The Hardings: July 2009

Sunday started bright and early at 5:00AM (Campbell, next time the Sport race is scheduled before the Expert/Elite race at a venue that is 3 hours away, you're on your own). Kathleen, our weekend house guest Campbell, and I woke up extra early on Sunday , piled into the weekend mobile and headed as far west as I've been in a while to race the fifth race in the MASS series, the Long Pine Classic at Michaux. Geography note: Michaux is west of Gettysburg, just sayin... The Long Pine Classic was sponsored by Fast Forward Racing, a junior development team, in the hopes of raising enough cash to send the team to Colorado for the Junior National Championships. Read this next sentence imagining that I'm not typing it with any malice, anger, or ill will. If Fast Forward Racing needs to raise funds for next year's junior development team, I will gladly pay them twice the entry fee for Kathleen and I for the next five years if they'll agree to not have this race ever again. Needless to say, I did not enjoy myself. Its not entirely the race promoters fault though, I had a bad day (my worst yet actually), and I was riding a new bike (an aluminum bike which was a rather harsh and bumpy reminder of why I've ridden steel bikes most of my mountain biking years). It wasn't a total loss. It was a beautiful day, Kathleen won the Elite women's class yet again (she's building herself a nice little racing nest egg this summer), Campbell also saw his first win in the Sport Senior II category, and though I "gave up the ghost" ~6 miles into the 23 miles course I managed to pull off a distant 3rd (very distant - first and second took me for 10 minutes). We also enjoyed a nice lunch at an Irish pub in Gettysburg where Kathleen and the waitress treated Campbell and I to a 10 minute dissertation on the upkeep and pitfalls of maintaining curly hair. Now we know and knowings half the battle...looking forward to Fair Hill this weekend.

Kathleen and I traveled up to Marysvill, PA this past weekend with the team for the second time this season to participate in visitpa.com's Mid-Atlantic Super Series Mountain Bike Festival Weekend. The event is put on by Mike Kuhn and the fast boys of the visitpa.com team. We weren't originally planning on going. We're focused more on the cross-country events this season and as an endurance event we didn't have this on the "calendar", but the Neshaminy XC race was cancelled on account rain, so we decided to give it a shot. I'm glad we did. I want to thank Mike Kuhn, his wife (who has to be the most patient and accomodating soul), his inlaws the Oesterling's (probably where Mike's wife gets her patience and accomodatingness from), and the visitpa.com team for organizing; letting everyone camp, race, and live on their property; and helping organize while simultaneously giving us regular guys something to shoot for, respectively.

The event consisted of a night time trial (solo or team), an endurance event (9-hour solor or 12-hour team), and a short track race. All of which were a lot of fun. Kathleen and I decided to sign up as a team under the Dos Coed category. There were only two other teams singed up as Dos Coed but we figured it would be fun anyway. Packing the car was interesting, but we got it all to fit. We headed up in the early afternoon Friday set up camp in TLR's tent city, got our pit set-up for the next's days endurance event and kitted-up for the night tim trial. As a Dos Coed team we had to ride together as the last finisher's time counted. I was a little nervous about his event, the 6.5 mile loop was ridden with log-overs, low-hanging branches, and was very tight and twisty; I was worried about Kathleen going too fast trying to keep up and getting injured on one of the obstacles. I worried for nothing, she did great. I rode ahead and called out obstacles and encouragement as best I could and she did everything she could to stay on my wheel. We rode the fastest Dos Coed time even with me flatting twice and her falling once, and Kathleen's time (although not scored that way) was the fastest women's time.

The endurance event started at 9:00AM solo riders would ride for 9 hours, relays for 12. It was a Le Mans start so I chivalrously volunteered Kathleen to lead-off. I have enough trouble not rolling my ankle in running shoes. If I had lead off our 12-hour relay could have been over in the first five minutes. Our decision turned out alright. The other Dos Coed teams did the same thing so that the evenly matched members were riding together each time. The loop consisted of an 8-mile backwards hybrid of the night time trial loop. We began by each turning in single laps for the first three laps. Then Kathleen tired so I turned in two doubles, after which I was almost completely cooked, so Kathleen stepped it up and a double of her own. I did the final lap by headlamp in the dark. I wasn't sure what to expect from the relay and had no notions of how we would finish, but it was a lot of fun. We batteld with the single-speed boys from Beans Bike Shop, the fast chicks from Human Zoom Pabst Blue Ribbon and Judd and Melanie from Gripped Racing. We turned in 13 laps total in just over 12-hours which was good enough for teh Dos Coed win, and third overall with only to Dos Men teams of visitpa.com guys in front of us. We were really shocked about the third overall as neither of us checked the results board all day. Kathleen has been in the money a couple of times this season already, it was cool to be there with her this time.

Start

Campbell, Kathleen, and Bill prior to the start

Some more of the TLR crew at the start

Waiting for the awards

Dos Coed podium (the other couple is Judd Milne and Melanie Swartz from Gripped Racing)

I've never done a short track race, but have always been curious. Bill Showers describes them as fast...and painful. They're basically an anaerobic nightmare you can't wake up from for 30 minutes. The race consisted of a 1-mile fast and flat loop, 30-minutes on the clock, do as many loops as you can. I loved it. It was like being on the track in highschool running the 800 meters again. I got spanked to seventh place by the Expert A guys, but finished at the front of the Expert B guys. Still had a blast though. Fast and short is not Kathleen's cup-o-tea so to speak but she held in there and finished the race third...out of three...