CCCX #3 Toro Park 01/08/2012

Slacking time is over! Not only because of the holidays being past us. I also wasn't very proactive with my workout schedule in the last months. So as a new years resolution I was planning on spending more time breathing hard.
So there was not even a question if I'd do the first CCCX DH of the new year. Scott was in as well and we headed down to Toro Park, where there were steel blue skies and, later in the day, balmy temperatures around 70 degrees.

Since it hasn't rained in a while Toro Park was bone dry and the sandy soil made for a dusty, slippery cornering experience. Some of the berms were halfway broken and washed out so you had to be careful to not push too hard. But both, Scott and I didn't have too much trouble with the conditions, unlike quite a bunch of poor chaps who washed out and crashed.
Compared to the previous races in the series I actually felt pretty good and was able to apply some of the tips from one of the guys who are usually half a minute faster (mind you, the runs are only 3-4 minutes) then me: pedal, pedal, pedal.
Well, that's what I did and I had a pretty good run. I ended up 7th out of 15 in the Cat 1 19-34, the first time I got into the first half of that group - yay!
I also started in the chainless category, like I did in all the other races this season. It's always fun, not only because of the pre-start party the 50/50 team is always having on the top of the mountain, cheering on the last regular racers and even more so the the other chainless contenders. This time the female members declared a no-shirt race and went through with it ...
I ended up 5th place, which I was happy with.

Scott decided to skip the chainless race this time and only did a hardtail run instead. Three runs on the same day is just madness, considering that for two practice runs you'd have to push your bike up the mountain 5 times. He finished 5th there as well.

Full results are here.