Marysville major

As I wrote lastnight this past weekend was the Marysville stage race. Friday night was a NTT, (night time trail) Saturday was a normal XC race and Sunday was both a hill climb (2.6 miles long) and a STXC (short track.)

The way it worked was all four races broke down into two points races for the year long season. The XC was one itself and the NTT, hill climb and STXC (stage race) were grouped together as the second one. Everything with the XC was normal, but the way they grouped racers for the stage race I lined up with 19 thru 45 year olds (Sport A.).

Having ran into a problem with the babysitter for the dogs wifey and I got the pleasure of driving the hour and 45 minute each way trip back and forth all three days. So thinking about it we spent more time in the short bus then we did racing.....

....and we kind of invaded the "Team" RV....food, beer and all.
The NTT on Friday night was a blur only being 25 minutes long, but it was a good look of the course for the XC on Saturday morning. After Wifey had a little problem Saturday morning (I'll let her tell that story) we were lined up and off for the XC race.

The course was a great mix of technical stuff, (logs, bridges and tight twisty turns) climbs and open areas the fly thru. Things worked in my favor again and I took the win....my last for Sport, more on that later.

Sunday started early with the hill climb being the first of the two races of the day. It was only a 2.6 mile climb on mostly fireroads, but it was 20 minutes that I don't want to repeat until next year. Luckily no walking (besides having to jump of and run thru a bottleneck area for 10-15 meters) but it was a nice tough climb the whole way.

After a couple hours the recover (two beers and a turkey burger style) it was off to the STXC...20 minutes of laps on a quarter mile loop thru the camping area. Wifey had the camera rocking...

....and I was just trying not to throw up....nothing to do with said beers and burger. After working my way thru traffic (someone thought it would be a good idea to fall over in front of me at the starting line) I sat on third places wheel in forth most of the race. First and second place were fighting back and forth about 25 meters ahead of us, but we just could not close the gap.

With two laps to go I made my way into third place coming across the start/finish and I heard the promoter say over the PA system if I keep third place it would put me on the podium for the Sport A stage race....
....and so it was. I took third in the STXC and that gave me third overall in the stage race....the podium shot of the three 20 something year olds and I. No respect......kids beating up an old man like that.

Even thou I was third overall in the Stage race they break the points down into the normal age classes, so with that I won all three stages in my age. And with the wins this weekend I will have mathematically won the season even thou there is four races left...so on to Expert I move.

Now the real pain begins....but I just look at it as a head start on next year.