The guys up here are going to do their best to make sure the course is good for the Elite races tomorrow. And, hopefully, I’m going to have to eat my previous words. I think that the course might be fine for the races tomorrow. Today, for the majority of races, the course was just a grind. Not super deep, but pretty deep, sticky mud. But, the last race of the day, won by local Matt Shiver, Trek, the course started drying up pretty good. The temperatures were dropping and the wind was blowing hard, drying up the ruts, while the guys were riding in a line. I left just before dark and they had a Bobcat out trying removing the ruts before they froze up hard. I’m not going to 2nd guess this. I was all for it this afternoon, but I didn’t expect it to dry up as much as it did. There was a good line pretty much around the whole course at dark. We’ll see what it looks like in the morning at 15 degrees.
The afternoon prep team meeting -Tom Schuler and Tommy Matush
Backing the Bobcat to flatten the ruts.
Matt Shiver on his way to winning the final race of the day.
Steve – I am wondering about the logic that allows a course to be groomed for the Elites and not for any other single group participating since Wednesday. All of us who race the under-card enable the Sunday events by dint of our numbers and entry fees. How many hundreds of participants have had to endure the worst of it because of the elements? How many riders hit the ground because of those ruts and that natural surface we all had to race on? Grooming the course for the Elites smacks of inequity and it’s beyond unfair to all who accepted their fate as the race before theirs defined the very course they had to endure.
Typical.
Bend a few years back, black ice everywhere. Watched one corner during a junior race, and lost count of how many went down, and how many collarbones I heard crack. Bad, bad corner. The kind that happens when it’s below ten degrees after snow melts a while.
Then, early Sunday, I was at that same corner, watching as “course officials” dumped truckloads of sand on that very spot. AFTER every other class in the event had suffered through that area. This nation’s best, apparently, can only deal with a sandy berm.
It’s complete bullshit, this way that USA Cycling takes your money for an annual license, does basically zero for you all year, then pulls crap like this.
It’s complete bullshit, this way that USA Cycling takes your money for an annual license, does basically zero for you all year, then pulls crap like this.
While I see some benefits to grooming, I agree 100%. Yet, the number of licensees doesn’t change much one way or the other. The ones involved seem to like the abuse. I don’t get it either.
Guys-I agree with much of what you’ve said. But, the difference here is that the night time temperatures have been hovering just around freezing and the day time temperatures in the 40’s. Now it is in the lower teens, so the ground froze up harder than a rock.
I’m not sure that by doing experimental grooming that they made the course safer. The last races of yesterday rode in a pretty great line that would have been race-able today. But, there wouldn’t have been any other lines but that one. Plus, there were/are places on the course that were complete quagmires that would have frozen into ice rinks.
I guess we’ll see how it worked out later, but I’m not going to 2nd guess these guys for trying to make the race safer for the riders today. No one wants to see anybody get hurt, no matter what the class is.