Until the Snow Ends

Last year I reunited my love affair with the Pinnacle , and I've been telling everyone who asks me about MTB racing that this is THE RACE to do if you like your courses LEGIT, but in a fun way. Not LEGIT in an evil way (looking at you, Coyote Hill ). This year the promoters moved the Sport race to 9:30 AM, instead of with the expert/elite fields -- which was a good idea. Although giving them only 2 hours to finish the course before getting RUN OVER by the elites was not as good. And me getting up at 6:30 to get my soon-to-not-be-Sport carpooler (ahem) to the venue was a throwback to the old days of Cat 4 cross at 6am wakeups! Good thing bike racing is super awesome so I was bouncing off the walls at 6:29AM anyway. I need to find a way to convince myself I'm going to a bike race on WEEKDAYS. I used my extra bonus time at the race venue to HANG OUT with the Boston bike scene. And definitely not to warm up. Because warming up for a race that climbs 700 feet in the...

I bet you thought you might see a Pinnacle Race Report here today.  Ha.  I am still trying to recover from the weekend, as always.  Here's the Coyote Hill Bar Cam I made last Friday:

I tried so hard not to do this race. First I tried the simple tactic of saying "after three straight weekend of racing, I'm taking one off." Didn't work. Everyone else was going. What if I miss something? Attempt #2: I think I'll replace the (totally frozen) headset bearings on my janky Top Fuel on Thursday night. Pop the old ones out, put the new ones in, five minute job... unless you "pop" the lower bearing cartridge out by giving it a gentle tap with a screwdriver that breaks its rusted outer layer off, leaving it wedged/fused in your carbon headtube. Then you would have a problem on your hands. I thought this would be enough to keep me from racing, but I had to make a small effort to fix it on Friday...so I took it to JRA... and ended up walking out of there with a 20-lb Felt 29er "just to try for the weekend" Let's not talk about how much the price was, or how I'm totally going to end up buying it. (Sidenote: Brian M...

Hey, it's Saturday, and you're reading blogs.  Trying to figure out if you want to race tomorrow? Maybe this will help.

I think this might now be the only race I have done every single season I've raced mountain bikes. For serious, check it out: 2007 , 2008 , 2009 , 2010 . It's that good. Wait, is it good? I'm not sure any more. It's all singletrack, but it's lumpy and fresh cut and generally a mess. The FLOW is few and far between. But hey, it's a legit test of mountain biking ability (damn!) so put let's put some numbers on and ride until we're praying for death. Yeah! I got there Saturday night with my friend Christin, and right before we went out for a lap the MAN IN CHARGE, Tom Masterson, drove up and told us all about the new course. Which, of course, had been cut the day before. And didn't have bridges yet. Or had even been weedwhacked. But that's okay, cuz he still had 15 hours to finish building it. That's how they roll in Vermont. The big change was that the dirt road climb had been taken out and replaced with even more lumpy singlet...