OMBC - Lake Hope State Park - Mountain Bike Race

weeeeeee,
My race today went like an 1:24 min ride on a super fun roller coaster. My watch said 1:21 min, Avg. Speed 12.34 mph, 1730 feet of elevation gain, . I need to look up my info from last year.

I have never ridden Lake Hope so fast in many years of riding there. This was my second year racing there in the Sport Category. Layne, my wife and I all Subaru'd down together.
This race is combined with the West Virginia race series and their race catergories do not match up with OMBC. So....to make things easy the Sport Catagory for racers from 19-50 were all leaving in one group. Yeah that was fun. I think 50 guys? I nudged up to the front 12 or so for the start and hoped to get a good flying start up the gravel road to the water tower. I did, but we were 4.5 wide on that road and I was eating branches on the right side up the hill, when many faded in fitness towards the top, I manged to get passed 5 or 6, make the turn to the left at the bottom of the hill, where our cars were parked, and up the second real gravel road hill. We fly up that, fly down the hill and head up to the crest of the third hill right before the single-track into the woods. I manged to pass quite a few in my big ring before the dirt and we all bunched up at the entrance. I think there may have been 15/18 or so of us at the front of the Sport group. I felt pretty good about where I was sitting. I did manage to get some warm up before the race start, but now the legs were starting to feel pretty good about 3 miles or so in. I was passing lots of riders, passed a few of the women off the back and trying to maintain a steady pedal state. I rode really agressive on any hills or sections I knew really well, thinking anyone that was behind me would have to fight till the end to pass me. I saw one girl go down really hard on her face after flying right over the handle bars. She ended up being ok and finishing. Jen and I hung out with Amanda Sproat and Joe Devault today after the race at a picnic table eating and drinking. It's a nice change of pace being at mountain bike race from the 'serious ness' of the road and crit scene. Although there are some somewhat serious, too serious dudes at these mtb races, it was good to hang with the Superfly Twins.

I do believe I should have ridden with the Experts today. I don't think I was sandbagging per say - all the other guys in my Sport group were all within 1 min of each other. And the only guy to beat me today, came around me in the last few miles, pretty rude in his pass, ran into the wheel that was in front of me after passing me.
I was within 10 to 15 seconds of getting 1st back at the finish, I saw him look back at the top of the second hill before the finish. I dug really hard in my big ring to catch him coming out of the woods and up the steep dirt hill before the campground pavement.
I ended up with a solid Second Place this year.
I am pretty sure after thinking about it today, that the top 3 finishers in the entire sport category should be racing Expert as well. There were guys that finished 5 to 10 min faster than I did - they must have been just motoring, sick. My low back is so sore, after riding in the car home, getting on a plane to chicago, I sit here with ice on my low back. Dang, I am old.
Layne got third in the Single Speeds today, pretty good considering, he hadn't ridden MTB much this year.
More tomorrow if I can come up with more -