Tuscarora Off Road Weekend Marathon

The format of this race was to do as many laps as you could between 10 am and 2 pm.  The lap was 6 and a half miles and took around 45-50 minutes for me.  It was a cold morning in the 30's.  It is always tough to dress for a cold weather race because you know that you are going to hot on the climbs and cold on the long gravel descent.  But you could tell the folks that have been biking all winter, not just because they had better fitness, but because they had less clothes on.

Photo by Jack Copley

It was a great women's field with a dozen girls.  The gun went off and up the hill we went.  I went my pace and got some saddle time in.  Selene and Laura were pushing each other hard and had a great race with Selene winning on her new bike that as a size small fits two water bottles.

 Laura is on the fast track to racing success this year.

I finished five laps and ended up in third, which was good enough for the cool El Salvadorian machete prize.  In the words of Cory Rimmer "Tough day at the races. Skills kept me in the race and my legs took me out. Lots of training to be had."  My skills were remarkably good.  Maybe all the cross country skiing had a positive effect on my mtb skills?  I also really like the Scalpel and my Kenda Nevegals, they rock on the rocks!

 It was great to get racing and really, just riding!  I have a lot of work to do to get in shape which is full of possibility and promise.  I want to be able to do TSEpic again but its hard to know if two months is enough time to be ready for a 7 day stage race.

Zach puts on nice races and feeds us great afterwards.