With the Winter Short Track season ended it only is a few weeks away from the Maxxis Southern Classic Series. The first race in that series this year was down in Sumter SC. I thought I was more ready than I was, but things didn't turn out so well, racing wise anyway. Coming into the sleep little town was a National Guard Air Force base. When I hit the side road to go to the state park these were posted about every 100 feet.

Ok, this wasn't the actual sign, but I forgot my camera and I still use an old cell phone which doesn't take pictures well from a moving vehicle, but you get the point. Bomb range = bad idea to bike there. As expected I turned away from the range to enter the State park and was was directed by the rangers where to park and set up.

Stock photo of the park ranger. Like I said I didn't have a camera with me.

 I got there early enough to watch the beginner and children's class go out. Teammate Steve Pep's old son even decided to give racing a try, the course was supposed to be around 13 miles for one lap. After goofing around for a little bit more and talking to some of the Charlotte crew that made it down there it was time to get warmed up and ready to go. The race started and went off without a hitch, no crashes and no extreme mad dashes to the front. I guess everyone understood that it was going to be a 26 mile race. You can't win a 26 mile race in the first quarter mile, but you can definitely lose one. As we entered the newly cut singletrack, I should have known that I was in for a world of hurt. The problem with newly cut singletrack is that everything is soft. It takes a lot of extra energy to pedal. But I entered in around 7th or 8th place of 16. After a few more miles the course was a lot tougher than I expected and what everyone led me to believe and I started slipping back a spot at a time. I even started slipping back to the leaders of the old man class who had caught me.

 Continuing to ride seemed like forever as this trail seems to go into the middle of nowhere. There were some short punchy climbs that put a hurting on me, and then long flat stretches over hard packed sand where you could really get your speed up. Being the first real race for the season I tried to conserve energy the first lap and not push to hard to pick up places but tried not to lose them. More twist and turns, and even a fun little pump track section was the short climb to the top of the "hill" where there was a long fire road trail to the finish. Usually not a bad thing to have, but it was long, like a few miles long. It was also the sloppiest part of the course as it had rained the night before. And that water was cold riding through it and it got everything all muddy. 

After that the race was pretty uneventful. Just another full lap of suffering, and oh yeah, they miscalculated the mileage. It was really over 14 miles per lap. At the end of the day I rode near 30 miles of trail. That is a lot more than I was expecting. I started having leg cramps the beginning of the second lap so I tried my best to just keep pedaling. Eventually I did finish. I didn't stay around to wait for the awards ceremony as I knew I was way at the bottom, and found out I finished 14 of 16. The good news is that I finished though. That kind of heavy mileage is just forcing me to get into better shape fore the 6 hours of Warrior Creek.
And in other news, it was time for a ride change. I have a full suspension 26 inch Haro and wanted something different. So I went to Sun and Ski sports test rode 2 different bikes. I save the details, I ended up going with Marin Nail 29er.

Yes, I got the water bottle cages to match the color of the frame. If you can't win, at least be stylish.

I did make some minor changes already, removing the reflectors number one, putting pedals on, changing out the grips and seat, but I forgot the after pictures. Oh well, there should be many more this year as this will be my primary race bike. Now only if I could get to give it a real test ride before my race tomorrow....