Lewis & Clark MTB Time Trial

Council Bluffs, IA
Saturday August 07, 2010
by: Brandon Harpster

On Saturday August 7th was one of the new races to the Nebraska Lottery Psycowpath Series the Lewis and Clark MTB Time Trial.  I have done a race on this course before but was able to make it up a week earlier to at least scope it out so I didn’t go into the 1 lap time trial cold.

When I got to the race course things had already been underway for a while but I didn’t go off until towards the end so I checked in and then headed back to the car to get my bike ready and change.  Since they had people constantly going into the course nobody was allowed to pre-ride on the day of so I opted as with many others to warm up on the very long paved climb that led up to were we started.

When it was close to time for me to go I dropped my ipod, waterbottle and sunglasses off at the car and then headed to the start line to get in place.  When they sent me off I was not mentally ready for the off camber bumpy section at the start that I had forgotten about so I didn’t have the best of a start and it kind of carried on through the rest of the lap.  I never seemed to be in the right gear on the turns that led into climbs and I seemed to just be always struggling to get my bearings on the course.  I had one off camber turn that led into a climb that I was in to heavy of a gear for and ended up having to stop but when I got off I kind of pinned myself between a tree and my bike while trying not to fall downhill.  I’m sure it would have been pretty funny to watch.  I definitely wasn’t my morning.I did manage to catch the rider in front of me but had a really hard time getting around him on a very tight section of singletrack which ended up costing me some precious seconds.

I ended the race in 8th place.  I was 1 second behind the guy in 7th and 3 seconds behind the guy in 6th.  I keep thinking to myself if I had just done a few things differently I would have posted a bit better result.  I just keep thinking this is a learning year for me still at this level.  I’ll be better prepared next time.

harp