Baking at Hanson Hills
So it turns out that I missed on a monster showing by KMR at the Novi TT in order to do some XC racing and chase some CPS points up north at Hanson Hills. Congrats and great job guys at the TT and sorry I missed the post race party and BBQ. Sounds like it was a blast.
The hot weather continued through Sunday with a scorcher of a day for racing. It seems like it was a good idea that I cut off my mop of hair the day before because this was going to be hot!! (Now I don't recognize myself in a mirror.)
The race started off briskly up the opening climb. When does it not? At the top of the hill is when the fun started. My adrenaline quickly spiked as I clipped bars passing a fellow racer and got shot straight into the woods at 20+mph with one foot clipped in. I somehow managed to keep it together (I don't know how) and got back on track and in full chase mode. Shortly thereafter, I managed to get in front of the main chase group with the leaders just up the trail in sight. This is how it stayed for a while and it hurt! Bad! Somewhere in the middle of the race, someone turned on the hot sun switch and it got really warm fast. Everyone was drenched in sweat and covered in a fine layer of dirt. Saucy. The real fun came at the finish line. Our chase group had whittled its way down to two and we both knew it was going to be a full on sprint at the end. Sure enough, 200m to go and the sprint was on. The finish was coming up fast as I was gaining momentum and took the inside line. Now, question, who thinks it's a good idea to set up a finish chute along a massive wooden fence with a sharp 90degree left hand turn at the transition? Not most people, and certainly not two people coming in at full speed in the middle of a sprint. Result --> massive crash (actually I was the sole crash victim but from my POV it was pretty scary with an immovable fence adjacent to me) at the finish line with me lucky enough to fall into the finish chute and my competitor slung to the outside. We were side by side at the line so who knows who would have taken it had the finish area actually been thought out with some foresight. Luckily we both came out injury free but a bit P.Oed and rattled. The promoters need to keep these things in mind when laying out the courses. There was a similar 4-man sprint in the elite race end in mayhem two years ago at this same venue. I think past results/history should warrant looking into this matter before someone gets really hurt down the road.
Take care all.
-Pete
The hot weather continued through Sunday with a scorcher of a day for racing. It seems like it was a good idea that I cut off my mop of hair the day before because this was going to be hot!! (Now I don't recognize myself in a mirror.)
The race started off briskly up the opening climb. When does it not? At the top of the hill is when the fun started. My adrenaline quickly spiked as I clipped bars passing a fellow racer and got shot straight into the woods at 20+mph with one foot clipped in. I somehow managed to keep it together (I don't know how) and got back on track and in full chase mode. Shortly thereafter, I managed to get in front of the main chase group with the leaders just up the trail in sight. This is how it stayed for a while and it hurt! Bad! Somewhere in the middle of the race, someone turned on the hot sun switch and it got really warm fast. Everyone was drenched in sweat and covered in a fine layer of dirt. Saucy. The real fun came at the finish line. Our chase group had whittled its way down to two and we both knew it was going to be a full on sprint at the end. Sure enough, 200m to go and the sprint was on. The finish was coming up fast as I was gaining momentum and took the inside line. Now, question, who thinks it's a good idea to set up a finish chute along a massive wooden fence with a sharp 90degree left hand turn at the transition? Not most people, and certainly not two people coming in at full speed in the middle of a sprint. Result --> massive crash (actually I was the sole crash victim but from my POV it was pretty scary with an immovable fence adjacent to me) at the finish line with me lucky enough to fall into the finish chute and my competitor slung to the outside. We were side by side at the line so who knows who would have taken it had the finish area actually been thought out with some foresight. Luckily we both came out injury free but a bit P.Oed and rattled. The promoters need to keep these things in mind when laying out the courses. There was a similar 4-man sprint in the elite race end in mayhem two years ago at this same venue. I think past results/history should warrant looking into this matter before someone gets really hurt down the road.
Take care all.
-Pete
posted by Anonymous at 10:43 AM
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