2007 National #1
by Brandon on April 4th, 2007
Wow what a weekend! Norba National #1, let me first start out, if you have never raced out in the desert put this race on your calendar for next year. I really believe it is the best mountain bike race of all time.. It has the best singletrack, I mean fast singletrack and of course it does have a few rocky sections. Oh and we can not leave out the heat that we out in SOCAL are not quiet used to. YET.
Well the trip out AZ on Friday was miserable. There were wild fires all over Socal backing up all the freeways leading to AZ. It was an 11 ½ hour trip WOW. Good thing I brought my BALLs to snack on. Well on Saturday I went to check out the scene. I ran to our AZ teammate Matthew Connors who was working at the time and what a kid he is immediately asking if I needed anything or the bike, big thank you to Matthew and his family for taking photos. Of course I wanted to see all of our sponsors that were there and let me tell you they (Kenda and Crank Bros) were very excited to be on board with EVOMO. John Tomac told me what tires to run out in the desert and I put the BLUE GROOVE 2.10 w/Stans on the front and SMALL BLOCK eight 1.95 w/ Stans on the rear. Wow it was better than Christmas on my pre-ride with those tires. Yet during my pre ride I was noticing a few problems with my rear hub and I was dropping the chain on the two really rocky sections. I did come 11 ½ hours and I was tired and was going to do the race if I had to run the damn thing.
0800 Sunday race day. I was on, right out the start right where I wanted to be before the singletrack top 5. In every turn that KENDA Blue Groove was biting anything it good grab to whip you through the berms. But with speed that tires gave me I had an odd noise from the rear hub, well anyway I was still in about 5th with about three miles to go in lap one and then the rocky section, it was tough with the hard tail, (the SCOTT would have rocked) but the damn chain popped off. Lap two same thing. Lap three same thing x2 except this time the chain was caught up around the crank arm. Well it was the first race of the season and the way I look at National Races, there is a lot of talent out there, but as long as I finished and had fun it was all worth the long trip. I will take my 13 place finish and start working for the rest. I will see you at the Firestone Race.
April 7th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
11.5 hr trip out there sucks but it sounds like all was a good experience. sorry to hear you had technical difficulties with your chain. I know you’ll rock it on the home course at Firestone!