Deer Valley

Saturday's race played out just as I had spent the winter anticipating this season would go. It just happened to be in a different class.

Thirty guys showed up to Deer Valley for the week-before-Norba Intermountain Cup pro class. It rained much of last week and then was dry for a day or two, so the trails were perfect. The weather was cool, which also made the riding nice.

What was "as anticipated" was that Bp and I basically rode the entire race together. He actually led most of the race, with me in tow. This was a lot of fun. He passed four guys in one pass on the climb on the second lap.

The only tough thing about following was that, as we lapped riders, Bp would call out "2 Racers", and a few people failed to stay over for #2 (me), and merged back into me, two people actually causing enough of a hangup that we were stopped and un-clipped before getting going again. Maybe this is why some woman warned Chad about hip-checking as he went by? Hopefully not, but sorry to anyone if I offended. After this happened the second time, I became very proactive about adding my own warning of the presence of a second rider, and I think this helped.

After the race I was thinking about what a problem lapping traffic is on that course. When people are getting lapped on lap 2, it is an indication that the speed differential is very large. Some of those people were probably lapped by essentially all the pros and most of the experts, which would be something like 70 people. For them it would get really old moving over and stopping every time, and there isn't much room for moving over on the vast majority of the DV course. Additionally, these are the riders that are the least comfortable riding side-by-side on single-track. Unfortunately, Solitude and Joyride are not much better. All we can do is be patient, try to execute clean passes when the opportunity arises, and hope for good luck on when we catch people.

Anyway, Bp and I rode together the whole race and then I pulled a little lead on the last 12 & under Little-Stick climb which was enough to separate us from a sprint, and we finished 11th and 12th.

Meanwhile, Reed rode an excellent 19-29 race. He flatted on lap 2, changed his tube, and still finished 2nd.

Scott and Ian both raced with the 9 and unders. The climbing was a little steep for Ian, but they finished happy.

After the race Reed and I rode the 12 & under loop with Scott. He has really improved his skills over the past year and had no real difficulty on the switchbacks.

It was great to ride in a large field like that. Makes me consider doing the Norba race.