I love the mountain bike stage races that are done by Tailwind. You have 3 different disciplines, Time Trial, Short Track and Cross Country. Saturday was the TT and Short Track at Addison Oaks , there was a small field for our group of 50 to 59 year old racers but I was able to eek out a psychological win in the short track by taking 3rd place in my age group. I used my cross bike and it handled the extreme turns very well. The turns did not affect me, but I stuffed my pedal into the hill on an off camber turn and, although I was in 3rd place of the entire ‘sport’ group, went to the back of the pack in seconds. It is only a 15 minute race, so it is a lung burning, leg cramp-fest, a fall is fatal. So, like I said, a 3rd place finish for our age group was a nice win.
In the morning we had the Time Trial and I ended up 4th of 4 in our age group there. Even though the number of racers in my age group was low, these stage races are double points races and set the tone for the leaders for the rest of the season. As such…finishing 4th is strategically valuable…even if there were only 5 or six of us out there this weekend.
Final tally, 4th place TT, 3rd Place Short Track, 5th place in today’s extremely hot 3 lap cross country race…overall I should walk away with a 4th place double points win for WSI-Team Active.
Jack Miner.