Matt and Mitch went down super early on Thursday to set up and get started for a long weekend of racing.
Practice and Qualifying for Expert Super D and Slalom started at 8 AM Thursday morning.
Matt's Super D race started at the top of "the long climb home", with 40+ guys, running with their bikes to the top of a short hill and then jumping on a pedaling, bangin elbows and rubbing tires to the bottom. The course was mainly high speed fire roads with stutter bumps, drainage ruts and loose gravel. Matt battled to a respectable 11th place against a bunch of hard pedaling XC racers. Congratulations Matt!
The Slalom course was really fun, starting out of the gate with a hay bail lined corridor that led to a couple of drops and a series of three loose off-camber turns. This part of the track was tough to get through without putting a foot down. Once through the top section, the fun began, with three huge bermed turns linked by small jumps in between, left, right, left, to a roller triple and a hard right turn. The first rider to that hard right turn usually won the heat, because after it, the speed turned on with a a couple gates you pedaled hard through to hip the step down road gap and then sprint to the finish around a couple of tricky flat track gates.
Even with a crash, Mitch qualified for the Expert 19+ finals, but was eliminated in the first round . Well at least he got to hit the legendary Sea Otter Slalom track...Good Times!
Saturday morning we woke up to a torrential downpour, with sideways rain and 50 degree temps. SF DIRTLAB riders Jesse "White Velvet" Gray and Dan "Double D" Tracy huddled in the deluge at the top of the DH course awaiting their start times for Sport men 30-35. The rain turned the course into a muddy river, with large puddles in the apexes of the berms and speed sucking muck before every jump. The two mud caked heckadudes kicked off their Sport class rivalry, Dan taking 8th and Jesse taking 15th. Way to represent fellas.
SF DIRTAB has
XC riders too! Kim Perrin raced the
Sport XC race on Sunday morning pushing hard and finishing mid-pack, reminding some why we race primarily race DH. Kim's lovely wife Marina competed in her first XC race ever and dropped herself right in the sport class, finishing impressively with a mid-pack result against the Sport ladies 25-29. Great Job!
Sunday brought its namesake weather, sunny skies and a stiff breeze that worked to dry out the DH to near perfection. The pros went at noon and showed us all how the course was meant to be ridden. The SF DIRTLAB had 4 racers in
Expert DH. John Paul "Cooter" Albe and Jonathan Clark in the 25-29 class, Mitch Monroe in the 30-34 class and Eric Mellegers in the 35-39 class...Go Expert!
Mitch Monroe took 1st in Expert 30-34, Jonathan Clark bumped Cooter off the podium for 5th place in Expert 25-29 and both Cooter and Eric Mellegers took 6th place! A strong showing for SF DIRTLAB!
Sunday's DH course was super fun riding, not DH gnarl, but berms, jumps and stutter bumps with a bit of pedaling in between. You start out of the gate pedaling though some bumps into an off camber turn the directs to series of jumps where most of the spectators were gathered...a small double to roller to larger double to two tables to step up to roller and into a large left hand berm. Some of the pros were sucking up the fist part of the step up, launching off the top of it and gapping the roller into the berm...sick. Rail the berm into a couple of speed jumps and hit a long table with some wicked cross-winds. Flow over a little tree jumps into a right hander, through and a small rock garden
and over another table. Land and pedal your ass off up a little rutted climb and hit the sweetly bermed S turns and the log drop (pictured right). Rail with hand glued to the bars and off the brakes through a
cross-blown bump embedded straight away that made hardtailer, and mid-hitter mortals wish for long travel bikes. Pedal up over the rise into a steep rutted chute the spilled into a torn up left handed berm...triple to double roller out and pedal for the
hip jump to paved road landing. Almost there at this point, lungs and legs burning and a bit more pedaling to go. A fun riser off the pavement unweights you onto a pedally side hill section and onto a fire road leading to the last series of features. Hit the left hip step down, pedal, hit a little table, up onto a wooden ladder to a loose lefty berm, pedal through the trough and double the first two of a roller triple and mash to the finish line. Yeah...lungs and legs burning, waiting to hear your preliminary race time and place, reveling in the camaraderie that only racing can bring.
Thanks to Murli and Nutan for the support and thanks to Eric Frazier of the
Velomonkeez for letting us poach his campsite. Rob...way to represent for the Monkeez!
Random Goodness from Sea Otter 2007
Matt, Mitch and Coot workin it at the G-out
Jesse takes 4th place in Sport 30-34 with a time of 2:33
Mitch takes 2nd place in Expert 30-34 with time of 2:16:13
"Cooter" Paul Albe takes 1st place in Expert 25-29 with a time of 2:16:12
