The Battle of Blue

It was great to return to Blue Mountain Bike Park for the second race of the 2019 Eastern States Cup. The course is one of my favorites of the series. It runs fast, it’s rocky, has a nice drop, a rooty section, then a flowy bike park trail ending.

New to Blue Mountain this year were the bike trays. These 4x trays are a huge improvement from the one-hook per every other chair that we dealt with in the past. Lines were still long due to the volume of riders racing, but nothing like last year.

Excited to jump on some practice runs, my friend Jake joined in. It was Jake’s first time at Blue and I was stoked to be riding with him. Unfortunately, on that first practice run Jake took a hard crash in the rockiest section of the course. He was super tough about it, but his racing weekend was over. He went back to Vermont where it was determined he had broken bones in both his forearms and had one broken wrist. With that in the back of my head, I was determined to ride clean.

My race run went really well, I was stoked with my speed and my run, it felt really great. The results ended up being pretty tight and I was just a couple of seconds off second place. Next up, Plattekill.