Grinding for Six Hours

Yesterday David Bishop and I (Matt Williams) cruised down south to do some six hour racing outside of Charlotte. You can only do so many intervals and silly workouts before you need to do a race, so we teamed up to race to duo class at the Grind on the Greenway. David woke up in the morning to find one of his cables was frayed, so we got a late start. Then we got lost and couldn't find the start because I had messed up the directions. Eventually we found the race, about ten minutes before the start, which was about enough time for me to attach my number plate and put on a jersey and helmet. The course was 9.5 miles of sweet single track, super rooty, muddy, and twisty. An on the gas off the gas all day sorta thing. David and I were switching off laps, trying to get some good hard training in.






After two laps we were getting into our groove. We had a decent gap to the second placed team, but there were a couple of solo riders ahead of us. No good. I caught Erik on the third lap and past him for good, but Jeremy was rocking all day. After four laps he still had five or six minutes on us. We had the duo class locked up, but didn't want to get punked by a solo rider (way too competative for that). Finally, on lap five, David caught up to Jeremy. The rode the whole lap together, but Jeremy put in a last ditch attack and came through a few seconds ahead.




David passed the timing chip off to me and that was it. We both in super strong last laps to finish with eight (76 miles total). Mission accomplished. We got the win (final results to to the left), some sweet trophies and swag, some uber sweet single track riding, found some good little on the trail, and had a whole lot of fun. All in all a really good day.
There's no racing for a couple weeks, but stay tuned for some updates from the upcoming Serc Series races. This weekend proved that the form is there, so hopefully David and I can make something happen in the Sercs and US Cups this spring.


A couple of Photos of the Scene at the race. Laid back, fun, and well run. The Grind on the Greenway is an awesome race.