Our Falls City Fat Tire Festival weekend fizzled into two separate weekends of racing this year. While both were super successful promotions from a logistical sense, the sum of the parts hardly made up for the potential whole.

The XC race never materialized due to Weyerheuser refusing to allow recreational use of the Socialist Valley Road easement in Falls City, Oregon.

Instead we hosted the OBRA Short Track Championship in the Upper Park. While we had ridiculous T-storms the night before and throughout the day, a few die-hard racers showed up and we had a fun time.

http://app.obra.org/results/2009/Mountain%20Bike/15028

Food, running water, flush toilets, power–everything most MTB events wish for but not enough racers. Hopefully we get another chance next year.

As for yours truly, I seemed to have injured myself this week and couldn’t really do much of a race and ended up way off the back of my race. No worries–I had lots to do that day!

-VP

Had to do the double with some of the multi-day races still on the calendar later this summer. With Mt Hood Classic off the table, we decided to make a quick trip up to the Indie Series for the Bavarian Bike and Brews Festival.

Even though I tried my best to miss the start, I made short work of the up/down course and demolished the competition–and almost myself when I ate it hard over on the last lap. Lucky lucky. Over the bars at speed never feels good but I managed to escape with a few scrapes and bruises!

We drove the rest of the day and part of the night to Bend for Picketts Charge the next day. It was a new course with seemingly endless twisting singletrack through the woods. A select group of locals broke the elastic almost immediately and amassed a gruesome lead on the rest of us.

I managed the distinction of being the “first” non-local finisher in 4th place but left licking my wounds.

Things have tightened up again in the XC Series so I have more work to do if I am going to secure overall victory in 2009.

Cheers,

VP

One of my biggest objectives for 2009 is the Intermontane Challenge in Kamloops, British Columbia. This will be one of the first MTB stage races to offer SOLO categories. It will also have legitimate prize money and all stages will begin and end in the same location. I have secured a great local sponsor, Domenic’s Marine LTD, so please stop by and check them out.

See you in “Oh, Canada” next month!

We were supposed to have a race this weekend, too. Unfortunately we haven’t been able to convince our neighbors at Weyerheuser to let us use their Socialist Valley Road easement so it looks like we will postpone our event to June 13th in Falls City.

http://csc.brettluelling.com/?q=state_championship

Instead Brett, Ryan, David, and I went out to Blackrock and provided timing for the first annual FLOWCUP. BRMBA hosted the event and it went off well. The course was fun and some quality riders showed up to test their wares.

I even took a couple runs on my singlespeed XC bike just for kicks. Stacked it up on the first run but cut nearly a minute off my time on the next. Check out my run and the ride back up to the awards:

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/8378996

Our timing work was nearly flawless and relatively sress free so that made tolerating the bugs acceptable.

Here they are: http://app.obra.org/results/2009/Downhill/13808

Yes, CSC does much more than just RACE bikes!

Thanks again,

VP

Every year in Oregon we have the OBRA championships for each disipline. For the road event, it is tradition to have a “rehearsal” race the weekend before followed by the actual championship race.

The Rehearsal is contested for prizes while the Championship for medals and bragging rights. The course is generally harder than most races around here so it actually somewhat suits a strong rider.

Unfortunately the nature of racing here in Oregon doesn’t because it seems that once a break forms off the front, the rest of the field quits racing. At least that has been the case every in every road event I have done this season.

That being said, I did a lot of hard riding both days and MISSED the break on each occasion. I didn’t have the right finish in either race although I finished both times in the main bunch.

Here are my Motionbased files if you want to check it out and compare each event.

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/8334653

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/8342656

Thanks for reading!

Ah sweet vindication! Back to one of my favorite races–Spring Thaw in Ashland, Oregon. After a year off winning here I came back ready to rain on the GT Golden Bike Parade and all others for that matter.

This race is totally old school MTB–single lap format: long fireroad climb with a little singletrack finishing with a nice long singletrack decent. Kind of like every “fun” ride I ever do!

After wandering around in the mud last week I just went out with my HR monitor and rode just at LBP or a little above on the climb. It was more than enough and I had dispatched all the competition within a couple miles.

So, I backed it off and cruised around the loop for another stop on top of the podium! Good training and nice winning…

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/8246825

The only damper on the weekend was missing doubling up with the Silverton Road Race for some extra training.

A win is still a win… Yeah, baby!