August 8th - MSC Race, Snomass G3 - Practice Day

Amber and I both had Friday off so we packed up the bikes and the dogs on Thursday and headed over to Snomass for this weekends Mountain States Cup race. We would be able to get tent camping in Snomass from Friday in a soccer field but for Thursday night we would have to find another option so we found a nice camping spot near Independence Pass.

This race was a G3 format race and it would be our first time racing this format. I was not sure how it we would go as the normal format is a couple of days practice and then the race day where you do a single run and that time determines your standings. For Sol Vista all the practice runs we were able to do helped immensely with finding lines and then hitting them in the race run.

G3 format is different in that there are three different races over the weekend and you could win those individually but the overall was a cumulative time across all the races. It is like a multi-day stage event like they have in road racing. It was a little intimidating as we had never been to Snomass before and one of the DH tracks was the same as they used earlier in the season and by the sounds of it that track was pretty technical and caused quite a few problems in the beginner classes (i.e. what Amber and I are).

Weather was also going to play a part as it rained all night thursday night where we camped and when we arrived at Snomass on Friday it was very wet on the ground there as well.

There were three tracks for us to race and therefore practise. On Saturday we would be racing a new DH course in the morning that no-one had been able to ride for a few years and the Super-D course in the afternoon. The DH course was a fast course with the main technical sections just being in the form of high speed bumpy or rocky sections, there was also going to be plenty of time made or lost in the corners. The Super-D course was similar to the first DH course but with more pedalling and less intensive bumps and rocky sections.

We opted to start the day on the Super-D course as the first DH course was not open yet and the sunday DH course was pretty wet. We just did a casual run down the Super-D track on our big bikes to get a feel for how much climbing there was and where the tough spots were - there literally wasn't any climbing so this course was going to be well suited to either a big big or a 6 inch AM bike.

We took a run down the Sunday DH course as well and that was entirely ego destroying as it was slick and muddy and super crowded. On the two technical sections it was either a constant flow of high speed pro level riders or a constant clutter of bumbling crashing riders (such as Amber and I). We just did one run down it and switched to the Saturday DH track once it opened up.

The Saturday DH track was being ridden in every single run down so it's speed was getting higher every time. Amber and I were also getting our lines, particularly for the top section that we would run on both DH tracks.

I was very happy with how the first DH track felt but still had a couple of sections I needed to get a fast line for. Amber wasn't sure and the corners in some sections were still presenting issues for her. We were both hitting the jump in the lower section at good speed so things looked promising for our race run on saturday.