Karma

Saturday kicked off mountain bike season with the Desert Rampage. I took the family to St. George and we left early enough so I could get a lap in since I hadn't been on dirt since November. As we left Cedar City on Friday I got a call that we had a power outage at work and the main server wasn't coming back up. Fearing the worst, I spent the next couple of hours on the phone with an outsource and my boss trying to get everyone working which pretty much killed any hopes I had of a pre-ride.

Saturday I decided to head to the venue extra early. I was confident that the Anthem was dialed in but I wasn't sure how I'd feel after spending the last three months exclusively on the road bike. I did some long warm-ups, adjusted the air in my tires, (I had left 40 lbs in them from cross season) and was ready to start.

The start was the usual, fast and I soon found myself at the back of the pack.

Once I started up the first long climb I came up on Bikeman Tim fixing a flat. As I approached I asked if he needed anything. He said air so I threw him my big air and kept riding. I thought since I was running tubeless and gave my air to another guy karma should watch out for me and kept going. The first lap was good managed to pick a few guys off and settled into a battle with a couple of utahmountainbiking guys.

Coming through on my first lap I was happy to see a 35 minute lap and was hoping to keep it up on the second. As I started the first long climb on the second lap I could feel the Utahmountainbiking guys on my back. I continued to push hard hoping I could wear them down and proceeded to try an gap them on the first DH.

Unfortunately, I caught one of the expert ladies at this point and had to wait until I could pass. As I hit the second creek wash to climb I could feel the utahmountainbiking guys on me. I tried to push the climb hard, but took some bad lines and ended up having to jump off at one point and burped my tire on a rock at another point. The utahmountainbiking guys managed to get a gap on me and heading up the fireroad I was pushing as hard as could only to see them hit the DH about 20 feet ahead of me. I pushed the DH as hard as I could and managed to close to within 10 feet of the slower one only to take the final dry creek way too fast and pop the bead on my tire again. Once again karma bailed me out as it resealed itself, but I was forced to finish the race on a low tire making it impossible to ride fast across the flats into the finish.

I think I finished around 6th place. I didn't stick around for the final results, the kids were getting hungry.

I was a good race, a chance to see old friends like the Bikeman team, make new ones like Kanyon Kris and meet some new competitors like the UMB guys that beat me by seconds.