LAKE TAHOE, CAFRI: quali. Fun day of riding, dust was insane all through practice. Hard to find clear gaps from all the riders. Not much regulating goin on anywhere. For the actual qualifying they did get a bit of water out there on some of the lower turns, which was a nice surprise.. From my experience, quali was my first full run, and man, there is so much pedalling! I was just having fun flowing, but should have definatly put in more work! Maybe I blew myself up, cause i owned the first 30 sec:) four and a half min is a long time at altitude. Buhly is a real strong pedaler, so I now know what needs to be done, and it's gonna hurt.
Mens race, syndicate boys got maybe 3-4 runs on the track, but I guess they do their testing here, so no big deal. Lift was running so slow with all the people riding the bike park all mixed in. Anyway, peaty took a bit of a digger in the 2nd turn. Brad benedict, local hero, pedalled his brains out and took the victory over minnaar by .2 . Bryn was 4th, but top 4 are all fairly close. WOMEN'S DH 1. Buhly 4.32.5 2. Jill 4.34.0 3. Pruitt 4.38.0 4. Joanna Peterson 4.44.3 5. Leigh d. 4.47.5
MENS QUALI 1. Brad Benedict 4.08.0 2. Minnaar 4.08.2 3. Mikey sylvestri 4.09.4 4. Bryn 4.09.9 5. Kevin aiello 4.12.8
12. Larssternberg
THURS: First day of practice up at Northstar today. I guess what has made the biggest impression on me is just the dryness of it all. Being from the NW we haven't seen many dry days at altitude- dust bugars, and a bit of a headache. All good though, track is pretty straight forward and flowy, nothing really technical, but the looseness of the turns will make the push for speed interesting. Chairlift access is always a bonus, 4.5 min with lots of flat pedaly bits.
The ol tr450 is loving it, so am I. Dh is sooo much fun in any situation. Really nice people on tour here in the us. Even a bit of international talent, Bryn, minnaar, peaty, rando, kieren Bennett, n more. We should have the best of US women here too; Pruitt, Buhly, Leigh D, Jackie h, me, etc.... Maybe a Canadian or two?
Anyway, more practice, mor pedaling, more tahoey goodness. Nor cal is beautiful.