2011 Southridge Winter Series #1 -SuperD

My first race of season is behind me. Two words: crash and burn. Everything started going dowhnill (pun intended) since Friday before the race. I still had to swap cranksets on my SuperD Machine, the KHS AM200, and it was cold and dark outside. I took care of swapping the crankset and it occurred to me that I’ve read before that the cassette and the chain “marry” and therefore, I decided to swap cassettes and the chain as well. The front derailleur needed to be adjusted, so I waited until Saturday for RL to give me a hand with that. That meant that I was not able to test ride the AM200 at all.

I loaded my Jeep on Saturday and headed to Fontana. RL was already there and he gave me a hand with the derailleur. He also discovered that my fork felt loose. We tried to adjust it, but no luck, so I left it with a little play. There are usually vendors at the races so I was hoping that could buy a headset there, but no luck. As 10:00am approached, it was time to register, freaking line was already long! So I patiently waited an hour in line, until the race promoter had all of the SuperD racers come up since it was time to start practicing.

I was done and registered by 11:15am, but I saw that the shuttles were not moving, wtf? so I asked the race promoter where is the start of the SuperD race, he pointed at a big ass hill and said to follow the blue arrows. No shuttle this time, lots of hike-a-bike steep switchbacks. I decided to stay and wait for the start of the race instead of doing a recognizance lap, I just didn’t feel like climbing again. BIG mistake.

The top of the course seemed easy enough, but as soon as we left the top, we raced through some steep and rocky stuff that I was not anticipating. This yielded in me eating it not only once by twice. I think I could have done better if I would have raced my DH bike since there was no uphills whatsoever. Lesson learned.

Next race is in about two weeks, registration shouldn’t be an issue. I already got a new headset for the AM2000 and I will be making sure that I at least take a look at the course before I race.

Big thanks to all of Team MtnBikeRiders.com sponsors: Serfas, KHS Bicycles, Ergon Grips, DirtyDogMTB, Evomo and Spenco. Special thanks to RL for helping me out with my derailleur and G-form pads, those are the yellow elbow pads that you see on the picture, they really work! (You can read my review here)

See ya at the races!