My Blog

I know I'm a little late on this update but here goes anyways.

The Cal State finals race was in the middle of September and I was pretty excited to get back into racing and to see some of my friends whom I hadn't seen since the last race.

My weekend started off good, Jason Scholz met up with Debbie and myself at my house early Saturday morning and we got on the road heading up to Woodward West in Tehachapi. When we got there our rooms were not ready yet so after meeting up with Troy D'Elia and his parents we decided to just change in the parking lot and get some runs in.

Saturdays practice went good. I really liked the course even though the difficulty level was pretty low. The more I rode the more fun I had and my only complaint was that there was a couple jumps with turns right after them so you couldn't really air them out, you had to get hard on the brakes or overshoot them. At the bottom of the course was a long straight to a big kicker of a jump that I couldn't help but launch, with Troy telling me to stop over jumping it with every run, it was just to good to pass up the boost.

Sunday morning practice showed up all to early and as we headed up I had already decided I was ready. I told Jason and Troy I'm doing 2 runs, thats it for practice. I cruised one and then ran the second just under race speed. No problems.

Race time came and and I thought my first run was pretty smooth. I got told off for not pedaling enough at the top when I got back to the pits and then when times were posted I was less then a second off first place Justin Mann's time. I was a little shocked because I didn't think I was that fast. I then got told off again because If I hadn't been cruising at the top I would probably be sitting in first right now.

Second run time and I new I had a chance at taking it so I pinned it from the start. Unfortunately going into the second big bermed turn as I was getting my drift on I hit a hole somebody had bashed into the berm earlier, smashed my knee into the bars and almost went down. I saved it though and got back on it hard. I was mad. I was thinking I may have just lost it all with that one scew up. I knew I had to push hard and as I came around to the big step up jump there was Adrian Thome cheering me on (he had a mechanical), "Run his ass down!!" he was yelling so I still go go go but running out of gas real quick. I put it all down and crossed the line at the bottom, grabbed the brakes and fell over. I turned around to see Justin running over to the timers booth at the finish line to see the times, I sat there watching him to see what his reaction was, win or lose.

When Justin raised his hands in victory I had my answer. And when the final times were posted I walked away with second place in the finals and second place overall in the Cal State Series.

All in all it was a good weekend. I had fun, saw a lot of friends, and had some good racing. Congrats to Justin for winning the Cal State Series, at least it was on another Intense.

I want to thank everyone that was there and everyone that supported me. Also thanks to all my sponsors. We have one more SRC race in November to wrap up the year. So I will see you all in Fontana.