Can't Stand the Heat? Get out of Georgia!

This past weekend, Dave, Jeremy and Myself travelled to the swealtering blue hills of georgia (which happened to be 7 degrees cooler than the suffocating piedmont of SC) to race the first race of the Carter's Lake MiniDH series. What a fun course! It was only about a minute and a half long (hence MiniDH) but it was action packed from top to bottom. From the start gate, you had to be on your game through big gap-out drops, tight turns, hip jumps, ski jumps, creek jumps, berms, rock sections, and high speed sections. Its hard to believe what a variety of things they were able to fit on such a small hill with such a relative little bit of pedalling. The only draw back was the inferno-like temperatures. The worst part was standing around in the heat. I hate standing around in hot weather. All I wanted to do was turn it back around and go down the hill so at least the wind would be in my face. Anyway, Jeremy was the big man for SEI, laying down the power with a 5th place finish against a competitive pro class. Dave and I pulled up the rear as we showed up a little late and didn't get enough time on the track to get really comfy on it by race time. The real fun started for me after the race when Brady O was kind enough to run several shuttles for us. I feel like I had the course dialed by the end of the day, but that's racin'! You got to make it count when the man says it's time to make it count. Anyway, I had a great time riding, can't wait till the next race in the fall, and Thanks to Brady and his crew for an awesome event (They doubled their numbers this year, hopefully they can double again next time!) The plan for next week is to be at the Grand Opening of the new 26 West Bike Park. I'm really excited about this place as it really has the potential to be a new mecca of DH for the South East. It's something that I know can be achieved here and I'm hoping this place gets off the ground, grows, and we can finally get some respect!

US Open of MTB

On memorial day monday morning at about 6:30 am, I was just rolling back into town after this years U.S. Open in Vernon NJ. We arrived in Vernon on Thursday evening just in time to walk the course as the sun was going down. It boasted its usual gnarly rock gardens, flowy berm sections, and huge red bull finish line jump. Friday was practice day and I knew right away I was probably not going to be posting my best time ever. I'm still getting used to my bike and if nothing else, the Open provided me a great opportunity to figure out exactly what changes I needed to make before my next race. (Wish I'd figured that out before I drove 13 hours!) I raced the pro qualifying on Saturday after a short practice session and needless to say, that was the end of my racing as I didn't come close to making the top 60 cut. Probably one of the most embarrassing finishes I've ever had. I really don't know why but I just couldn't get it together and really felt out of myself the whole time I was on the course. Big props to Steven and Dave who both qualified in the Amatuer Class. As anyone who has ever raced the Open knows, the Amatuer class is no joke. To qualify for either the pro or the amatuer race is a big deal so congrats to Steven and Dave for stepping it big to make it in! Anyway, besides the racing, the whole experience was great. Diablo freeride park has so many DH trails, you could ride all day without hitting the same one twice, but so many of them are so fun that you can't help but ride them again! The atmosphere was great. We felt like real high-rollers staying at the "Appalachian" right at the bottom of the track. Funny story- The ride back home was uneventful for the most part. I took the wheel in NJ and made it all the way into NC where we were going to drop Steven off at his car that he'd left in the parking lot of a Super-8 motel. When we get there, not to my suprise, his car had been towed! After waking up the owner of the towing company and driving all over kingdom come to find the place, we finally got Stevens car back and Dave and I set off for home. I rolled in as the sun was coming up and slept most of the day monday thinking to myself, "Maybe next year".



We saw some bad crashes while we were there, so to everybody who got jacked up, heal up quick!

Massanutten!

You'd be hard pressed to find anybody who's ever raced at Massanutten who could tell you it wasn't one of the most fun races they'd ever done. I've been racing there for the past five years and last week's installment of the annual event was no let down. Big thanks to the promoters for keeping things so well organized as usual. The weather was the big question mark of the weekend. One minute, the sun would be out, the next it would be foggy, blink your eyes again and it would be pouring. I was surprised at how well the course held together in spite of the changing conditions. The only part of the course that really got sketchy was the upper rock section. The middle section of the course is full of loaming, sweeping turns with a couple of funky rocky right hand turns. There's a short high speed fire road before turning off onto a tight rocky single track that becomes a fast baby-head rock garden just before the finish straight away. After looking at the stacked start list, my goal was to put in a solid mid-pack finish. I met my goal, finishing in 12th place with a time of 3:59. Jeremy and I practiced together all weekend long and were pretty much matching each other pace for pace. He took a hard spill in one of the rock turns and finished with a disappointing time. Had he stayed on, I'm sure he would have finished with a very respectable time judging from the way we were both riding throughout practice. Steven T finished with a 4:07. Dave P. finished with a 4:17. The thing that sketched me out the most was the number of injuries at the top rock garden! That part took its toll on several of our local boys! (Kenan, Greg, Doug, anybody else, Heal up quick!) Other than that, it was another good Massanutten Race in the history books. I'm already looking forward to next year. The US open is coming up next week and Dave, Steven and I will be rep'n the SEI! can't wait!

Good times

As April comes to an end, we've all finally gotten to throw some mud on our new Demo 8 race bikes. These days, it seems like every weekday is a brilliantly sunny day that's just begging us to leave work and hit the hills. As murphy's law would have it, the weekends seem to be when we get all of our rain these days. We've decided to fight the oppression of the foul weather and ride anyway. This past weekend we decided to do some shuttle runs in the rain. This particular location has a couple different options for shuttle runs, one is a little more mellow than the other, so we started with that one just to warm up a bit. It felt like someone was grabbing my bike by the seatpost and pulling me backwards in the pedally section because the ground was so wet. By the time we got to the bottom, we were all ready to go do the steeper, less pedally trail. The mud and water that was spraying all over really made it hard to see so it was kind of point-and-shoot sketchiness. It didn't actually rain at all while we rode, which was nice, but it poured in between runs and soaked everything around. Good times were had by all though, and my bike worked great! It really has a different feel from my last Demo. The change in the suspension rate made an immediately noticeable difference in the way the bike reacted to square edge hits. The reduced weight didn't hurt either! So far, the 08 Demos get an A+.

On another note, before the ride, I got to go check out the property that my two buds Butch and Greg have been given access to build on. The drive up to this place felt like a ride in a time machine into the early 1900's of rural north carolina- This place was in the boonies. When I got there, I parked in this pasture behind this really old barn. I didn't see anybody so I just figured I'd start walking the only way I thought they'd be- up. Only problem was, after I got so far up this dirt road in a pasture, I realized that there were way more than one ways to go up. There were at least 4-5 different ridge lines all around me! Finally I caught up with Greg on the 4-wheeler and he took me to the top. I was amazed at the amount of territory we were looking at! The potential is endless. The terrain is so steep! I'm looking forward to see what this place becomes. It'll be great to have this spot and wolf laurel at our doorsteps for riding DH.

Training Rides

SEI has been busy putting hours in the saddle! Over the course of the winter and spring, we've been able to ride non-stop, putting in several great rides at our favourite trails in Pisgah National Forest, outside of Brevard, NC. It's great having some of the best trails in the world out your back door. Not only do the downhills provide us with the kind of terrain we need to keep our A-Game on year round, but in order to do those downhills, you have to build the fitness to climb them! The Appalachian State contengent of SEI has been hard at work scratching out their own trails into the steep, rugged, rocky, snow-covered wilderness that lies just outside the city limits of Boone NC. Here in Greenville SC, we've been blessed with an incredible network trails that actually lie within the city limits at Paris Mountain State park. Several miles of brand new trails have been added within the last 6 months and they are sweet! After a ride we all did a few days ago, we got to thinking about the ridiculus amount of decending we did in one cross country ride and how awesome it is to have that to ride year round. Hopefully, being able to ride consistantly with each other and push each other during every ride is going to pay off this season! Speaking for the South Carolina dwellers, every ride we've done lately has felt like a ride on a high-speed freight train with no brakes. Not only have I been hitting the XC trails hard, I've also been spending a good bit of time on the local pump track. It seems like a great way to work out and it gives me a little more time on a bike and is a lot more fun that going to a gym. Six or seven fast laps around that track is enough to make me want to puke. (Maybe that's bad?) As May is approaching, my training rides are feeling better and better. I was worried earlier in the year as I was going through the "I hate bikes phase" but I'm pretty sure I'm over that by now. I've been thrashing on the hardtail, but we've all got our new DH bikes built up and ready to race!

Why even bother with little races?

Why even bother? You have to stay up late the night before cleaning your bike from yesterday's muddy ride. You have to dig out all of your gear, make sure you have a clean change of underwear, make sure you don't have any missing gloves and that your socks match. Then you have to wake up at the butt crack of dawn, stumble out the door, walk out into the early morning drizzle, all the while grousing about what a disgusting time you are going to have as you pedal across that 100 yard flat-uphill section that's going to be full of peanut butter mud. The thought of that cold wet spray from your caked-up tires catching you in the shorts and up the back of your jersey is already beginning to make you feel nauseous. To top it all off, the highly competent college-aged race promoters haven't so much as posted a start time for the downhill. The only information you are getting is coming from some patchy internet forum chatter where the supposed promoter who hides behind an unrecognizable internet handle is indicating that the race may not even happen if its raining too hard.
A few of us found ourselves in this very predicament this past weekend for the ETSU Downhill race in Johnson City. I was watching the dismal weekend forcast on the weather channel, hoping for the best but expecting the worst. There was no posted start time, and there was a rumor floating around that the race may start as early as 11:00 and as late as 5:00 if it happened at all. The deck was stacked against me and I was leaning ever closer to folding my deck and staying home. At about 11:00 pm on friday night, Jeremy called to ask me if I was going. Upon hearing the tone in his voice, it became obvious that he was having the same misgivings about going to the race that I was. We both got to thinking though- Why not go? What is the alternative? Unless we go race, we aren't going to go ride in the rain, who would? We realized that we'd probably get stuck sitting on our butts, feeling imprisoned by the rainfall and going stir crazy, driving our wives mad. Besides, it was a 10 dollar entry fee and non-NORBA. So that did it. Deal us in, We were going.
Don't get me wrong, it still wasn't easy. I still had to do the late night stuffle-shuffle. The early mornging despondancy hit me just as hard as ever but by the time I'd arrived and done my first muddy practice run, I was in the game. Sure it was a little disorganized, sure we had paper plates for race numbers, and yes it was really muddy and sketchy-sloppy. On a brighter note, the rain gave us a window for the entire time we rode! I ended up getting second place and Jeremy finished just behind me in 2nd. (Young pinner Ethan Quell took the win by 8 seconds on the minute and a half course) Because of the chilled-out atmosphere and low attendance, the promoters encouraged racers to take as many runs as they wanted, providing us with the chance to get in several timed runs so that we could really gauge our effort. It proved to be a great training experience to set us up for some of the bigger races this year. Would I have gotten to enjoy any of that if I had stayed in bed? As I look back over my racing experience, I realized that I've woken up early to go to a lot of races that I really didn't want to waste my time on, but I've never left any race wishing that I hadn't gone. No matter whether it's a great course on a perfect day or a crappy course on a rainy day, its always a race, and that's what's cool about it. It's just one more chance to line up and diversify my racing portfolio if nothing else. I give two big thumbs up to the ETSU guys and it's these kinds of races that keep the true racers coming back! I had a great time and big props to the small venue promoters who keep it real even though they never get the love for it!

Clemson Downhill

A Big thanks to the Clemson Freeride Club for putting on their third race. Again, they proved the old equation of good course + good atmosphere = good time. I can't believe how much work went into the course from top to bottom. Considering the downpour that came down the day before the race, the course drained exptremely well. Despite a peanut-buttery practice session in the morning, the course got nice and tacky by the afternoon for our second runs. Although Clemson has little change in elevation, the course design makes the best use of what the Geography of the South Carolina foothills has to offer. The Clemson crew threw a little suprise in the mix by adding a HUGE finish line jump at the bottom that turned out to be really fun to hit! The course was best fit to short travel bikes. I actually raced my hardtail.

Congrats to Jeremy for pulling a 4th place finish! I came in seventh place, Dave got 16th, and Steven got 17th. It's looking like this season is shaping up to be a blast! We're all ready for the season to get rolling and its shaping up to be a good one so far! Below are some shots from the race.

The crew! Olivia, Matt, Jeremy, Steve

Steven-off the wall