My story was more about the kids and my race happened to be something that happened...
Today was my 11 year old’s first race and his nerves got the best of him during the preride. Poor kid was a shit show. The morning was spent helping him work through it. My 13 year old knows the prerace routine so I could rely on him to be on autopilot. Which he did and ended up winning the 13 & under class. While that was wrapping up, I managed to ride up to the parking lot and back for a warm up and staged back row of the mass murderer class.
Horn goes off, I’m boxed out and tried my best to wiggle through the pack... I’d guess I was mid pack hitting the singletrack.. The first lap was so fast, it was like an out of body experience... Lap 2 I started to settle in but was still in shock from lap 1. Lap 3 I started to feel pretty good and pretty much cruised at that pace until the end. The last lap, rain came down hard AF and the trails turned in to a slip and slide.
The major highlight for me was when I was coming around the start finish,
@Norm was yelling at me because they couldn’t find my oldest son for the podium. I spent that entire lap pissed off and cursing out my kid in my head. As I came around the parking lot area, Cameron was chearing me on a I yelled at him for missing the podium.. Then Josh yelled back that he made the podium after all... I didn’t have any expectations on where I would finish considering the stacked field and if I had to just throw a number out there, I’d be shocked if I was in the top 10.. I’m perfectly happy with 11th today.
That course kicked ass, I was hoping it was the opposite direction but either direction rocked. The mtbnj crew continue to put on solid events... Man that would be a rock’n NICA course...
I’m happy to report, we had 10? of us from our NICA team participating in this event and everyone seemed to have a blast even with the rain / mud.
Edit: mid five to BJ
