Mt Bike Racing

This is going to be a year of bikes.  I can tell.  Our favorite 3 year old is on a two wheeled (pedal) bike these days, and he bravely rides on trails.  Nearly every day, I'm told.  Since hiking with short legs is a bit harder, it seems likely that more of our group summer adventures will be mountain biking.

And you don't have ask twice if Matt would like to go for a mountain bike ride.  All this talk of "rides" and "trails" and "mud" and "huge scary logs" got him thinking about mountain biking in Janurary this year.  Not that he ever stops riding out doors, he really does ride 12 months a year here.  But other people start organizing events in the late winter.  He started a mountain bike series a couple weeks ago that will last until mid-spring.  These are fun because he gets to ride in different parks, and compare his time to others and improve his own performance. (Or so I'm told. Racing sounds awful to me.)

His first race was in Tacoma.  He made his bestie Jeffrey come with to spectate. The start line was staggered by race class, so all the Sport (faster than beginner, slower than expert) riders launch by age group.  They ride 3 laps in a winding park.  He passes people, people pass him. They had fun, and went to a hearty lunch as soon as Matt crossed the finished line.  Some hours later he pulled up the race results online and said, "Um. Oh. I guess I got third?"

Matt has a fairly binary approach to being competitive.  He can go have some rides with other people and push himself and that's cool. He is pretty laze-faire about going to these events when it's just for a ride. But as soon as he placed, I knew he was committed to the series.  Fortunately, so was Jeffery.  (Bike racing is cool, but it is in lots of different far away places that are nice to have a co driver for,)

The second race was also in Tacoma. Again, the staggered start, with multiple classes on the track at the same time.  I'm told it's hard to pay attention to whether the person passing you has grey hair or acne, so both of the guys felt like they did OK, but couldn't judge their rankings.

When the race results came in, Matt had taken second place. Jeffrey came in the top half, easily. Now there is talk of series points, and the next race is next week.  They guys speculate that most of these riders are road bikers who are getting off the street for a few hours because they both pass other riders on the technical parts (read: rooty, dropsy, chasms). I'm sure it has nothing to do with them both riding this type of terrain for most of their lives.

You can check out pictures here. Most of those people aren't Matt. You can tell some of these riders are out of their element.  How can you tell they are doing it wrong?  Both tires should stay on the ground (#728 is my favorite).  Here is a nice one of Matt just doing what he likes doing.

(I feel I should add the Matt says people crash here because they rode it too slow.  Wheee!)