Must Have Skillz

I had some friends at the race this weekend who were treated to their first bike race experience ever, I think they thought we were part of a cult. There were tons of fans each day of racing though so at least they weren't the only ones standing in a cold windy grassy field taking pictures.
Sunday's race had a pretty tough run up in it. Troy Wells was absolutely destroying me on it every lap, I don't know how he went up that thing so fast but he'd gap me by 5ft every lap by the top. I'm not sure if guys were shouldering their bikes, I was watching during warmup and nobody seemed to be doing it, I'm not quite sure why - maybe because of the barriers at the bottom were so tall everyone was just trying to get over them. I kicked the first one pretty hard mid race and almost went down, luckily I held the top tube of my bike to keep me up.


There was also this steep L shaped section that was pretty tough to negotiate. It was rideable, but faster to run. The hard part was dismounting one a pretty steep hill right before the corner, I quickly discovered that swinging my bike by the top tube was pretty fun - now I remember why I worked so hard to get my bike feather light.