The 7th race in the USAC Tailwind Series was the Murray Lake XC located in Brighton. This is a fun flowing course that for most of the time can seem like a road race. It is not as wide and open as ILRA but the avg pace for the race is high as the single track flows well and is not technical. But aside from the small dirt road section for the lead in and lap around it's pretty much all single wide single track.
Like many other races this year Aryn and Brian met up early in the A.M. around 8:30 to set up the team's staging area. Fellow race enthusiasts Dub9, Lakomoto and JTP provided early morning entertainment as there was a mix of trash talk and down playing going on until the first set of riders went off at 10AM. Horsing around before races is just part of the fun during race days.
A-Train joined Dub9 on the pavement for a nice warm up before the race. Shortly he lined up with his class and saw a few faces he didn't recognize from previous races. He had just got back into the country (from Canada) the day before and it had been 6 days since he had been on a bike. It was to be in the 90's again so his goal was to try and get decent field position before going into the single track and go from there. Great plan huh?
Well by the time the single track started Aryn was 10th in line and already failed to meet his only goal he set for himself for the day. However, as the race went on he managed to pick off a few people and work with fellow rider Simon Bailey to gain ground on the podium spots. On the final lap, lap 4, A-Train put an attack on Simon that put him in a podium position. He was able to make the pass when Simon over cooked a turn and had to put a foot down to correct. However, 4 miles later A-Train's legs would not be able to sustain the pace and he started to cramp around the 2 hour mark. Simon wasn't far behind and took advantage of the situation and tried to build a gap on Aryn. After a mile though, Aryn recovered and set off on another attack to catch Simon but was running out of miles to do it. A-Train came out of the single track about 4 seconds behind Simon but as Simon started his sprint Aryn could not muster up enough power to match his intensity. In the end the A-Train came through the finish 11 seconds behind Simon.....11 seconds from another podium finish. He was very satisfied with his race though and looking back said there is nothing he could have done to go any faster. He left is all out there.
The frequent podium person on the team, Diesel, was set and ready to go at 1:00pm. His goal, as always, is to go for the win. Lap 1 he bolted off to get himself good field position and it worked. When he was 3/4 of the way through his first lap though of the 3 lap race, he realized he might be pushing to hard of a pace so he left off the throttle a bit. A-Train said his form still looked good as he came around for a bottle and was sure he'd be able to hold that first place spot. However, as the race went on the heat index went up. All the afternoon classes were starting to suffer. As Diesel and many other riders came around to start their final lap you could see the heat was taking its toll on everyone. Diesel's pace had slowed but he was still putting up a good fight.
He had dropped down to 3rd place and P4 was not far behind. But the guy in P2 was in sight at the turn so the A-Train yelled to Diesel that he needed to stay with that guy. The Diesel stated to smoke a bit to much though and while he never caught up to P2 he was never caught by P4 so he came around through the finish in a solid 3rd place. After the race Brian told Aryn the guy who was in front of him was none other than Rob Mitzel, an old friend and rival of the Diesel's. Back in 2007, Diesel and Mitzel fought every weekend for podium spots. Brian and Aryn were glad to see him back out there tearing it up.
Next up, Ruby XC.
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