Full Throttle #1

I was geeked when I found out in the beginning of May that the Full Throttle Weekly Race series was on this year and had added 3 more races and a new venue. It's by far my favorite race series every season. Cheap entry fee's, sweet swag, cool courses, great people, cash purses and it's well run. It's also nice that the races are quick and painful and you don't waste an entire day racing.

Headed up with Ken last night and arrived early enough for a course recon. Sweet course, middle ring singletrack climbs and a tight twisty downhill which was challenging to maintain speed on for someone of my stature. I new the pace would be frenzied from the start up the dirt road and I wasn't feeling particularly fast so I lined up near the back with Kris. The plan was to suck a couple wheels up the dirt road into the headwind to warm up and do my passing on the singletrack. Not the wisest of race strategies I know but anything goes in a mid-week series and it sounded like fun at the time. Jay sounded the start and off we went... well most of us. The Clyde in front of me gave a mighty heave of a pedal stroke and a loud POP sounded! His drivetrain detonated, he fell over and the guys ahead of me rode off into the sunset (literally). I snuck around Hoss and unsuccessfully tried to solo across no-mans land to catch on to the main group. I got around a couple of dudes who fell off the back on the road and passed Mark N (he who races not so often) after he blew-up on the singletrack. I caught up to Bob on the first downhill and thought he might have popped since he's an older gent and just raced on Monday. I was about to commence some serious heckling till I saw the blood pouring down his leg. Yikes! The climb wasn't long enough and the downhill was too twisty for me to catch anybody else except for some of the expert girls and I finished somewhere mid-pack. Not a great result but not bad considering Mark A only grabbed 4th and he's pretty dang fast. Fun race and I can't wait till next week.