The boys are back....

Well a whole winter's worth of training has been tested.... and proved to be worthwhile. We had our first O'Cup race on Sunday at Mansfield, and although the weather was perfect on Saturday.... it was far from perfect on Sunday.... 10 degrees, rain and wind. I also woke up with a sore throat that Luke decided to share with is daddy.... thanks bud. The trails at Mansfield always take the rain well, so there was on majoy wet spots but a lot of damp sand flying around. I didn't pre-ride (not worth spending 4hrs in the car) so I decided to take it easy on the first lap and let Rob Parniak ... who's always strong... lead it out. I know that Rob usually starts strong, so it was nice to have an escort through the trees. The lead group was dwindling after 1 lap, so i offered to lead for a while. Rob knows me well enough to realize that means "I'll lead for a little while with the throttle wide open".... so i got a bit of a gap and kept riding steadily. The course really suited me, with some nice tight singletrack, so good climbs and some really fast double track. I finished up with a gap of almost 2min, but there were still several Big Dogs that were missing from our group... so we'll see who shows up at Albion Hills. So now that the season has officially started... it's full speed ahead from here.... races around Ontario, a few in Quebec and even some in the US this year. Looking forward to it....