This was a fun race, an inaugural event turnout wasn't what one would hope but everyone there agreed that it could be grown into a very fun event. This was very similar to a road rally. The idea of the race was to ride a 15mph pace and hit checkpoints at certain times, if you were 3 seconds over at a checkpoint it cost you 3 points. The goal was to be as close as possible to 0 points as possible. I thought the course was well marked but apparently others didn't think the same as several got lost.

Including the rider who started in front of me, he got lost before the first checkpoint, and hence the marshall at the checkpoint told me (thinking I was bib 502, not 503 my actual bib #)that I was 35 seconds late to the first checkpoint, as I rode by I questioned him about this multiple times because by my watch/computer I thought I was getting there way early. Questioning him would turn out to be very important later. After that it was a pretty uneventful ride, and I finished at an avg of 15.2 mph. After the award ceremony, I went to check my score to see where I had finished and was astonished to find that at the time I was shown as DQ'd for missing checkpoint #1. I brought this up with the race director and she said I missed checkpoint #1, and I told her that of all checkpoints #1 was one I was sure I hadn't missed due to my repeated questioning of the marshall.. She went and got the marshall in question and he remembered me asking him multiple times for clarification. That and the fact that rider #502 finished 15 mins behind me(he ended up riding about 3 miles out of the way before rejoining the race. It was determined that actually rider 502 had just left the event with my second place trophy, so.... They are ordering me my trophy and I'm supposed to pick it up Tuesday or Wednesday :)

The fact that I had to maintain a 15mph pace :) I rode my Trek 820 hardtail for this event.


This race had the ability to grow into something big, I'm going to offer to be part of next years race committee because it was that much fun