Mike Stock turned in his race report from last weekend's exploits @ Plattekill. Mike faired in the upper half of the racers in his class, and was less than a minute behind the top pro's times. Nice work dude! A couple of flicks for the reading impaired:
-"So, basically, you go fast through here."
-"And when you're tired of going fast, come up short on the gap and nearly blast your groceries apart on your seat."
Its that time of year again, downhill race season!!!! I headed to plattekill for the season opener, there was a ton of buzz around this race. It was the 2nd stop of the Pro GRT race series that is happening in the US this year and a lot of big world cup name's are actually racing it. This plattekill race was also a chance to get UCI points on the east coast before the World Champs in windham in august. The week up to the race i saw tons of helmet cam shots of the course, pictures, and i recognized the trail for the most part. I was super stoked, it was on the triple side, on a classic old trail that traverses the top, then dives down some chutes and just goes to a classic pkill drop.
We arrived to plattekill at 10am on saturday, set up our camp, registered and i found out for once there was actually practice times due to UCI rules. I got my gear ready, hoped on the lift and was off. AHHH it felt so good to be back at my home away from home. The trail started off on a brand new starting ramp, and headed down a classic trail into a new gap jump, which was prob only 3ft tall w/ 15ft gap, super fun, land it then into a lil berm turn to the single track the is super fast traversing across the top of the mountain. It is filled with a bunch of lil berms that you absolutly blast into and out of, over some lil 2ft double rock drops and into more single track high speed stuff.
The trail starts to head more straight downhill and gets back into tighter single track, it then comes into a tricky part of the course with a right hander into a area with an option of a 5ft drop or3ft drop into shale landing w/ right hander shale berm into a flat rock left hander with 3 rocks you had to skip on the top of the tips of, into a chute which at the bottom was a flat rock again about 3ft from the knuckle of the hill that lead out to the ski trail/access road. You had to gap it step down and suck it up, very sketchy cuz it was a long way down to the bottom if you clipped your rear and went OTB.
Once you crossed the ski trail/access road there was a left handed berm into a lil chute leading into some fast very rocky single track that lead to another large drop option, about 6ft, or left line of double 2ft drops or 3rd option of the 2ft drop to turn across a ski trail again.
Across the ski trail was another quick chute into more left/right handers w/ lil berms which was really nice to see at pkill! then another straight down chute, into a left hander rooty single track off camber with a lil step down gap, into more fun blasting single track into a right hand berm.
This is towards the bottom of the race course now back onto a ski trail quick 50yard sprint to a left hander berm into a classsic plattekill drop, broken tooth, which the landing was nicely updated w/ more dirt, then into a right hand berm, down more single track, out into the ski trail, full on sprint into the last wood section that was fast with slight curve, back to the ski trail sprint into the wall ride then crossing the finish line.
Saturday was an absolute BLAST, did a bunch of practice runs then had to wait again till 3pm to get more race runs in, so we explored all the old trails we loved there, just having a blast going down the shale steep chutes that platekill has to offer. Practice at was 3 till 6 and i got in about 4runs on the course. Cleaned up took the gear off and walked the course with miss jamie lee.Mickey of spooky bikes put together an old school DS race with gates. The mechanic from fox shox burned in the track with a dirt bike making nice lil berms. That was fun to watch, and then after a foot down competition at the base of the lift.
We all headed back to the camping area, grilled some burgers, went into town got ice cream, came back and watched a film the guys at voncooper racing were projecting on the side of their van. About 10pm i passed out because practice sunday was at 7am till 930am.. super early for pkill racing.
Woke up at like 2am with rain on the tent, i thought great! now its gonna be a slick ass pkill race, woke up at 630am to fog covered drizzling plattekill, classic.. i really didnt wanna ride in this because the day before was 70 and sunny. Got my gear together, finally got on the lift at 815am, and the sun was slowly poking out. I did my normal half asleep first run to wake up then 2nd run turned on the heat. Almost at the bottom i tried a small gap but slipped on some roots, crashed real hard and bent my seat in half with my tailbone/other sensitive parts.. said well that was enough for me, packed in practice and waited for my race run at 2pm.
By 11am the sun was out in full force and I found another seat and did some warm up runs around 1230pm on some easy trails so i wasn't totally asleep for the race run. I heard the pro qualifying times from saturday being around 2mins 48seconds was the fastest. I was hoping for a sub 4minute sub because they were world cup riders, some of them top 5guys in the world. So my race run came and it was a big class 28guys. It was cool having a real timing system with the 5second count down timer with beeps.
I blast outta the gate, hit the jump, came up a lil short, but kept my speed, started pedaling in spots i havent before, i tried a new line on the double drop i saw pro's doing which was sweet! i just kept telling myself, bryn did this w/ no brakes, let go let go let go. and i was BLASTING the top section into the big drop/chute area, i was so squirrely on the drop and turn after it, i put a foot down and got it back together into the chute. The rest of the run i felt like i was going way faster than before, i came up to the gap i bent my seat on and got lame and didnt gap it again playing it safe by rolling it.
I had a great rest of the run, always telling myself to keep off the damn brakes and pedaled my head off towards the end. I came across with a 3minute 23second time, the winning world cup rider time was 2minute 43second, I was SOOO stoked, less than 1minute behind the pro winning time, and not just local pro's but world cup big time pro from trek world racing, transition, giant bikes and few others!! I ended up 12th outta 28 in my class, so nothing awsome, but still such a great time for me and the track was even better than practice because of the rain then it dried out.
We wrapped up the day by doing a bunch of really fun runs with the guys from action sports showing them around the mountain then watched the pro men's final runs, which was mind blowing fast. We rolled down, packed it up and said bye to everyone. Such an amazing weekend and start to the downhill race season. I cannot wait for the next one, unfortunately it will not be until July 4th weekend, but have already gotten to another mountain, highland the following weekend. So great to be back!
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