WORS #2 Alpine Valley

Traditionally Alpine Valley has been a pretty wet sticky course. With 3 weeks of rain I was considering just throwing on my mud tires before the preride. We headed over on Saturday to do some riding and found that the course was really shaping up nice. It was in great shape and still had another day to dry!!
We loaded up and headed over to the race on Sunday. Once we got all checked in and ready to ride I started digging though our bag looking for my shorts....WHICH I FORGOT AT HOME!!! I didn't have enough time to run home and get them so I rode around seeing if anyone brought extra shorts. Jason Nine had a pair that were a little dirty, scratch that VERY dirty - YUCK! Then I ran into Jeff who had a pair for me.

After a warm up we headed to the start line only to find a completely stacked field. I got called up 16th so had a good view of the hill we were going to attack. About 100 ft. off the line someone went down hard and took out about 8 guys including me. I got going again quite a way's back in the field. I was feeling pretty decent on the climbs, and really felt like I was riding my own race. On the second lap I came up on Cory who was walking his bike back with another broken chain, talk about bad luck two weeks in a row. I was moving up pretty good but just kept that in the back of my mind and didn't over due it. I thought. By the 3rd lap I was running about 15th spot and really feeling comfortable. I pretty much just hung out there for the 4th lap and started to see a couple guys starting my 5th lap. I wanted to push a little and close up some time in the single track. I was getting around the Comp. guys with no problem until we hit the big hill about 1/4 into the last lap. The other 4 times up weren't that bad but I really fell apart hard the last time. I couldn't get recovered after that and started riding backwards all the way to the finish.

Cathy had a really good race for her first time in Expert. I got to see her on my 4th lap (her 3rd) and she looked good. She was climbing the hills smooth and really hitting the single track hard. We worked on a few lines through some tricky sections and those paid off big time for her. She came in mid pack just as she thought. It was really cool getting updates every lap on how she was doing.
Not sure what we are doing for Memorial Day yet. We've talked about doing a duo 6 hour race but on the other hand we might just go out and do some riding. Sounds like it is going to be pretty nice though.