Sure I won an expert mountain bike race once. Does it count even though most of the fast Cola people were at some other race instead of at Harbison? Counts in my book, and it was probably one of the only times I will experience a win like that. Lets face it, I'm not getting any faster or younger, just better looking.
But my son. He has experienced a win that I could only dream about. Total Domination. We missed the first Carolina Youth Mountain Bike Race because not only am I slow, but I can not read a flier correctly either. So this weekend we got up real early and left the house around 6am. We arrived in the fine town of Hendersonville, NC ready to ride around 8:30am. So we got to see the 11/12s, and then the 13/14s ride before he had to race at 11am.
My sage advice to him was to race the first 3 laps below the pain and then crank it up on the fourth lap. The most important thing was to keep 1st place in striking distance, and don't blow up too early.
Well he started just as I said for the first 1/2 a lap and he came out of the woods in 3rd place, but I noticed he was kind of just tooling around. As soon as he got a clear spot to pass, he turned it on. Later he told me he couldn't go that slow any more and just had to go. By the time he crossed the start/finish he had pulled about a 30 sec gap on second. He came out of the woods on lap 2 looking good and still in first place. This lap he had pulled away by more than 2 minutes. On lap three I asked him how he felt and he said, "No pain Dad" and then he was off to the woods again. On lap 4 he started lapping other riders and crossed the finish line in 35 minutes, 4.5 minutes faster than 2nd place.
It was a proud moment. I still would like to see him pushed some on these races, but it definitely built some confidence and it was the first race he did without me coaching while riding along. We have agreed that he will race one more in his age group and if he does that well again, he will move up an age group for the challenge.
Next Race; August 28th Camp Carolina, Brevard, NC
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