1/10th Of A Second; The Ryan Nolan Story

US OPEN 08

Friday


Friday practice went pretty good the conditions were pretty slick. I was less muddy than last week but actually harder to ride because the rocks and roots were like ice for some reason. I still got about 10 Runs on the new bike though and felt pretty good about everything. ( I would have got more runs in but bending my crank and pedal took about 2 runs time to go to the Sram trailer and get it fixed.







Ryan's new DH rig, the TOMAC PRIMER











Saturday


Saturday the track was pretty dry with the exception of a few spots. It was much faster and more fun knowing you could pin just about everything with good traction. I did 3 practice runs on the track and walked and rode the few sections I felt slow in. My qualifying run went really smooth when I got to them bottom I realized it was the smoothest run I had ever had I did not take my foot off the pedal one time. This concerned me and with good reason because I missed qualifying by less than a tenth of a second. The worse part was is I held back some because I knew crashing would have been in instant non qualifying time. I wish I would have A: tried as hard as I could have which would have given me a qualifying time or B: tried as hard as I could have and crashed and had a better excuse why I did not qualify. There is always next year though and I learned a lot this weekend about what it is going to take to place where I want to so it was not a lost cause.