Jay Richards

Eric Oftedal sent me this pic of Jake. I was going to mention Jake in the last post but that got pretty long winded. Jake had a great race on Sunday. Jonell was all amped up about his race. Luke Baker was at the line, Chris Benson, the joking around with Steve. I told her to just relax, its his first sport race and it was going to be fun. I told the same thing to Jake, just have fun and enjoy the singletrack. Well, when he came through on the first lap I was surprised to see his position. Having not done any miles on the road and any long rides and what not, I wondered how is endurace would be but he moved up and said he kept closing the gaps down by the finish. A great race and should be an exciting year. He said he made a bunch of time on the singletrack which was to be expected, being the home course.

Yesterday I did a short ride on the road with the Salsa just to keep getting the feel for it amap and Jake wanted to do a expert lap when I rolled in. I let him go first and it was nuts. He was pinning the downhill drops crazy fast. Faster than me, thats for sure. When we got to the top of Suicide and did that singletrack section after it, I stopped before the creek descent and said "this section is really nice now, the berms are all buffed and it flows really well off of them" he says "what are you talking about, I just jump over those, follow my wheel and see if you can hang on" Did I hang on, no, he had a few seconds gap at the bottom. Jake said he wants to lay out the course for the Loppet weekend. I said see what you come up with. We will probably try to use some of the singletrack that didn't get used in the spring. I like to do long lap but for spectating, it is nice to have riders come through the drops as much as possible so Experts will probably do 4 laps and sport 2 again etc. I think for the TT we might just do Lucky's Loype outright. It would be a bit shorter compared to last year but not much. I think it would make for a really fun tt with short ups and downs. Not quite singletrack but not as wide as the ski trail/double track.

Having qualified for Nationals now, we will plan on taking the trip to VT. Hopefully we can see Zigs one day. Jake really wants to go to Woodward and check out the jumps there. I never tell Jake to go out and train or to do any specific type of training. He does it on his own and the sprints to the jump is great "training" as well. The only thing we might do is head to the mountain the month of June to do some 5 min climbs and what not to get used to the longer climbing at Mt Snow.

Going to try and do Rollag tonight for the first time this year. Have been on the road bike once. I am sure Brian Dahl and co. will put the screws to me.