Battle at Burke Farm

Today I raced the Battle at Burke Farm MTB race. It is the seventh race of the 2008 Virginia Off Road Series. I raced the Beginner men 35+ category. There were eight racers in my category and I believe seven in the beginner men 34 and under category. The race was held in Culpeper, VA on the Burke Farm, hence the name. Konrad Heller, the race promoter who runs Fred Events and also promoted the Rappahannock Ridge Rumble (RRR), told me that the Burke Farm was not as difficult as RRR and less hilly. So, my goal for today's race was to ride fast and earn enough points to lock up the 2008 VORS beginner men's series. BTW I only needed 38 points to lock it up unless of course they have some silly rule that the last race counts double or something.

I decided to do what I did at RRR and get to the race early to pre-ride the course since I had never ridden there. I got to the venue at 7:50 and had to wait to register. A guy, Len Parker, who I parked next to was getting ready to do a pre-ride and asked if he could tag along with me since this was his very first MTB race. I said sure and we headed out for an easy pre-ride a little after 8:00 a.m. After maybe a half mile of open field trails we headed into the woods. There were rocks and roots and dips and creeks right from the start. There was one good rock garden on a descent that was somewhat tricky but not too bad. After about three and a half miles of singletrack trail we got back to the field trails for almost two miles to the finish. Len, who didn't have clip-in pedals struggled on all the climbs and then said that he had pulled a muscle in his back, so he told me to go on without him. I ended up finishing my pre-ride in about fifty minutes giving me an hour or so to chill waiting for the ten o'clock start. Len rolled in a few minutes behind me and decided to not race because his back was hurting.

The race started almost exactly at 10. That's when the under 34's went and we started a minute later. The start was on one of the field trails and they were fairly narrow for a race start. When it was our turn I went straight to the front in the middle and noticed that no one was moving up next to me. When Konrad said go, I took off and looked back quickly after abut .1 miles and saw no one close to me. I decided that I would not push too hard because an eighth place finish would suffice for the points so I didn't want to crash out and get nothing. It wasn't long before I started picking off the under 34's. I caught the last one after about fifteen minutes. After I got by him I just tried to ride hard and steady. Sure enough, I was the first to cross the finish line in about 37 minutes. The second place guy who was also 35+ was about three minutes behind me. So being first overall got 100 points in the VORS series and with one race to go my lead is 167 points. Mission accomplished! So instead of riding the Twisted Tire Fall Cup I may do the Tour de Canal, a weekend ride along the C&O canal trail from Cumberland to DC which is an Alzheimer's fund raiser.