Sweet Times in Sugarbush

It was a trek, but eventually we made it up to Sugarbush, VT, another new destination for us as we follow the Eastern States Cup series around the Northeast. Weather on Saturday was pleasantly in the low 70s and the occasional rain shower throughout the day kept practice interesting.

The race course was on a raw double black diamond named East of Eden. It was a fantastic trail, my favorite of the series so far. It reminded me of several of the courses I'd been seeing on the UCI World Cup Downhill circuit recently, namely Val de Sole and Vallnord. The course started out with low angled, but fast, switchbacks across a ski run, then dove into the woods where it twisted through with a mixture of rocks, roots, and shoots. It was so nice to be riding dirt again after the rocks of Blue Mountain, not to mention the hard pack, dried out trails of my home mountain.

I did five practice laps, and was feeling good Saturday afternoon. The sporadic rain definitely slicked up sections of the course, especially this particular one rock slab section. But it also dried out quickly, and no rain was called for Sunday, so I didn't worry about it. I decided to take a party lap down one of the other trails at Sugarbush, a stage of the enduro race. This was supposed to be a cruiser lap, but was actually kinda tricky...maybe I had my guard down, I ended up crashing three times in 100 feet. None where hard, but I was happy to call it a day.

Race day dawned clear and hot. The course had become dusty and loose in sections and my two morning practice runs helped me fine tune lines that had changed since the dampness of Saturday. My under Under 12 Class was the most stacked of the season. I was the youngest rider, racing against plenty of 11 and 12 year olds on bigger bikes. 

My race went fairly well, except I wiped out on one of the last berms of course, with the finish line in sight. I quickly grabbed my bike and ducked back under the tape and finished the race. I ended up 3rd out of 7, only 16 seconds off the first two who were with a second of each other. Fifth race, fifth podium, it's been a great year.