This is what I imagine we all looked like
Great news to report from this weekend, the season opener lived up to and surpassed its namesake by being entirely epic. NU Cycling hasn’t hosted a season opener race that I can remember, but we handled the challenges pretty well. The short 90 mile, interstate drive Friday night was accomplished in a less than brisk 2.5 hours, but we were kindly greeted by starry skies and the promise or great racing to come. The weather was absolutely perfect when we woke up bright and early Saturday morning at Highland Mountain Bike Park. With NU Cycling running the show for registration, every rider had a number plate and was registered for their events with plenty of time to spare before the first race. The weekend started with a nice 3.5 mile loop of freshly cut XC trails specially built for the ECCC race. NU faired pretty well with 2 top 10 results in both C and B categories. Now we just need someone to upgrade to A… Dual Slalom was on the tried and true course that Highland has been using for the past few years. The track was in great shape, and the long steep runs made for awesome racing. New for this year, the ECCC has acquired laser timing gates so results were super accurate, and all the racing was completed in record time. Sophomore Pete McNulty led the men’s A class and won the finals heat by 0.2 seconds. New comer Stefan Gottschalk killed it in his first ever slalom race by handily dominating the men’s C field. Another newbie Rich Crowley was absolutely shredding the course in practice, but an over the bars crash in quali’s kept him out of the running. Both new guys showed some serious bike skills, and I hope that’s a sign of things to come from all our young guns. Saturday night was another gorgeous moonlight night, and our campfire of wet branches and old pallets was roaring for most of the night.
Sunday morning starting with the ECCC’s most interesting short track course. A nice fire road climb lead riders to a burmed up decent with some small table top jumps. Roadie turned XC expert for the weekend, Hughes Burridge, came out with a solid 3rd place in the men’s B field. Downhill in the afternoon turned out to be a pretty gnarly affair. A summer of heavy rainstorms capped off with Hurricane Irene really put a beating into the DH track. A lot of the soil had been washed away leaving slick roots and rocks all the way down the course. On what is sure to be one of the toughest courses of the season, Nik Patalano came down in 5th place for men’s A, just a couple seconds back from the top spot. Stefan had a pretty rough track to start his DH racing career, but from what I saw of him in practice, he’ll have no problem taking over the Men’s C field this year. So with 1 race down and 5 to go, NU Cycling came away with a pretty solid looking group of new riders, and a bright future for the rest of the season. Stay tuned for the report from Lehigh next week!