Local racing is back in action! Tomorrow night kicks off the 2014 Ascent Cycling Sand Creek Series here in Colorado Springs. Race #1 will be held at Palmer Park, the first races starting at 4 pm and the Cat 1 and Pro races cranking away at 6:15 pm.

My first Sand Creek race was 4 years ago and also at Palmer Park. I was fresh in town and had never even ridden in Palmer. My mind was blown! That particular course took you on a substantial chunk of Templeton trail (seeing that for the first time at race pace was an eye opener) and the race even had a momentary pause when we came around a corner to see a Bear standing up tall right on the trail. I knew I had moved to the right place!

Since that first event in Palmer I have ridden thousands of miles crisscrossing the trails there. I have left a fair bit of flesh behind but I have also had so many amazing rides that they all blur together. Often Palmer is on my morning or evening bike commute and it regularly plays a role in urban MTB super loops of the winter.

But the experience of Palmer Park would not be complete for me without racing. Willing your machine as fast as you can for one hour of rock crashing mayhem just can't properly happen any other way than with a start line, a finish line, and local bragging rights on the line. Tomorrow night is our first shot to come together in the middle of town to see how fast you can ride our trails. Strava is out the window, this is bike racing.

Andy Bohlman is nearing up on bringing his 100th MTB race to the Pikes Peak region. I think this is something like 97 tomorrow night. That is a huge accomplishment and something I am very grateful for. I have written about our stellar local racing scene many times and I will not digress into that again. But i will say that that never happens, and Pros don't roll out of our community like it's a factory, unless there is a promoter hard at work pulling all the pieces together and creating an event. Get out and support Andy and COS MTB life. We got a good thing going.