally and Theresa above puke hill and lunched with them post ride as well.

Great Weekend on the bike. Raced teh Flash 29er at the 'Tude and rode the AnthemX 29'er up in PC. No knee pain either, hmmmm.

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