Into the Bloomer Butter they go

Last weekend we sent the worker ants out to Bloomer Park in Rochester for local Tailwind XC.  It had rained on and off for close to two weeks leading up to this race....more on than off it seemed.  The day before the race it was posted that the normal race course would need some reroutes so the trail would not turn into the DMZ.  Diesel arrived pretty early and put it in park next to fellow Twin Six'er JD9.  A-Pong showed up a few minutes later and flanked Diesel on the other side to form a nice 3 vehicle Motor Pool that would serve as camp for the day.  No sense in setting up the tent as there were no groupies, media, medics or small farm animals traveling with the band this day.  Everyone was in self help mode.

The morning seemed to take longer than usual to get to race time even after Dubs did a perimeter search, Diesel checked out the latrine and Pogo stayed at camp to take inventory and check ammo supply.  The scouting report came back fairly normal with only a couple small concerns and after a warm up and pre ride of some of the course the Motor Bugs were ready to roll out.

Pong and Dubs made their way over to the front lines and stood in formation with Osgood, Lakomoto and Klienglass.  RA was also there along with a couple others.  The roll call numbers were low but the pack was strong.  Pongo went into the woods at P7 right behind Seth and in the end made up one spot to grab 6th place.  Said he after the race: "This course suits my strengths for sure.  Tight twisty single track with only a small handful of long open flats for power riders to pull away from me.  Plus with Tailwind having to cut some sections out and do some reroutes it kept the course length closer to 2 hours which is my ceiling right now for XC.  So I was able to finish strong instead of limping across the line like I did at Addison.  Overall a great race and it's always fun to hear about  everyone's battles after the race.  My splits were solid and other than missing a turn on lap one and having to dismount and run thru the mud to get back on course I had a fairly clean race in terms of strategy.  The course had it's fair share of grease and mud tho!"

Pongoloco coming down the ravine

Diesel was up next and he had plans for the day.  The course suited him very well too so he was looking to do some damage.  Unfortunately, there was a foreign ringer in his class that put a smack down on the guys who usually win his class and also two other Elite riders CAT-ed down to his class so he was in for a tough fight.  From the Diesel himself: "I went out the first lap trying to hang onto the end of the podium.  But closer to the end of lap one I decided my garmin was right and I couldn't spend the entire 2 hours in zone five.  Shortly after that the group I was in missed the turn at the cart path and we went about a minute off course before we realized we needed to turn around and head back to the race that was going on.  What makes it bad is that I pre rode that section with Dub-9 and I still misread it.  Dumb dumb mistake but in the end I finished in 6th place about 5 minutes behind the guy in front of me so even if I wouldn't have missed that turn the podium was out of reach today.  Other than that it was a pretty solid race for me and I left it all out there."

Diesel in Z5 mode

And since Block and Soze weren't there a MOTOR jersey never made it to the podium.  But once again our fellow Twin Six bunkie, Jon W(hatever) Polish METAL Guy took 3rd and had a seat on the podium making him 5 for 5 this year with podium appearances.

Jon DoUBle Cheeseburger playing in the mud

Lakomoto survived another sprint finish to take the #1 spot.  Osgood fought the mid season demons for a day and held on to 5th place while our man Marc Zac took a 6th in his SS field as well.

One of the fan favorites, J-O, out in the weeds

Next up, Brighton XC on July 13th.  Be there or be square.