quick thoughts...

i've got a bigger landahl writeup underway, but here are a few quick thoughts about the race and the series that i want to get out without having too finish it up... some pictures are up on flickr too.

matt on the starting line

in trying to figure out laird's tiebreakers i figured out that as a team, in all five races we've raced almost 1200 miles and climbed over 136000 vertical feet (and done just as much downhill).

in the 4 races that i've done i've raced 231.68 miles in 23 laps and climbed 30306' (just a little more than the height of mt. everest.)

of course, doing an series like this isn't about the stats, obviously, but it helped put in perspective just how big this was. the travel was tiring by the end, especially since we did the landahl race with no time off work. i flew out friday after work, flew back sunday night

jeremy and bill from the wrecking crew, and matt

all of the courses were fun and different...

temecula - all exposed, one big climb to start and the a couple of smaller ones with superfast downhills on the ridges in between. not very technical, except for a couple of short, steep, and loose downhills.

big bear - rolling, rocky, and rooty. some moderate extended climbs and lost of short steep ones.

handoff number one goes smoothly

killington - basically one big climb with a tight, twisty, and technical singletrack downhill. a prototypical ski resort course.

landahl - constant rolling singletrack with technical rock gardens. the rock gardens are more like rock problems... big slabs of granite with small channels, holes, and fissures. a blast to ride, but a hard one to race, since there was nowhere to rest on the course. there were no sustained climbs or extended downhills as the course wrapped around the contours of some small hills, so you were pushing the entire time.

darren & mike

laird and granny gear take some heat about the entry fees at the races, but he puts on a first class event. the realtime scoring can't be beat, the port-a-johns are always above average (and often cleaned out several during the events), camping facilities are great, hot showers, food vendor(s). it's a shame that attendance has gone down. big bear attendance was up this year, i think, as was killington. temecula and landahl didn't do so well, but they're great races that i hope stick around.

time for cyclocross i guess... ed sander is this weekend.