The day started with some oatmeal and way too much bike cleaning, lubing, cleaning the chain, relubing....it really helps keep the nerves in check. At 10:30 I loaded my mom up with a backpack full of bottle and emergency tools, poor Dad is still recovering from surgery so he wasn't much help. We went up to the village where I ran into Sarah (VT grad), she finished ~17th.
I began my warm up at 11:15 riding the first mile or so of the opening climb and spinning around the village area until it was time for call ups. Thanks to the ACCC starting with the letter 'A' I received the second call up right after last year's winner, Rotem Ishay. After 10 nervous minutes the race started and I had great position over the first rise in 3rd. That was when i realized I probably wasn't going to be able to sprint the 4 miles to the top of the hill so I started getting passed by all the fast skinny people. I crested the hill somewhere around 50th...not so good but managed to make 5-10 passes during the decent. Half way down I saw James Wittwer fighting with a flat tire, too bad, he was riding well when he passed me near the top. At the start of lap 2 i settled in for a long painful climb up the hill again after taking a perfect feed from my mom. I lost about 3 spots not counting the front wave of the D2 race that caught me half way up, they caught me at a good time so i could let them through w/o loosing any time. during the decent I rode hard and managed to pick up the spots I had lost during the climb and possibly pick up an extra position or two. Lap 3 went very similar to lap 2 except I finally rode the technical steep uphill after the first flat fire road (It's hard to ride gnar when ppl are falling over in front of you. At the top of the climb I again made some quick passes before the single track by forgetting where my brakes are located, it's amazing how fast you can go when you just let go and trust yourself. I took the rest of the decent easier than the previous two laps knowing my legs were....on their last leg for lack of a better phrase. Holding back on the decent apparently wasn't enough because as soon as I made the turn through the start finish at the village to start the last trip up the gravel both thighs cramped leading to some screaming as I took my feed. For the next 15-20 minutes I suffered through my legs taking turns locking up as i climbed the last hill and managed to only loose 2 D1 places, one of which was to to App State (Jeb?). Over the top I passed 2 D2 guys and decided the rest of the race was going to hurt but that I wasn't going to let App state beat me. The bike performed flawlessly as I again "forgot" how to use my brakes. It helped that my rear brake was starting to fade, will have to do a bleed tonight after I can move again. I caught both D1 riders that passed me on the hill along with a couple D2 riders. I finished 43 out of 73 starters, if history is any indicator I should be able to finish top 40 tomorrow, having less climbing will go a long ways towards that.
