WORS #10 Treadfest

Lake Geneva, WI
WORS #10, Treadfest Sunday September 12, 2010
by: Dan Ellerkamp

Lined up for WORS #10 in Lake Geneva.  I always love this course, it has a great mix of challenging climbing and fun singletrack that doesn’t give you a whole lot of rest.  Rain the night before made the trails fast and tacky, which was much easier to handle than last year’s dry and dusty conditions.

Lined up at the start and to my surprise I had my first call-up of the season!  It was awesome to start in the front row vs. three rows back, it made the start a lot faster.  GOOOOOOOO!  The first lap I raced hard and tried to keep myself in a good position in the Comp field.  The rock garden is a super fun technical feature of this course…I remember last year it kind of freaked me out but this year I confidently rode it and felt relaxed the whole time.  I guess all that riding at Chequamegon and Levis this year paid off! 

For the second race in a row I thought there were 4 laps instead of 3, because last year’s course had 4 laps.  I think this year they added more new singletrack so the laps were a bit slower…I realized halfway through the 3rd lap that there were probably only 3 laps based on how much time I had already been racing.  Rode the last half lap by myself which was fun in the singletrack…the faster guys in the Comp field were long gone in front of me by this point.  I really need to start paying attention to what Don says at the start of the race so I know how many laps to race!  I could of gone a lot harder at the end of the 2nd lap and the first half of the 3rd lap, but oh well.

Ended up 3rd Age Group and 14th overall Comp for my best result of the season and my first WORS medal!  The legs are finally feeling good after an extended break from racing in July and August.  I feel ready to kill it in cyclocross, a good race is exactly what I needed with the first WCA CX race on Saturday, the No Good Double Cross!