In years past when Jake was racing Sport, I would take pictures of that race and Jake would take pictures of the Comp and Expert. When we got home I had two pictures on the camera.
One of some lightning as we approached home and one of this cow being moved out of Staples on the drive down Sat. night. Sweet beans, I thought we would have to drive through Wisconsin to see something like this!! If my dad would of know it was for sale, he might of wanted to bring it to Maplelag and convert it to accommodations or something.
Going into the race, I really had no idea where I was at fitness wise so. To me, Afton is probably one of the toughest/hardest races on the circuit with the climbing and distance and I am still scratching my way to racing form, so I took a pretty conservative approach with the mindset of a training race. But like all races, I race every race like it is the last, meaning I go as hard as I can with the form that I have. This race had a much better feel to it. There wasn't all this crazy nervous energy like Harmon. People were more laid back and easy going it seemed. I think everyone knew on this type of course, the hills were going to sort things out quickly, which they did for the most part as Brendan crushed everyone with those gigantic calves. The start was clean and nice paced. The selections were made relatively early with some back and forth among the top 10 and rest of the field as the race went on. I rode a lap with Fisher and Luke Nelson and lost contact when I went on the singletrack section after Shady Lane, thinking it might be shorter but the rock section wasn't rideable and lost 10 seconds just like that. I put in a effort to try and bridge that gap but knew I needed to pace myself so I rode my own race. It was a mental challenge for sure after that second lap, knowing the race was going to be 2.5hrs. Jan Rybar caught up to me the middle of the third and he was working like a horse. Just ripping the hills, standing up and breathing like a mad man....I thought he was going to blow down the chalet. Way to go Jan, animal out there. Last lap I felt better than expected and held off the chasers behind and thought I was closing down Fisher but he still came across a minute ahead of me so good job to him. In the end, rolled across 9th feeling much better than last year and a little bit ahead of last year.
I told Jake expect to race for 2 hours. Made a big breakfast in the morning of oatmeal, ww cakes and hard boiled eggs for extra protein to be fueled for the day. No energy drinks. Just good ol water for hydration . His race plan is always to start out a bit slower than work into it. Jake said the start was "so slow" compared to Harmon and said he could of gone to the front ride away but wanted to play the field so he waited until halfway through the first lap before going to the front. Jake said his "climbing legs" were "on". Said he thought of Adrian in Sayulita and climbing with him. (The San Pancho ride reminded me of Afton which I said about San Pancho at the time) Jake stayed at front moving his way up in to the Expert field (Comp started 2 minutes behind the Experts) and eventually caught up to Nikolai Aninkin who placed 10th at WORS race last weekend. Anyways, after riding with Nikolai for a while, Jake flatted on one of the water pipes used for snowmaking, hitting the rear tire hard and snake bit. Jake changed the flat but had troubles with the Co2. He pushed his bike along the course to the bottom of the manhandler climb where we had our Swix wax table with a cooler for water. Left his bike there, ran down to the parking lot, picked up some more co2 and filled the tire. He figured about 34 people passed him during all of this and he got cranking away with a lap to work with and caught about 18 of those people, moving up to 16th I think. (Comp Results are a little unclear at this point) Jake was pretty excited to be leading the race. Obviously frustrated to flat but learned a lesson about being a bit more prepared. Hungry for the next race and good attitude about the whole situation, focusing on the positives and not the negatives.I left the Garmin at home, thinking it would of been muddy but I would of been curious to know what the climbing was per lap. My guess is around 1500ft per lap maybe 1800? Killer climbing course.
Made it home safely with no issues and probably home about the time we left last year. Nice job to Bruce of skinnyski.com once again for posting great photo sets and big thanks to Sam and Eric for giving me a tire. Once again, top notch dudes, always there. I had a Nevegal in front but with tacky and "dry" surface conditions, that was not needed. The karma I had had about 300 miles on it and I didn't make the gutsy move like Fisher and Brendan to run small block 8s. If it would of started raining as forecasted, it would of been a whole different story.
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