ETSU Mountain Bike Race Weekend

My first collegiate mountain bike race and my first race for Lees-McRae College kicked of September 6th and 7th hosted by Eastern Tennessee State University.

The weekend began with short track followed by downhill and dual slalom on Saturday and cross country on Sunday. I raced short track and xc. As a member of the current best cycling school in the nation, I was put in the B races and finished 6th in the short track behind three of my teammates. What I lacked in power in the short track, I made up for in endurance in cross country and came back to win on Sunday.

Here we are getting ready to leave early in the morning…Not quite sure whats going on in this picture.

Lees-McRae men absolutely dominated the men’s A short track race. By the last few laps, all but 7or 8 riders had been lapped and pulled of the course and all but one of the remaining riders were from Lees-McRae. They took all three podium spots.

The course was brutal. All up one way and all down the other with thick grass the whole way… a painful combination.

Hannah was unable to ride like a maniac due to her recent neck injury, so she came out and cheered like a maniac instead.

Ben cheered from the bushes to get closer to the action before his victory in downhill.

Carla smoked the field in the women’s A race. Like me, she is on the cross country running team and the cycling team.

My race face.

Gravity racer Dane also had a tough race face.

I didn’t have a great start and was about mid pack after the fist lap. I just didn’t have enough power to start out fast enough to stay with the leaders.

Determined not to blow my race, I hammered it when the pace slowed down a bit and started passing people.

Aaron got a little distracted while he was cheering for us.

My teammate Chris rode great and won the race. He also raced downhill and dual slalom and got second in cross country.

Trying to catch my breath after another intensely painful climb.

I fought hard the whole race and came close to catching the leaders but didn’t have the strength in the end. I ended up sixth of about 20 after a hard back and forth battle with one of my competitors who eventually dropped me on the second to last lap. There is nothing more aggravating than getting dropped so close to the end of a race, and I used it for motivation the next morning in the xc race.

Hannah’s old roommate Catherine finished third in the women’s B race in her first bike race ever.

Downhill was next. Most of the course was pretty tame except for this nasty rock garden at the end.

Check out those shorts!

The beginning of the race had a big log jump. Here’s Aaron flying over it after finishing the short track A race (though he had a spectacular crash landing). He also got second in slalom and won the A cross country race. Very impressive weekend.

The dual slalom was also quite entertaining.

Unfortunately no pics from the cross country race. Our team photographer (Hannah) was busy constructing a turtle habitat at the Lees-McRae wildlife center and no one seemed to post any online. The race began with a short road climb that veered of onto single track. The trails made a figure eight pattern through some forested hills around the ETSU campus. It was three fast and relatively smooth laps through rolling hills with a very short road section in between each lap and each loop of the figure eight. I tried to take it easy at the start as mountain bike races usually start out insanely fast though most of the riders rarely keep their pace for much of the race. I was about seventh entering the single track. Normally not a bad spot, but some of the guys in front of me were going way too slow. It took some time to get around them and by then I had already lost some ground on the leaders. To make matters worse, there was a swarm of angry hornets on a short ridge atop one of the first climbs. I got stung on my arm before I even new what was going on. The screams and curse words I could hear behind me let me know I wasn’t the only one getting attacked. I kept a hard, steady pace the whole race and picked people off one by one. Near the end of lap two, I caught my teammate Sandre, who is a great road rider but had never even raced mountain bikes before! He stayed with me until the end of the lap and easily on the road section, but my mountain bike experience allowed me to drop him on the more technical parts of the trail. When I reached the hornet ridge on the last lap, my other teammate Chris was off the trail trying to avoid the mass of killer hornets. I saw this as my chance to take the lead, put my head down, and charged though them. I could feel them bouncing of my jersey and helmet but miraculously didn’t get stung again. Chris is a great descender and was hard on my heels till the end. Every downhill he would gain on me, but I was fueled by a desire to pick up a rare victory and hammered it as hard as I could on every climb while basically trying not to crash on the downhills. In the end, I pulled away slightly and won by about twenty seconds. Sandre was third about a minute back. Not bad for his first mountain bike race.

It was a great weekend and one of the most fun races I have ever done. ETSU has extremely nice trails around their campus and put on a great race. Hannah is almost totally healed from her neck injury and will be ready to tear it up again soon.