Thunder and Schist in The Berkshires

I had a stellar weekend of racing at Thunder Mountain Bike Park for the second stop of the Eastern States Cup. The race course was a super technical double black diamond named The Schist, though The Roots may be a more appropriate name. Due to rains earlier in the week, and high humidity on Saturday, the course was super slick for practice. The top third was mega steep, and the roots were like greased up pythons, there to wash out your tires at any given moment. The practice runs we did left my upper body worn out.

Race day weather was absolutely perfect. The humidity was gone and the temperature had dropped to the upper 60s. I did one practice run and was stoked to see the course had dried out considerably. The roots were still an issue, but they were no longer slick. I felt good. My start time was High Noon and I was to be the first racer, out of the 185 downhillers, on course. My race run was clean and fast with a time of 4 minutes flat. We were all very happy with that, and as the youngest racer in my class, it was good for second place.

Afterwards, I met up with my racing buddies and did party laps on the beautiful flow trials of Thunder Mountain, namely The Gronk and Hawleywood. Lets do it again in two weeks in Pennsylvania.