The first race of the season took place in Granby Colorado with just under 600 high school kids competing in the Colorado High School Mountain Bike League. CAMBYR was among the 3 teams from Wyoming that took part in the race. 50+ teams competed and 42 of them were in the D2 (division 2 teams have less than 16 registered racers on their team).
It was a blast from start to finish!! 8 racers and 9 parents and former racers made up the team of CAMBYR. We took off Saturday morning and were able to pre-ride the fun course together. It was fun to talk strategy while riding the course with the kids. Spaghetti supper was amazing and most of the kids helped with camp cleanup :)
Sunday morning we woke up early to the soothing sounds of chainsaws! Everyone hopped right out of bed and began to eat pancakes made by the coaches and parents. Thank you to everyone who helped cook and the kids who helped clean. The camp was a blast. Lots of good jokes and games!
At 9am, Eric was the first to take off in the Varsity race. Over 40 kids on varsity lined up and Eric had the unlucky draw of being on 10th of 11 rows. He battled hard against some of the nations fastest youth through super fun single-track and high speed double track. Eric passed as many as he could and did awesome. He will get to line up a little higher in the field at Leadville.
At 11am, Kit-Kat took off in a field of 20+ Sophomore girls and had the race of her life!! She was placed towards the back of the pack and started picking riders off at the very start. Thirteen minutes into the race, she had already passed half of the field. On the second lap, she had bumped up to 9th place and managed to pass a couple more earning 7th place in her category! Kit-Kat rode very strong and took advantage of her fitness on the open pedaling section. Great job!
By 1am, the Sophomore boys were racing. Austin, Ben, Logan and Travis were spread out pretty far on the starting line with the randomly drawn position rule at the first event. Over 80 kids were in the D2 category and it was an epic battle for position throughout the race. Who could make it to the single track before anyone else??? Ben had a great starting spot and rode so smooth. He was able to ride near the front of the pack the whole race and earned a solid placing of 13th for the team. Logan was on fire his first lap and passed nearly half of the field. He was literally on the last row out of 20 rows. Great comeback Logan! Travis improved his time by minutes over last year despite crashing!! And Austin finished a race after a 15 minute bike fix that was needed due to a broken chain. Even though he was in last, he finished the race strong and happy.
Caelan and Cameron were the final two to line up at 3pm. The two lap race had these two excited and nervous for the first time racers. The 9th grade category was another huge group of fast racers. The start was pretty crazy with a huge crash. But the kids took off and rode a solid race with few crashes themselves. So happy for you two to compete and have fun at your first ever NICA race!!
We are excited to race again in Leadville in two weeks. Enjoy the photo's and see you at practice!
~Adam
