Tam strong at Fairfax Fat Tire Festival

by Den Satake

For you MOMMA'S boys (and girls) that missed yesterday's Tamarancho race I thought I would give you a quick write up on how the rest of us defended the home turf. Unlike the last couple of years the conditions were just about perfect, which means it was about 20 degrees cooler this year. What a difference! Alex MacSwain took 2nd in Sport 35+, Kevin McClure WON his division (sport 19 -34), Julia Violich took 4th of 15 in the MEN'S Pro/Expert Singlespeed (3rd woman overall just seconds behind Barb Howe) and I took 3rd overall behind Mark Weir and Roger Bartels and just seconds ahead of Shane Deal in a mixed Pro Expert
field.

After the rider's meeting where Chris Lang explained that the only passing in the first half of the course would be in the first half mile of slightly downhill fire road, the pro/expert field shot off the line with everyone wanting to be first heading into the split fire road (no-passing) section. Shady got a great jump (that would later come back to cost him) and got into the single track in 3rd behind Weir and Bartels. I went in 6th. Rob Anderson was a few guys further back but started charging through until he was on my wheel. I jumped into 5th at a slightly widened section and RA followed me through, then started verbally working on Shady to let the train through. Shady, having fought a bit too hard to get on the singletrack in good position was having a hard time finding a rhythm and pulled over to let 4th place, me then Rob through. Rob must have gotten a bit tangled up because he fell back for a while while I had some clear track.

On the climb up to Serpentine that starts the second section of the course I passed the guy in front of me and moved into 3rd where I stayed until the second time through the first singletrack section. Rob Anderson caught back up and passed me about halfway up, then Shady came back to within 5 to 10 seconds. For the next lap and a half I would see Shady about 30 to 40 feet from each switchback as I was riding out and he was heading in. Every time I thought I had put a bit of a gap on him, I would head into a switchback and see him on my way out. On the last lap I passed Rob with a flat tire as I was heading into the last "big" climb on up to Serpentine. Shady as always was a few seconds back. I hit the shallow end of the hill pretty hard but "rewarded" myself with the granny gear on the last steep pitch section before the singletrack. Shady, having practiced this hill in his middle ring, tried to jump the gap here and almost made it. However, I got to the singletrack first and seemed to put a few extra seconds on him so that I again had about 10 seconds heading into the last little climb out to the finish. Shady said he knew I had him at this point, but I wish he had told me. It would have made for a much more pleasant finish. Instead, I suffered all the way up the climb before looking back at the top and relaxing a bit on the cruise to the finish line. I ended up at 1:17 and 48 seconds I think, which is 35 minutes faster than the last time I did this race. Did we do 4 laps? Was the course longer? Was I that out of shape 2 years ago? Or does 20 degrees make that much of a difference?