ACCC at Virginia Tech

Last weekend ETSU Cycling loaded up the trailer and headed for an out of conference ACCC race at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va. Saturday night would be a night race under the lights on campus and Sunday's race was to be at a city park in Roanoke. My first collegiate night race! Night races are the bomb! The only other night CX races I've done are the ones at AVLCX down near the river at riverfront park in Asheville.

 

 

My creative side came out and I took a picture of our sweet jackets under the lights at VT.

 

Here's the start of one of the races. As you can see the turnout was big for the first ACCC collegiate race. Plenty of participants!

 Here's a picture, below, of the big hill run-up with a big log at the bottom of the hill. Only a few riders rode this because it was just as fast to run it.

 

 

Casey, a new guy on the team this year, is getting ready to start the A's race. Below that he's warming up on the trainer.

 

 Here's Schyler running through the Christmas lighted barriers. Sorry for the blurry pics... iPhone at night. Thumbs up to VT for all the creativity to light the backside of the course in the field. There were several totally blacked out sections that made it sketchy but super fun.


My Race:
I took a flying W after the barriers on one of my laps there. My foot caught something on the last barrier, my bike kept going but I hit the deck pretty fast. I did rebound quickly with the cheers and heckling from the nearby spectators. On my first lap I was forced over into a ditch and burped my front tire (yes I'm running tubeless Clements this year front and rear) then soon flatted it completely trying to get over to the pits for a pump. After running to the pits there was NO PUMP to be found lying around so I as off to the races on foot. Running a full lap and one-half in carbon soled mtb shoes s not fun by the way. I managed to jog around to the guys and let them know I needed a wheel in the pits. They rushed Schyler's Easton over but where I'm running disc brake wheel we had to do a front brake mastectomy on my Niner to make a rim brake wheel roll through without hitting the brake caliper because the hub/spoke spacing is wider on a non-disc hub. 3 of us and  2 minutes later I was back in the race and made it all the way back up to 6th place out of 12 or so, to that effort I was amazed with myself.

 

 

Sunday at Roanoke:

We arrived early after staying at the downtown Holiday Inn express to a barely set-up course. The crew barely finished setting everything up by race time. There was several sweet technical sections; single track, a mulch pit, sand pit and these sweet triple log barriers that most peeps rode around on the left, missing them entirely, going up. (I did twice because Schyler and Blair tried to stand on the end and force peeps over the wood)

 

 

 Start of the Men's A race. One hour of giddy up go!

 

The sand pit was super easy with speed. It also had about a 2ft drop off entering into it as well.

 

 

Casey through the sand. His shoulder popped out of joint mid way through the race but he sucked it up and finished one-handed. He even rode through the sand pit a couple of times one-handed. Good job Casey.

 

 

 

 Schyler, you know I'm not going to let this slide................

 

 

Blair and I are standing by the pit when Schyler rolls up to it. I heckle him by yelling "ENDO". What does he do? He endos right smack dab in front of us! poof!!

 All I could do well all day was get through the sand. My legs felt like crap in Sunday's race at Roanoke. I held on for second to last was all I had in me... I didn't quit though. The pics look sweet, I think, with all the sand getting kicked up.

 

 

All these pictures (except for the crappy iPhone ones I took) are by David Lehn. He races at some of the events but he is also a great photographer. Please go to his website and check him out. You can do that by clicking on his name and the link will take ya there. Thanks David!!

 

 

 

We just returned from the first SECCC collegiate cx race hosted by UGA in Athens, Ga. I'll save that for another post and wait until I can find some pictures. This next weekend we'll be racing at MSG/King on Saturday and Virginia Intermont on Sunday. Both colleges are only 3 miles from one another so they split hosting which will be cool because it'll mean 2 different courses for the weekend.

 

 

LAter G........................