WORS #1 Iola

WORS #1 is finally here and gone. Its been a long awaited race and it was a great way to start of the MTB season.  The day before a couple Ripon teammates, coach Ric Damm and I all drove up to pre ride the course on saturday. The course was beautiful. But this wasn't going to last long. After we left I got a call from my parents saying that it was starting to rain. This rain wouldn't let up until early sunday morning only to start up again around 7.

The Storm before is on its way

This storm only got worse throughout the day. Since the storms where so bad Don, the founder of WORS, decided to push the start time of the sport race back by 30 minutes and shortened there race. He also decided to shorten the comp and elite race by 1 lap. Now only having to do 20 miles I new this was going to be a fast race. After a quick warm up, I got to the line around 1:20pm.  I was sitting 4th row, which I was pretty happy about because I knew that everyone in front of me was a seasoned elite veteran.  After Don's famous GOOOOOO, we took off.  I pushed off but had to dab because the guy in front of me didn't start to move like I had anticipated.  I pushed off again and finally got going. Cruising up the first hill, then down into the bowl and making a hard right we started to climb again.  I wasn't the happiest with my position so I tried to move up but it wasn't happening. After climbing for a bit we flew back down into the bowl and then right up another big hill which is usually rideable but with all the rain it was like trying to ride up a greased slip and slide. All of us got off and ran it. I re-mounted, clipped right in with no problem, thanks to Crank Brothers for making amazing pedals, and got going again.  Now realizing what kind of race this was going to be all I could think about was collegiate nationals which had similar conditions, except Iola was much flatter and didn't have a river running through the center of the trail.  After racing for 3 laps just behind Casey and Pete I was in no mans land because Casey and Pete only had to do 3 laps.  Trying to push and catch some of the people in front of me I ran out of trail and my first WORS race was in books.  I realize now i've got a long way to go but for the first race of the year and my first elite race ever, I didn't really know what to expect.  I ended up finishing 2nd in age group but got a 1st place medal because Joe, who took first, was also on the podium for the overall prize, so he doesn't count for the age group.  I also got 12th out of the cat 1 males and 28th overall out of every male elite racer. Not knowing what to expect I can only hope things get better from here but we will have to wait until Rhinelander to see.  Here are some post race pictures. 

Jason and I.