1st Annual Trailer Time Trial

Last night we put on what is going to be an annual event. We met at 6:30 and got to see our newest anchor, the B.O.B. trailer with 27.5 pounds of sand weights bungied in for a ride of their life. We got to the lab and between the people that rode out and the ones that met us there we had a pretty good group. Bob took the first pull and showed the rest of us the course. It started with some fast downhills and plenty of roots, to make the trailer bounce uncontrollably. Then after crossing a small bridge you dropped to your easy gears and hit a pretty steep climb. The steep part was short, only 100-150 ft. but then it leveled out a little but was constant up for a long time. We turned over a log, which made for some interesting shows through the night. We then headed through some pines and into the wood chips. This made for a hard finish, trying to find anything left as the bike and trailer just sink and drag though the soft surface. It sounds like a long course but was actually only 0.85 miles.
I took the second run, still leery about how much abuse the trailer would take I took it easy through the roots, powered up the climb, almost came to a stop over the log hop, and buried the needle through the wood chips turning a 4:51 minute lap. It was fun following everyone else watching the trailer bounce all over, there were a couple near misses as the trailer slid and tried pulling a couple off the trail! Bill L. had the slide of the night, he went across the bridge way to fast, trying to keep his speed to push him up the hill, but when he turned the trailer slid off the path and just about took him over, somehow he held onto it, and still was able to get into the right gear for the climb!! Rob H. took two passes at the course, on his second run, he some how got the trailer to clear the log hop! It must have hit a bump just as he was lifting his rear tire over the log, because the trailer was already airborne, and just touched the top of the log as it flew over, INCREDIBLE!! I had posted the fastest run on my first try but wanted to try again after seeing how much faster people were pushing in the rough sections. I took off and rode significantly more aggressive. On an off-camber sweeping corner in the wood chips I got loose and put the bike and trailer into a power slide, I hung onto it somehow, but cleared the wood chips down to dirt through the entire corner, SWEET!! I was able to cut another 9 seconds off my time, posting 4:42 minutes as a fast lap of the night!
All in all it was a great time, the weather was perfect and doing this at night just made it all that much more fun! I tried to snap some pictures, but the camera died instantly. We will definitely be doing this again next year so I will make sure to have good batteries ready.