Woodstock Enduro Race Report

 The new blogging model of "write it up for team slack and then also post it here" is working!  We've got more content!

Did the thing where you pay the pro photographer for a picture of you lookin cool

I did Woodstock last year and it was super fun.  I tried to bully Kevin and Desen into joining me and Harry on this year's adventure but they had (kind of) legit excuses.  Hopefully after you all read about how much fun Harry on had on his XC bike you be inspired to check out the joy of XCDURO next year with us!!Last year I rode all the stages blind, this year I prerode 4/5 stages, but last year I finished better (by % beat) in my field so either preriding doesn't actually help at all, or everyone is getting faster.  Honestly I think it might be the latter, I think I have gotten a bit better at descending in the last decade but it feels like the overall level of racer has come WAY up.  Or maybe I'm not getting better, my bike is getting better but so is everyone else's??On the preride day a college (?) girl correctly identified us as "xc guys" because our helmets didn't have visors and it was hilarious.  Then Harry fell off a skinny (definitely not trying to impress her and show he wasn't an xc nerd) and he got extra roasted, it was great and everyone involved had many lulz.

Stage 1 line was 30 minutes long but we were full of HYPE so no one cared

Stage 1
This is the only one we didn't preride and hooooooo boy did I feel it.  There were a lot of rooty turns without catchberms and I was NOT managing lines and traction correctly for this kind of riding.  There was also a lot of in/out of sunlight and lots of blue course tape ahead of me that was hard to figure out which way the next turn went -- I honestly spent some time on this stage wondering if it's finally time for some prescription sunglasses.It felt like I was pushing as hard as I could manage but not really flowing through anything as well as I could have.  Harry was nice enough to leave it out of his race report, but this is the stage he beat me on, by 3 seconds.

Stage 2 was the first stage we had preridden so I had a little list of mental cues for it - "you can roll the first rock drop, get high over the root ball on the early traverse, you can air the right side rock midway down, drop gears after you finish the big pedal at the bottom."  Problem was, when we prerode, there was a big rock rolldown/slab thing into a janky/loose/fluffy catchberm, so I rode it slowly and made the note of "oh that was fine, nothing to remember here for the race run."  So then on the race run I SENT it fast, problem was if you send it fast then the janky catchberm is REALLY hard to stick and you should have put that in your notes, instead I failed to stick it and fell off the trail into a tree/tape.I got annoyingly tangled getting back onto the trail but the FANS present yelled "don't worry the guy ahead of you bit it harder!" and I yelled "hell yes that's my boy!! (Harry)," so I was less panicked about my screwup knowing that.  The rest of the run was also sloppy, I remember an outrigger and utterly failing to clip back in and some other non-smooth cornering and decision making, so SOMEHOW this XC nerd managed to put down his worst placing of the day (14/30) on the stage with the biggest pedaling section :( :(At least Harry blew the rock->jankberm spot too, so I beat him by 2 seconds :)

The pro guys were gapping from the rock into the background into this berm on stage 2, it is not a line for normal bike racers

Stage 3 was THE JAM though, after 2 stages of many turns with out much bermage or flow, stage 3 was more like one of the newer KT trails with some legit bermage and corresponding FLOWAGE.  I wimped out on the mid-stage gap jump and took the B-line because my mental game SUCKS but other than that I was smooth and fast and I could TELL.  I was at a 11/10 stoke after this stage and it ended up being my best one of the day, 8/30.  Now that the stages were getting steeper and faster my bike advantage on Harry (140/125 vs 120/120) was showing and I got 9 seconds on him here.

Obviously my Stage 3 photo looks flat, it is not flat, it ripped

Stage 4 was after the big road pedal back to Saskadena 6, we smashed tons of downhill nerds on the transfer and subsequent hillclimb but also stopped for kitschy espresso in Woodstock, it was amazing, did I mention everyone should come do this race?

There was an art fair on Woodstock common, and we were the least classy patrons of this coffee truck by far

This stage was kind of frustrating for me because I felt like I was over-thinking it based on my mental notes instead of just vibing the shreds, like I knew I had to jump a rootball at one point and somehow spent the entire traverse into it riding slow and thinking about this instead of just SHREDDING VIBES.  So while I felt super engaged with line selection I also felt like I wasn't really FLYING and the results agreed... 11th/30.  There was a series of small doubles at the bottom though that I absorbed in preride but GAPPED in my race run and that was very pleasing to this XC nerd.Stage 5, one more steep ripper down S6!  Harry and I smashed another transfer (aka pedaled tempo) while talking about how much more fun it was riding up than pushing our big heavy enduro bikes up the fire road like some people were doing.  This is the steepest stage of the day, still nothing crazy but quite a few steep faces into berms down the fall line where you slide the back end around fully locked up and it feels awesome.  Had a few turns where I didn't get out super clean and had to pedal hard but other than that this one felt pretty good.  9th/30 for my second best stage and brought me in for 11th/30 overall just 0.5s out of 10th.Looking back on the race I only had 1 big mistake (stage 2) that was probably an 8-10s hit... but even taking that out of my time I'd only move up to 9th.  People are really good at this!  There were 7 people who beat me on EVERY STAGE in my class so they are just BETTER.  But who cares?  It's super awesome to ride downhill as fast as you can with a purpose and this event (unlike harder Enduros) doesn't really push the scary meter too much.Everyone who races XC on the team and likes descending should do this, you aren't gonna win but it's a super fun and fresh experience and the vibes are unmatched!

Attack of the XC Nerds!!