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Thanks, Joel

This year for the 24/9 I decided that the 12 solo was the right format. I tried the 24 solo last year and felt that it was obviously difficult but the reason for dropping back to 12 really came down to family time. Coming into the race I felt rested, in good form, and mentally ready. This year the race was setup by a new organizatioin and it felt a little dis-organized along with being somewhat overpriced.

My theme song for the race was [15 minutes by Rodney Atkins]. <quoted>I gave up smoking, women, drinking last night and it was the worst fifteen minutes of my life!</quoted> It happened to be the last song I had on the radio before getting out to ride for twelve hours!

I put the hammer down at the start to get ahead of all the bottlenecks that usually occur at the start entering in the first singletrack. From what I gathered from Seth, it probably saved me five minutes on the first lap. From there I told myself to just ride your own race. The second place guy kept it interesting early on as we flip-flopped first and second a few times. Toward the middle laps I found myself coming back to him and starting noticing my left cleat was loose. I had to get off the bike and tighten both sets of cleats, costing me about five more minutes of catch up - blarg!

I too was glad to have the Kelly as a backup bike because the rain mid-race made the Intense drivetrain a touch annoying and the Kelly was clean and ready to roll. Once the rain stopped though I switched back to the Intense after Seth took it for a wash. Oh and Seth, thanks for lubing the chain - <cough> <cough>. Getting back on the dually was lovely though for sure.

After about eight laps I decided that I had enough of keeping it close and ended up gapping ten minutes on the 2nd place guy in two laps. Some of that was due to more efficient pitting as I was being pokey early on. At different points through the day I stopped in to chat with Monica and Jeff, Beth and Gavin, and Luke. Thanks to all the support from the above folks!!

147 miles in 12:43 [Results]
elevation gain 5850 vertical feet
average speed 11.56 mph

Here too is Seth and Chad's [results]

I hope to have a couple nice photos courtesy of [Shawn Hauser] who was doing photos for [XTR photo]. I will post a link if I can get them.

Post race photo courtesy of Luke.

Nice smalley eh!

What a beautiful weekend to do some mountain bike racing! This is the first time Beth was able to come to a race since most of the time she's at home with the three little ones. It was really nice having her at the event for Father's Day weekend.

The temperature was in the 80’s which made it feel muggy since it has been unseasonably cool. The weather conditions made for a gritty, grueling race transitioning from muggy shade to beating hot sun.  As for the trail conditions, they were great – the climbs, open field corners, the downhill switchbacks, etc. This was the first year doing the Subaru Cup and I missed about four turns having not pre-ridden the course. I wasn't able to get a very good start because I was sandwiched behind a fallen rider and had to wait. Time is of the essence when splitting time between family/work/racing.

On our trip home I went to roll up the window on the Jetta and the window slid down into the door frame. I guess this is a known issue after researching on the internet and having it happen to the passenger side last year! It appears to be about a $150 fix parts/labor.

Here are some [pics taken] of the fam from the last couple of months.