Team MotionBased

Its hard to beat racing at home...wake up late, make coffee and muesli at your own house, and call the ride to the race your "warm-up." Brilliant. Ben and I rolled out of our 'hood' (which has to be on some top-ten list for "highest density of fast mtb racers on the same street"...a fact that has less to do with Ben and me and more to do with a retired Canadian racer and one of the top-5 regulars in any given NMBS series race...anyway, its a good place to live) at a very reasonable 9 a.m. and were at the Pickett's Charge course 12 minutes later to meet Brig and start "warming up" in earnest. This process involves talking about what to bring to Brig's bar-b-q later that evening, who's in town, who's not, did you see how so-and-so did at Mt. Hood?, should we have hydration packs for this race?, etc. The answer to the last question, in retrospect, should have been, "yes." It was/felt-like 90 degress out and we realized the down-side to racing at home: most all available friends, girlfriends, wives, were also racing or helping out with the race. Damn...guess we'll set our bottles on...this here log... After the opening climb and into the initial singletrack, through the dust and heat, we immediately had a gap. The three of us and Bear Perrin, a long time pro from Grant's Pass, OR. As we started the gradual climb through the woods, it seemed as if Ben was a little farther in front of us after every turn...until he wasn't there at all. "Why did you guy's let Ben roll away like that?" Bear asks. "Uhhhh...'let?'" I thought to myself.... "Why did you let him?" was my witty retort. In any case, it was 20 minutes into the race, Ben was out of sight and we would not be reunited until the finish line, where we met our comrade sitting comfortably in the shade for the last 4 minutes eating watermelon. Brig and I set a good pace, with Bear hanging on the back. Several times, on both climbs and descents we tried to shed the impostor, but to no avail, he'd always fight his way back to us. Eventually, rejuvenated after getting a cold bottle of water from the neutral feed at the top of the course, Brig and I attacked one last time on the familiar, twisty singletrack 2 miles from the finish and put 30 seconds into Bear, enough to let Brig and I finish 2nd and 3rd behind our teammate's first place. It was rad to (finally) race all together. We were very happy to have swept the podium spots and hope to repeat the feat in races to come. -- Bend Elite MT