Race Report - Sport Master

Well I finished with no damage to me or my bike. No crashes. No
serious food digestion issues. Big difference when I use my Hammer
gels and Heed stuff. No gluten makes the body feel good.

Improved my time over last year by 25 minutes. Finished 20th out of
26. Number 19 was less then 30 seconds ahead of me. If I had just been
a little more aggressive passing on the DH I probably would have
caught him, but maybe not. Just as well he was out of sight, may have
not had any energy left anyway.

The climb was tough. I poked and pushed but generally did not overdo
it. I did not feel great, my warm up was painful. I actually started
feeling good about 3 miles into the climb and new I could finish, but
it was still hard. Probably rode much too conservative since I felt
fine at the finish. Tired but not sick or totally beat like years past.

Did not see any other TWW folks except at the start. And they all had
good spot ahead of me, so I guess I have to be the slowest along with
the worst start. Yeah, I will blame it on the start. That works.

I passed people on the DH all the way down. Because of my slow start I
was passed by a number of the beginners on the climb. But put them way
behind on the ridge road and DH sections. Combination of their skills
and just having blown up, most probably had no energy remaining.
Seemed like I could just follow them for a couple corners and they
would always blow it. When I passed you could tell they just had no
energy and did not get back going. They often made me have to slow
down and I could not clear some spots because of the slow speed. I had
one section that 3 guy had jammed up all the lines and could not even
move. No lines except a couple big boulders, but they looked smooth,
so I took that line. The almost 3 foot drop at the end was a bit
tough. I just got behind the seat and let my Fox fork do it's thang,
stayed off the brakes and rolled on by. Interesting, I had a bunch of
folks behind me, but when I checked, no one had followed. I do not
think I had but one person pass me. And he was flying, I have to
assume he was from the fast groups and had some mechanical issues.
Lots of flat tires being fixed all the way down. Sure glad I had my
2.4 Mutano Raptors, they rocked. My brakes did not heat up on the DH.
No noise or squeals. I made it a point to stay off of them.

In short, have to improve my climbing significantly. DH skills are
coming back and improving. I feel like my ride is improving, not
getting worse. Big difference over the past few years. Never going to
move into the big top ten, those guys finished in the 2:20 minute time
for 1st , well if I can break 2:50 it would put me in the top ten
based on this year. That is another 30 minutes improvement, probably a
large bite? But we shall see.

My training plan for next year at Downiville started this week. The
next prep race will be Howell Mountain on Aug 13th.