MASS Team Relay Race Report

Seamus tearing up the first of his five laps

So here we are again welcoming in the 2011 race season with a good old fashioned team relay. Everyone from the Giant- Mid Atlantic MTB Team were all together for the first time at this fun event. The weather threatened the Mid Atlantic region with rain and snow, but luckily weather passed through the day before with a snow rain mix leaving us with a nice mild day to race in and a greasy race course to test our legs and our sweet new team issue Giant Anthem X's equipped with fresh Geax tires and X-Fusion suspension...Super Smooth!!!. We looked really sharp with our matching bikes, kits and Oakley's (that came just in time) and the Team tent in the pits.

The day Started off with a Le Mons start. Since I'm the new guy on the team an executive decision was made by Matt, Jordon and Martin to make me do the run. I found this out the night before while fueling for fun with Matt at Holy Guacamole. While midst conversation he slips the news that I would be running at the start (side note: I'm pretty sure Matt has a genetic code that allows him to eat a burrito half his body weight). I put no thought into it and proceeded to watch Matt devour his burrito. Lets just say that the run was not just a quick sprint for out bikes and off the the trails. It turns out that it was about the last 1/4 half of the course. I'm still sore from it and am glad for that little team initiation thanks guys. Everyone performed really well keeping our lead all race by a small margin over the junior teams and came out as the team with the most amount of laps all thanks to Martin powering through the last lap with 10 seconds to spare to tag me off for my 5th and final lap giving us 17 total. It still wasn't enough points to get us the big "W" due to handicap points the juniors had from the start. Either way were glad to see those kid thrilled to have beaten the "big boys". They're the future of our sport and to see them having grins and smiles out there is awesome. Check out our pictures with them:

Matt racing through the pit area at the end of the lap

Jordan corniering

Martin keeping warm between laps

So the Mid Atlantic racing campaign has officially started for us at GMA. Big thanks to Mike Kuhn for an awesome event and fun day and all our sponsors for making our team possible for 2011!!

Photo cred goes to Don @ http://singlespeeder.smugmug.com/Mountain-Biking-Events