Sunday started bright and early at 5:30am in Crested Butte for the always highly anticipated Super-D race. After finding a breakfast joint and chomping down some much-needed calories, I headed up to the resort. Somehow I got the schedule wrong, and my race was scheduled to start at 8:05am, rather than the 9am as I had expected... Uh oh... Not good to race on a full stomach!
After riding the Red Lady express up to the top (same lift I rode past the top of twice in the XC race the day before, and once on Friday) there was no time left for a practice run, so I just did my best to warmup and kill as many mosquitos as possible.
Not wanting to make things easy, the Super-D start at CB began with a 300 yard sprint to our bikes, near 11,000ft, wearing bike shoes... I had a horrible run with pancakes and hash browns sloshing in my gut, and got started on the bike somewhere around 10th place. Not having pre-ridden the course, I knew this was going to get interesting. The dust was immediate and THICK! I had planned to pass a few cats on the open ski run at the start, but I could barely see the trail, much less whatever obstacles lay in wait out on the open ski run.
After sucking down a few pounds of dust, we reached the first major peadaling section of the course. I put down some hate and managed to get past about 5-6 guys in a short 300 yard section, then chased onto the back of a group of 3 for the next singletrack section. Passing was impossible (or at least very very difficult) through the Aspen grove, so I was forced to sit on and eat more dust. Back onto the fire road, I passed one more guy and set off chasing the next, who I caught in short order climbing the next steep littl rise.... and now comes the exciting part!
Add in a monster cloud of dust... then let me know where you'd like to pass. Is that a huge rock in there?
Since this was the last real passing opportunity, I put in a savage 4MPH attack on the uphill side of racer-X. Not wanting to cede the position so close to the end of the race, racer-X started to get frisky and got to throwing some elbows my way. Now, normally I try to race people contact-free and respect their space, but this guy crossed the line with that elbow crap... and I was forced to defend myself... Lucky for me, I've played this game before and took the position. Racer-X hit the deck, and let out the all-too-familiar grunt of getting the his wind knocked out when he hit the turf. Sorry dude... I was faster!
The rest of the race was pretty uneventful to the finish. Since my running at the start was sooooo terrible, I felt that I had finished mid-pack somewhere and was just happy with how many people I passed. Well, turns out that I passed enough people to finish 2nd. Sweet!
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