Green Acres CX & Jackson Meadows

Round two of the cat 1/2's! This weekend the competition was quite a bit tougher. Last weekend a few of the top cat1/2's had been at Fort Collins USGP so I was looking forward to testing myself against a full field. Green Acres was on Saturday, it's a great venue with (for a local race) lots of spectators, good sized fields, and a varied course with a little bit of everything. It has a relatively big hill, a sandy run up, a fast off camber downhill, and a few good technical sections. Not only is the hill big, but you start straight up it! I had a little lackluster start because of this and lagged behind the leaders on the first few laps.

However I felt really strong on this course and I moved up quickly, soon I was 3rd on the trail bridging up to first and second with three guys on my tail.

 

 

I caught up to the two leaders within a lap, Jesse, Josh, and Smithers coming up with me.  I quickly blew past them and went to the front, I felt amazing and I wanted to test everyone.

(Me, Eric, Jesse, Josh, Smithers, and Fred in order)

Being at the front of a cat 1/2's race driving the pace was incredible, but it didn't last. Again, I pushed it too far on a downhill and crashed. I lost a good 40 seconds on the lead group...

I went deeper than I have in a while, and about half way through the race I caught back on to the lead group, and then hit a patch of slick grass and crashed again.

(me riding the sand run up)

I went really deep again and closed down the gap to 8 seconds, but with two laps to go they started to go really hard and I didn't have enough left in me to catch them. I finished 5th, but lapped every rider that didn't beat me except one.

The next day was Jackson meadows. Not my favorite race course, its straight, a few small roller hills and really fast with not many corners and huge barriers. However, I was looking forward to getting redemption for yesterdays crashes.

I had a good start, its not hard to here. the start is a long, tar road section and typically for the first lap or two the front group is really large. After a few laps though it whittles down to just Josh, CJ, Eric and me. Most of the the race was pretty uneventful, We each took pulls at the front, but mostly just watched each other. With three to go CJ put in his attack and I got gapped a tiny bit coming into the run up. I lost even more time on the run up and couldn't get it back before the tar. I was far too tired from my huge efforts the day before. Out in the ind all on my own I lost time quickly and they got out of sight. CJ dropped Eric but Josh won in the sprint.

(You can check out some great photos of my race at Jackson Here!)

I had another great weekend in the cat 1/2's, I really enjoy racing with these guys. It's pretty competitive and I learn a lot racing with them!