Sanctioned: The Greenbrier Challenge Race Report

By Hebrew Cyclist

Sunday April 25th saw the Mid-Atlantic race scene converge in Maryland at Greenbrier State Park for the Greenbrier Challenge AMBC & Maryland State Championship XC race.  While Rich was at the Cohutta 100 racing to a strong finish, and Martin was wrapping up his road season with Penn State, Jordan and Matt made their way down for some good old fashioned XC bike gaming.

The weather was calling for thunderstorms during the race, but as we got through our warm-up and lined up at the start, mother nature was treating us well with mild temperatures and overcast skies.  24 Pros made it to the start line, and were all itching to have their day turn up roses as the countdown to the start neared zero.  A little rubbing at the start woke everyone up and we quickly made our way into the woods and up the first climb of the lap.  Both Matt and Jordan played it calm and waited for their opportunities on this climb, passing riders through the bunch-up and making their way to some clearer trails to latch onto the train.  While Matt kept it in cruise-control, steadily making his way over course, Jordan took some opportunities to make up ground before the final climb of the lap.

This course is classic, as it gets harder as the lap goes on and the final climb is a doozy, with some steeper grades climbing up over some light rock gardens (which were a little damp on race day) then finishing on a wicked fast and technical descent.  This year, the climb was the same, but the descent veered off before the end onto a new trail of loose rock and some fun twists, turns, and bumps, before dumping out onto the fire-road to take you back to the start/finish.  To do well here, a rider has to be on top of both his fitness and his technical skills.  As it turns out, we were all good on technical skills but a little lacking in the early season fitness.  Jordan took it to the limit for a top-5, but suffered leg cramps and fell back to finish 9th.  Matt continued to ride strong throughout the race, picking riders off steadily, but ran out of race in 11th.

Another strong outing for the Giant Mid-Atlantic Crew!  This weekend, look for us at the Michaux Maximus and the next MASS series race at Granogue.  Raffle tickets will more than likely make their way to Granogue, so don't forget to get yours if you're there!