MBAA 6: Flagstaff Frenzy

Flagstaff, Arizona

by: Cody Kukulski

Well this was the final race in the MBAA (AZ State Championship series) and I was feeling good, the only home race of the year and I was only 2 points out of the lead. Race day rolled around and everything seemed like it was going good, had a big crowd of locals who wanted to seem me do good. As soon as the race started I made it into second and was pacing with the leader then about a mile into the race I managed to crash in a corner and my rhythm was all thrown off. I managed another two crashes before I got to the high point of the first lap. After the first crash, my legs decided to stop working and I fell back into fourth. Realizing I had two more laps with even more climbing left, I cranked out the downhill to catch up to third place. The start of this lap had a 3 mile section of fire road to a 4 mile climb, to another 2 miles of fire road climbing. Catching third place I paced off of him for the first fire road section and the singletrack. Near the top of the singletrack he turned on the gas and dropped me, and I could see sixth comming up behind me. When I finally reached the top fire road my legs came back and I caught and blew by third place. I established a good gap on the final climb and blasted down the decent back to the start. At this point I knew I was out of one or two but if I pushed I had third in the bag. Hitting the climb I ran into some geared riders I knew from around town and they gave me a pull to the top of the top of the climb. Then I spun the decent as fast as I could and finished in third for the day. In the overall points series I ended up in Second place in Arizona for Singlespeed.