UNH Kingman Cross Country Race Report

UNH Kingman was the first MTB race for the MIT team this season.  Beautiful sunny day, slightly on the chilly side in the morning. The cross country and short track courses were short and flat if you are hard to please, or “fast and furious” if you look at things from the bright side. MIT team had a great turn-out of nine racers.

At 8am in the morning Sebastian Kopf, Cimarron Wortham and myself were the first on our bikes for Men’s C cross country race. Ilana Brito and Lisa Marshall followed soon after in the Women’s B cross country. Cim placed third winning the first of the four sprint finishes MIT was about to have that day. I lost my sprint finish to place ninth. Sebastian, his first time mountain biking(!), on flat pedals finished an impressive 13th among 29 racers. The second podium success was by Ilana who placed second in the Women’s B. After the morning races, we moved on to welcome our races in other categories who were lucky to have slept longer.

Eric Edlund, Jonathan Everitt and Kenny Cheng and Kate Harris were next in Men’s B and Women’s A categories with 4 swift laps. It was fun watching Kate as 2 girls were able to keep up with her pace after the first lap, 1 after the second and she was all by herself by the time she made her 3rd pass through the start line. She placed first and she made it look too easy. Eric won his sprint finish placing third. Jon also finished with a sprint after being overtaken at the last minute but did not have time to catch back up.

Eric placed second in Men’s B Short Track and Kate finished first in Women’s A. I was not there for the ST race so here I quote Eric: “The course was fast and furious and well suited to the Edlund’s skills,
or possibly lack thereof – it was an all out power course, essentially a 25 minute time trial with knobbies, roots and a rocky descent.  Edlund and a group of five others established a clean break from the gun. Playing aggressively on the single track climb, Edlund secured a few positions and coming into the second lap thought himself to be sitting nicely in third wheel in a break of three.  A solid jump through the finish stretch on the beginning of the third lap was successful in opening up a gap between the other two riders.  From here, Edlund continued to power on and opened up more of a gap for what he thought was going to be an easy win.  What he did not realize, however, was that first place had crept away from the group on the first lap had left everyone else to scrap for second.”

Trivia:

  • So much for complaining the race is not technical. I got stung by a bee towards the end of the race. Jon who was not as lucky got stung at the beginning of his race. Kate also mentioned getting stung, but not by a bee I guess since she did not complain about swelling later.
  • I was not in the porta-potty when the race started, though it would have been funnier if I were. I was on my way from the porta-potty to the start line. Starting a race late is fun in its own sense. If you start the race last, you can only get better. Not a good enough reason to start a race late though, I can not recommend it.

Special thanks to our captain Lisa for getting us motivated and organized. And thanks to Keith and Seth for coming out and supporting(!) the team. You can find cools pics from the day at Keith’s web site.

Final word. Mountain biking is fun. Racing is fun. Therefore mountain bike racing is awesome. And one comes home with so many stories. “I was chasing this guy for almost the whole second lap and I caught up with him near the end and fell at these slippery roots and caught up again and skid at that corner…” fade out…

Burak Alver