This past Saturday and Sunday we, the ETSU Cycling Team, hosted the 3rd race of the 2012 MTB Collegiate season. We broke our rider attendance record too! The previous record was 105 riders but we topped that with 132 SECCC collegiate riders making their way up to ETSU's campus. We really appreciate all the teams that traveled to compete at our event this weekend. From Florida to Kentucky and everywhere in between. Our 3 A riders in XC held in for a good respectable finishes. This is pretty rare because ETSU has never seriously fielded A riders in endurance events until Ben Appleby joined the team in 2009-11 now we have 3 with Schyler Johnson, Matthew Young and Stefan Sweckers. Derek Maiden is a freshman at ETSU and made his name well known over the past two weekends in the gravity A class. He finished fourth at Florida last week and laid down a solid 3rd in 4X and 4th in his first collegiate A Downhill race, lookout Nationals here he comes! Andrew Ingram, another new member, made top ten in DH but opted not to race 4X due to a bum knee. Gravity is what ETSU is known for so I'm glad that we still have riders that hold their own against the nations best collegiate riders.
James bailey rocked the house in B's with a 7th in XC. That's awesome too because James is in his first year of medical school and doesn't have the time to train like he wants to. Me? I was head USAC official for our event. Everything went smoothly until time for 4X Saturday. We just finished with STX and started 4X qualifying and then the clouds let loose. We were unable to get 4X in on Saturday so a quick call to USAC HQ in Colorado for advice had me postponing 4X until after XC on Sunday. After the event was over we did have a hiccup when it came to enetering results. We made a few mistakes that were quickly brought to our attention Tuesday but everyone was very forgiving.
Here are a few pics from Brevard's facebox and Union's blog. Brian Sheedy, the coach of Brevard, brought a big team up from NC and Peter Haile, the awesome new coach from Union, brought his army from the KY. I didn't get to be a great host due to being the head official at our race but I love seeing all the guys and gals from the SECCC every weekend in the fall because we are like a very large family. I love collegiate racing!
Here's a picture of our new gate that was installed this summer. This is a manual style BMX gate with air ram assistance and is super powerful. Thanks to Campus Recreation for funding this awesome piece of equipment for the team it made our starts more professional. The 4X course came around pretty good by noon on Sunday and made for great racing but rider turnout was pretty low due to most everyone having raced XC just before so many riders opted not to race 4X which is understandable.
Erica from Brevard, above, killing the double after some quick coaching from Sheedz. She hit our infamous jump like it was nothing.
Our "infamous" jump came about because of another SECCC club's gossip about how our short track was lame by just doing laps in a field. Ben and I fixed that real quick a few years back! Ben installed a rock garden with a skinny TTF and Thomas and I built a small double jump. After a year or so of use the double wore down to two little speed bumps that a pre-K rider on a tricycle could jump. So when Ben was in town working this summer he brought down an excavator and dug a huge 3ft ditch between the double making it un-rollable. I then used the excavated dirt to raise the take-off about 2ft! Now we have a distance of about 10-12ft that you cannot roll over or through. You now HIT IT or take the ride-around. In Peter Haile's words "if you want to be competitive you must jump the double". "A" riders lost 10 spots easily in short track if they wimped out and took the B line just making it a matter of time before they would be pulled by the officials before getting lapped.
Here's a pic of Union rider Wes Lamberson running his bike after flatting. He actually lept across the double and the crowd cheered like he had scored a touchdown! Wes had terrible luck with flats this weekend flatting in XC and STX but managed two top 10's in gravity.
I can't wait until our race comes to town but I also can't wait until it's over. There's so much work involved hosting a race that you are plumb worn out by the time it's over. The look on all the teams faces while their here and while they're competing makes it all worth while though. I'm very proud to be a part of USAC SECCC racing.
Click on the PinkBike logo above for Tim Koerber's picture gallery from our weekend's race
LAter G............................
No comments:
Post a Comment