Battle at Buck Part 5

Last night at Buck could be described as perfect weather, tough course, and even tougher competition.
Weather: 80 and sunny cooling to 75 and perfect for the awards
Course: loose, sandy, bumpy, and one super steep climb like “The Wall” at Welch. Buck is putting in another chair lift, so the bottom corner is like a sandbox…sketchy at 25+mph. The fuel would have been better than the Niner-niner….
Competition: Doug, Jay, Luke, Chris, Paul, Sam..etc; probably and equivalent field to the MNSCS races


The race started out with a sprint traversing the bumpy, hay-covered side of Buck. Paul leading me, Chris, and Doug. It was the 4 of us for the first lap with a pretty immediate gap. By the start of the second lap, Doug had blown Paul and I. Fisher had caught us, and Paul told me directly “Dude Doug totally blew me up.” I could tell he was hurting to so on “The Wall” climb and the final backside climb I punched it. I got a good gap right away. In the singletrack I caught Doug who ended up being not that far off the front and had gotten a stick stuck in his wheel. I lead Doug until about ½ way through the third lap. He passed me in the woods, as I was gassed not riding the singletrack very well, which is disappointing. Here is a pic right after he passed me

The gap to Chris and Paul was about 30-45 seconds, so I had to stay on it. I could see Doug most of the time so I never really let up too much until I knew I wasn’t catching him and Paul and Chris weren’t catching me. I rolled home 30 seconds behind and about a minute later, Chris out-sprinted Paul for third. The sprint was pretty sweet because it included the high speed sandbox corner=)
Afterwards, Paul and I agreed that, all things considered, the race was one of the tougher Thursday night we have done. I thanks goes out to Paul's dad for taking a bunch of super sweet pics!

Next up is Rochester Steeple Chase on Sunday. The bike choice will probably be the fuel, but I will be bringing both just to be safe=)

Until next time…later.