Tamarancho report by Matt Leonard

I was pleasantly surprised to drive up and park next to Kyle, Jeni, and Justin Morgan. Kyle is always saying he races expert, and I always call him a liar, since he rarely races. Anyway, after some dorking around, lubing chains, etc, Allan and Mike Urbina rolled up. The parking lot soon got quiet as they realized the majority of the heavy hitters from Team Wrong Way had showed up. Okay, maybe not, but it was nice to have a good little group together. The six of us rode up to the camp with the Roaring Mouse gang and we all registered, rolled around the fire roads for a pseudo-warm up and headed to the start. Kyle went off in the first wave with the Pro/Semipro/Cat1 19-34 group, Justin following in the next group (or third), Allan in the third (maybe 2nd) wave, I was in the 4th wave, and Urbina behind me, all of us separated by 3 minute intervals.

As I lined up, I noticed a friendly face to my right. Chad Arkoff spent the past two years kicking my ass, but assured me this year he was out of shape. We all took off, and I settled in to about 5 or 6th. Lately, its always a guessing game of whether or not my legs will show up. I got behind a few guys who were just slightly holding me back, but I told myself thats okay, and just settled in and saved my energy. When the time was right, I got around, and was quickly on Chad's wheel. Same deal, he was just barely holding me up on the descents, but not enough to warrant a sketchy pass. When we hit the first feed zone, I darted in front of him in an attempt to beat him to the next bit of single track. No luck, he quickly regained his lead on the next short climb and we headed in to some more single track.

We rode together the for quite awhile, trading places several times. I knew I could catch him on the descents, but couldn't keep up with him on the climbs. So, I killed myself on the climbs to keep him close, then rested on the descents and caught him every time. In the beginning of the 2nd lap, he pulled over to lend a friend a pump, which I figured gave me 30 seconds on him. Only trouble was we were starting to climb the switchbacks, and had a brutal fire road climb in front of us. I punished myself as I could seem him chasing me up the switchbacks. Up the steep fire road, I passed a few people in my category who were walking, and could feel Chad right behind me. I kept in front of him and got in to the single track first.

After we popped out on some fire road, he regained his lead at the same feed zone where we exchanged places on the first lap and he led the way in to the next bit of single track. This time I sucked his wheel and didn't let him go. With the last bit of single track before the finish, we caught some people and wound up with a WTB girl in between us, and another rider holding all 3 of us up. I politely told the WTB rider that I was trying to get the guy in front of her, and if she could let me by when it was safe, that would be great. A few minutes later, she gave me the green light and right as I started to go by, we all almost piled up. She and I couldn't figure out what was going on, but as we went by Chad, he had broken his chain, maybe a mile from the finish. Bummer.

He was okay, but I didn't have a chain tool, so kept charging to the finish. I ended up coming in alone in 4th with a time of 1:19. Urbina came in shortly behind me finishing 1st in his category at ~1:18. I went back down the fire road to hang out with Jeni and cheer people on. Kyle came through on his 3rd lap with what will probably turn out to be a very respectable finish. All in all, a good time. I think the results were a little screwed up. Allan was pretty confident that he finished ahead of the 3rd place guy in the SS category, and a few other people were confused during the awards ceremony. Hopefully they'll post results soon, I'm curious to see how far out of 3rd place I was.

Matt
4th out of 20ish 1:19.