Jay Richards

Now that was some good times on the bike. The whole weekend was a blast, really. Going into the race I had no expectations and since it was Jonell's first "race", I told her lets just finish. I did look at last years results and what not and knew we could be up there but didn't want to put any pressure on Jonell..... so I didn't even mention it to her. After that ride on Monday though at Pinehurst, in the back of the mind I knew we would do just fine. (I will be sending a full report to skinnyski but here is a quick recap) Off the start, we took a while to get going but got positioned in the 70's or so and I was hollering out to folks to just hold their line. Things were a bit chaotic so I said to Jonell lets push it on the climb to try and get out of some of this traffic before we got on the snowmobile trail. To be honest with you I was drilling it pretty hard and I kept asking Jonell every few minutes how she was feeling and she would say "great". The last thing I wanted to do was to put Jonell in the red and have her not enjoy " the ride". I knew once we got on the snowmobile trail we could recover a bit before hitting it hard on the hills again. We were doing great on the climb, picking off quite a few riders and you know how that feels to do that. Once on the trail Jonell said she was feeling great so we kept on hammering away. On Telemark Rd we were just flying and it was a total rush to cathc up to the main chase group which were riders in the 15s to 25s I think. We worked through some of this group and remember riding with Andy Onken for a while before a little misfortune. On one of the downhills, (which we were pushing speeds we have never done before) our timing chain dropped. When I put it back on, I didn't sync the cranks so the last 5 miles was whacked. At that point I was a little bit on edge and just wanted to get to the finish safely. I didn't know what the gap was to the next tandem but we did lose 25-30 places from the time we had to get off the bike to the finish. We were able to hold position okay on the climbs but had to really watch it on the rocky ski trails as we were pinging rocks left and right with our pedals. So, we finished with Jake rolling in just behind us and Jonell said "I could do it again". Jake had a great race, finishing 1st in his age group and was 5th among all 17 and unders. He had some struggles on the fast gravel but once he hit the trail he said he started picking off riders. He beat some riders he hasn't beaten this year so he was happy with that. On Sunday the Crit was loads of fun, cranking it with Jake stoking from the rear. He was pretty tickled that we took the win. (I wonder what his teachers will say when he tells them) We than did the age class heats and after not working or looking at the hard tail for three weeks. I was happy how that turned out. The one steep climb my chain was jumping all over the place and I was clipping out. I think I could of done more on the climb, giving Travis more of a run but that is my own fault. Jake and I decided we better represent the tandem class so we decided to do the final. He was pretty awed to be lining up with Doug, Tristan, Travis, Paul, Brendan, and all the others that were on the line. Just think if you were 13 and lining up with all those guys. We had a terrible start, (half the riders were down the hill before we got rolling) but it takes a while to get a 29er tandem rolling. If we had a better start I think we could of lasted a bit longer (and didn't help I put Jake in the barriers) but whatever, it still was a great time and we had a blast. Thanks to the Cheq crew for all the efforts. We picked the kids up at Jonell's parents and finally were home around 11pm. Jonell's dad had a fire going in the fireplace so putting the back up to that felt good. Crazy. It was 30 degrees cooler here than when we left. Raining this morning so the cat/trail work we had planned for today is on hold. We are going to expand the soccer field and make a new ski trail. The excess material from the soccer field will be used to make some jumps and what not for another nordic terrain park and maybe we can do some bike jumps as well. We'll see.