Secret Squirrel 2017

[cbusick]

I'm travelling next week so I thought doubling up at Secret Squirrel would be a good idea. I debated for a while the merrits of doing back to back races vs races 2 hours apart. In the end I went with back to back.

The first race was the Elite 40+. I kept saying this race was a lot more ELITE than 40+. There were only 3 guys out of 14 predicted to finish behind me.
On top of that we were staged and started with the Elites, none of whom were predicted to finish behind me. Fortunately it is a Looooonnnnnggg lap, so I had a reasonable chance to avoid getting lapped by Myerson or Nate. I got an OK spot in the grid, then looked behind me and there was Nate, giving me a shug while saying "Day of". WTF! I've seen how he starts. Not wanting to get run over in the first 10 feet of the race I quickly switched with him. Glad I did. As soon as the siren sounded he stretched the tape went up into the tall grass and moved from 3rd row to right behind the leaders before the hole shot.

I kept telling myself I liked this course, but the first 3 minutes with a couple little up/downs, barriers and a long straight run through the field (Strava segment Watts Factory https://www.strava.com/activities/1290480851/) hurt. Then there was a sharp climb, descent climb again, down and over a jump, a long sandpit style run up, back down and up until finally a straight run into the pine forest. Ahh this is the part of the course I like. I managed to pass a couple guys by riding the short run up where the crowd was and got and caught Yellow helmet HUP (Todd Lombardo) and Wheelworks (John Mosher).

I should have passed Yellow helmet since he was really cautious on the roots. Did I say there were roots? I mean like anaconda sized roots. I was hoping this would be a good thing for me, since I was running 40mm tires at 24 PSI. Bottomed out about 4 times a lap but I spent a lot less time tip toing around avoiding the nasty things. Anyway I got frustrated watching yellow helmet work his way around each root so went by him on the start finish only to pull him and wheelworks through Watts Factory. I was reeling in Matt Curbeau which couldn't be good for him, but Patrick said he'd been off the bike for a while after "Pare"ing his thumb. anyway we passed Matt on both sides on the sandpit run up like he was doing the speed limit in the middle lane of the mass pike. This time I lead through the woods and got rid of yellow helmet, but couldn't shake wheelworks. I pulled to the side to make him do some work on Watts Factory but he said he was barely hanging on, give him a minute and he'd take a pull. Sure enough when I pulled to the left after the barriers he pulled through for 20 seconds then pulled off so Matt could pull through. Well, Matt still has some watts and he shattered our little group of 4, I clawed my way back onto his wheel and rode with him through the forest thinking I'd nabbed a good ride for the next time on Watts Factory only to have him header going down the drop into the sand before the start/finish. Still, he'd given me a good gap that I managed to hold to the end.. 9th out of 14. Probably not a result worthy of making you read this long recap, but I was happy with it.

After the finish, I rode right into the pit, put my crux on the rack, grabbed the Raleigh SSCX, tossed my chip into the bucket, took the new chip off the SSCX strapped it on my ankle, got Scott Sherman (new to MRC) to peel off my top number and jumped into the grid in about as much time as it takes to read that. Then we were off. I thought I'd be shattered, but after about 1/2 a lap I started feeling better and picked off people one by one. Doubling up is tough, but not as bad as an expert MTB race. I was counting on beer handups like last year to fuel my through the SSCX race but there were none to be had. Disappointing, since last year I scored a Mayflower Porter handup. In the end I raced a good clean race, possibly beating the predictor again. Hopefully these two races give me some good points for next season. fingers crossed

[pace21]

Your prose game is on point Busick. And nice racing too....

Scott’s a good guy, glad he’s on board. Hi Scott!

[Jimmy]

Nice work Chris!

[NateMorse]

Thanks for the start grid swap Chris! That was a huge help in catching the lead group. Luckily I was able to get up there by lap two and stick in there until the fireworks went off at the end.

What a fun race this was. Perfect all-around course with a little bit of everything and a whole lot of cool features. I'll definitely be back for this one next season.

See you all soon at NBX! Last big one of the year!!!