Ahhh! Sweet satisfaction. Race 1 in the books for the Ascent Cycling Series. Bikes were broken, blood was spilled, and a great time was had by all. The Pro/Cat 1 field was the biggest I have ever seen for a Wednessday night! That is very exciting and several youngsters on the line is a particularily good sign. One thing about lots of youngsters is you know we will go hard from the start, those kiddos are always motivated to sprint from the line.

Youngster extraordinare Kyle Bloesser did his youthful duty and led out the affairs up the dirt road start climb. JJ Clark and I were in tow and Kyle pulled a nice gap to the rest of the chasers. Across the first road section I did not paly nice and left Kyle out in the wind until right before the trail I popped around him and into the lead. Although I got a gap and was growing it slowly, I knew I had bigger problems with Fernando Paez bidding his time behind. Yes Sir! When he caught me and attacked up the start hill on the start of the third lap, it was crazy how quick and big the gap grow. Wow! I was not moving slow up the climb but this was a whole other level.

I stayed in chase mode and was thankful to be digging so deep and still feeling pretty decent, well decent as far as short XC racing goes at least. I made a dumb mental error and hooked into a bush and fell over costing me some time and certainly putting Fernando well out of sight for good. These points in a race are fun, the order is more less set and now you just get to fall into rythm and enjoy riding as fast as you can. I had fun, lots of support on the course and so fun to see my good friend Lydia West out in the woods every lap. I was asking her for a Bratwurst hand up, but no go.

Fernando won, I finished second, and last years series champ JJ Clark was 3rd. Great start to the year. I am shooting to get 20 Pros on the start line at one of the races. I think we had 16 tonight. Lets get together and rally!

Thanks for the part YOU play in making the races great. Keep it up.

                                                            Photo from Paul von Boeck