Moe’s Race report, with video!

I know is a little late, but I’ve been a little busy lately and my Internet connection at home sucks. Anyhow, the race weekend started with a terrible weather forecast: Hot. I know that some of you Arizonians are used to this kind of heat, but coming from a week that had highs on the low 70s, 95 degrees was freaking hot. We were hoping for the course to be a little packed down since it rained the previous days, for the most part, the course was good to race except for a couple of loose spots. Saturday practice did not go well for me, I only took 3 small water bottles and I felt the effects of some mild dehydration.

I showed up on Sunday armed with cold Gatorades and drank water all night, I felt pretty good. I sessioned the lower rock garden, hoping to gain some time before pedaling the dreaded wall. As our time to shuttle arrived, I grabbed the Gatorades and a few packs of from our newest sponsor, VIP Energy mix. I distributed some of the Gatorades to my team members and got ready for my run. Interestingly, this was the first time I actually felt nervous about my upcoming run, I guess the shadow of my injury still lurks. RL told me to just have fun, so I just went with it.

I had a very clean run, although I did not expect for Wes to catch me at the saddle, but the man was possessed and on a mission. As I cleared the lower rock garden and started pedaling the wall, a nasty head wind hit me and killed my momentum. I ended up on 6th place out of 8, so I was sort of pleased with my performance.

I ended up taking second place overall on the Golden State series, just 20 points away from my team mate and cousin Joe Solancho. I was also happy to see Wes on the podium, talk about the comeback kid!!!

Here’s the video of my race run, the video was taken using the ContourHD helmet cam:

Big thanks to my all my teammates and Kym Solancho for their cheering and support and of course the Team Sponsors: KHS Bicycles, Evomo, Serfas, Ergon USA, DirtyDog MTB and VIP Energy mix.