The latest Camp Fortune Sunset Series mountain bike race was last Wednesday evening. The temperature was mercifully moderate - well below 30, if I recall. I'm pretty sure that if the race was Thursday night, I would have skipped it; actually, I probably wouldn't have skipped it, but I would have gotten heat exhaustion. I'm happy to have not suffered that fate (again)!
The field expert/elite field was quite thin - a total of 5 guys. No doubt, this is in part due to observations described by Neil two weeks ago. In any case, I had arrived early enough to be on the bike 30 minutes prior to start, and caught up with Imad and Dustin heading out for a lap - to do a little course prep. Yup, to get the course ready for the race. Uh-huh, the race put on by Camp Fortune, a race for which I (and everyone else) have to pay for entry, as well as for trail access, and which starts in 30 minutes. But I digress!
OK, off we go, no time to spare It doesn't take long to find a "small" problem - a large tree fallen across the trail. Well, this is no good, it sure would suck if the race had started with that in the way. Not to worry, Imad heads back to the start to get a few big burly racers to move the fallen tree. Not being in that particular category, I keep going. As Neil noted two weeks ago, the course is poorly (i.e. not) marked. Well, that's not quite true. Most of the single track has tape along both sides of the trail - that must have taken forever. On the other hand, none of the intersections are adequately marked. It's not as if the intersections have never been marked - at most places where there is a choice on which way to go, there is ripped tape on the ground. I did my best to retrieve random unused tape segments (such as the tape along most of the single track...), to tape off as many incorrect turns as possible. I hope it helped, and I will say that this sort of course marking is the absolute least we should expect for a sanctioned race that carries an entry fee. I'm sure my tape will be gone in two weeks - no big deal, it'll just take someone from the race organization 30 minutes to go around and prep it before the next race.
OK, we didn't fix all the problems, maybe not even most of them. There is still lots of erosion, and the course does need attention - but hopefully we helped most of the racers go the right way most of the time...
A few race notes:
- as mentioned, the expert/elite category was thin. With only 5 of us on the start line, it was a very civilized pace.
- Imad crashed hard, right in front of me. I was sure there would be a dislocated shoulder, or broken clavicle, but it turned out to just be just a flesh wound, and a bent bike. Bend it back and keep going!
- my string of flats on the 29er has finally come to an end. I'm set up tubeless with my ZTR rims - no more pinch flats, and the bike is handling great.
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