Photography by: Kat

The second WEMS race this year was up in LaGrange Wisconsin in Kettle Moraine State Park.  This trail system is probably the one I ride the most and was looking foward to racing some fast miles on the course.  Cale and I rode medeocarly the entire day.  Neither of us were really feeling on.  We took 2nd of 8 teams.  We did not get lapped.  But I did have probably the worst lap of my life.  I finished the first lap overall in first place, but I took 3 wrong turns and fell off my bike three times.  The dirt was still damp from some rain and the dew and I was just pushing the envelope as hard as i could. This ended up being way too hard for some of the turns and it really set a rhythem for me all day long.  And once I got out of the rhythem of falling off my bike, I was just too tired to really fight back and my lap times got longer and longer.  Overall though we did well and we are still leading the series.

All day though I had a really tough time finding a flow to the trail.  The fast sections were great, but then there would all of the sudden be a sharp turn and you had to slam on the brakes.  And all the rocks on the climbs made them killer.  This was the first time since i have started riding the rigid 29er that I wish I had gears and suspension.  !2 hours at Blue mound is the next race Cale and I are racing on July 7th.  I think i will be riding gears there.....

It was also nice to push myself, from a cold start for 50 minutes.  I am really gaining confidence in how my cyclocross season will turn out this year.  If I am super duper aggressive about making it to races, so far, without the western michigan schedule there are 20 races I can make.

Photo By: Cale
A 5:30 AM wake-up call on a race day is the last thing I really wanted, but I knew it was an inevitability.  Cale and I had everything organized the night before, so it was meerly packing the car and taking off.  So, we were off.  A quick 40 minute drive and we were hanging out under the pop-up Gunner already had up.  Cale and I registered, both for the day and for the series.  Pre-race meeting and we decide I will do the Lamond start and the first lap.  A shouted go, 50 yards of running, and a 19 1/2 minute five mile lap later, I am rolling through the start line giving Cale a high five.  I was not the first one into the single track, but I was the first one out.  It was an all out sprint for me for that first lap, but i turned the fastest time of the day.  Cale did his lap in good time and I did another sub-20 minute lap.  Cale went out for one more before we started doing 2 laps a piece before switching off.
We started the race strong and in first. That is how it went for the entire day.  I pulled a few sub 20 minute laps.  It was good.  Fast and flowing.  I have put this off too long for it to really be relevant anymore.
We both rode about 80 miles in the 12 hour time limit.  I fell a few times, but nothing major.  Lost both my water bottle due to shitty cages.....we won, thats really all, except that it was a blast!