SERC Ducktown

So, I'm sitting at the house waiting to drive into town at take my AP Government Exam and I'm totally stoked about sitting in a cold, small room, with uncomfortable seats for about 4 hours. Sweet.

Let's move on to something a little more exciting, racing. I drove up to Ducktown, TN to hit the next round of the SERC series. On the drive up (Saturday) it rained the whole way, but I wasn't too worried because: one, I do pretty good in the wet and two, it's alwayysss raining here. Tasha was still going to be a while (coming from Sewanee) so I got registered and caught up with some people I hadn't seen in a while. I didn't really want to get muddy again so I rode for about 45 minuets on the road. I met Tash and Luke coming the other way. When I got back Luke and Tash went for a pre-ride and I hung out at the car.

After they came back I cleaned the bikes and packed everything while they got changed. We had to get some more food items so we drove into Ducktown to pick up some stuff. On the way to the camp site we had to drive like 6 miles on dirt roads. Rally time!

The next morning surprisingly I was the first one up, Tash and Luke were still on central time and Luke had finished his finals the day before. So I spent my time shaving, cleaning the bikes, and washing dishes. Totally.

The white wave went off at 9:30 and added on to that the sun came out so by the time we hit the trail at 11:30 it was almost completely dry. Warmed up and I felt pretty good. It was about 80 degrees but it didn't really feel hot. I was kinda disappointed because there were only 6 pro men racing. Most of the big names were in Cali for the next national race and the rest were in SC for a local race. Oh well. I had a really bad start actually, slipped a pedal and fell forward on my stem. But I got up quickly and made it back up to the front. I wanted to start really hard because I figured I could blow the race apart on the first climb and only one or two people would stay with me.

Well, I was first into the woods but I went really hard trying to get up the front so I was hurting on the climb. About half way up the first climb it switches from single track to gravel roads. I had finally recovered somewhat by then and ramped up the pace again. At first Drew was the only guy to stay me with me (which was actually kinda funny because he's from Florida and has no idea how to climb) but I think he popped on the gravel section. Felt good after that and just settled into my rhythm. On the second lap I started running into problems. Sometime on the first lap I burped air out of my rear tire. Think of a car tire, it has no tube in it but if the pressure gets down low enough it can roll off the rim and release some air. That's what happened. All I have had do to fix it was pop in a CO2 and pump it up. But I lost my cartridge sometime before. So I thought I was screwed. I soft pedaled for about 20 minuets and nobody caught me so I was like: "Well, if they're not going to catch me going this slow I might pull it off."

Everything was peachy keen until this dude grabbed my back wheel on the last decent. But he made a mistake by never attacking me, he made me pull along this really long section by the river but never attacked. Me, on the other hand was going my own pace waiting for him to pass me so that I could draft him. I lead through the feed zone the last time and he popped. I could go hard on the climbs but I had to take the downhills easy to prevent my tire from rolling off. I nursed the wheel around for that lap and took my first Pro win.

I'll try to write more this week but later for now,
TC