Xterra Blackhawk

Xterra Blackhawk is the last Xterra race of the year in the region. That means all the point series races that are close will be more or less decided by this race. Derrick is in a close race in his age group and he'll need all the points he can get to beat Dean, Brian Parker and Peter Hanson for the 40-44 age group title.

I already locked up the 30-34 Midwest title so this race will be a warm up for the Xterra USA championship. The long-ish bike course and the long run will provide a good workout and the trails are fun.

Tim has been talking a lot lately of running a single chain ring up front for simplicity and decreassed weight. So I figured I'd modify an old XTR crank, take off my front shifter and derailleur and see how it works out in a race.

Here's how it looks:

The race went fairly well. I only swam twice in the last 2 months due to a shoulder injury, and it showed. I was about 3 minutes down on the leaders

I maintained my composure and came out hard on the bike. I didn't even miss my big ring or my granny ring and ended up with the top T1 and Bike split on the day. That includes taking 2 wrong turns on the bike course, so I guess that goes to show this single chainring set up just might work for racing.

I felt better on runs before, but this was a fairly decent effort. I ended up 3rd overall on the day.

Derrick had a pretty good race too. He nearly caught Eric Fernando on the bike but on the entire run he couldn't close the 20 second gap on him. Derrick ended up 2nd in his age group and capped a breakthrough Xterra season.

Comparing my race to the race I did here two years ago, I improved my bike time by about 6 minutes and my run by about 8 minutes. I feel pretty confident I'll do well going into the National Championship.

Podium: