Right Bike, Wrong Course

Chuck-T "..bringing an atom bomb to a knife fight."










Chuck-T called me last night on his way home from the Cal State race. He said the course was much more 4X than it was DH, with the only rock garden being a man-made one at the top that was only a double-jump away from being non-existant. He was happy, yet sad at his 6th place finish. Happy he was so close to the podium, being one of only two guys on a full-blown gravity bike (the other DNF'd)....but sad that he did not have a XC bike on hand to ACTUALLY do the race on. It was very groomed, and was much closer to a slalom or 4X course. He had wished (upon seeing said course) he had a new TOMAC CARTEL
slalom bike, which was apparently much closer to what everyone else brought with them for this race. I must admit that after hearing what the course was like, it must have been a Herculean effort for Tabasco to pedal that TOMAC PRIMER to a near podium finish.










Sliding through a corner at Fontucky like M.C. Hammer with wrestling pants.







Thankfully, the rest of his races are in places like Fontucky, Tahoe, and Woodward West...oh, and Colorado/Utah!
Hopefully that will be the last of the non-DH downhill races! Great work Chucky, and I hope the rest of the XC team does great today. Have fun you gaggle of rejects!

Chris


******THIS JUST IN! T-MONEY'S RACE REPORT!*********************



Phew! Today was one heck of a race out at Elings Park in Santa Barbara. The course was loads of fun to ride, it had the layout of a giant slalom course. Out of the gate, it was a short pedaling section, followed by some burms and jumps, and small man made rock garden, and then it was nothing but tight burmed corners and jumps the whole way to the finish. This was THE course to bust out a hardtail or short travel mountain cross bike. Unfortunately, I don't yet have the resources to keep several bikes on hand, so I raced what I had in stock; my Tomac Primer. This turned out to be the equivalent of bringing an atom bomb to a knife fight... a fight in which I ended up just fragging myself. To put things in perspective, I had about a 20lbs weight DISadvantage over my competition (my Primer weighed in at almost 45lbs). Out of the riders that showed up to race Pro this weekend, only one other rider was on a fully equipped downhill bike... and he didnt even show up for his 2nd run! I ran two consistant runs, within about .4 seconds of each other (2:13:xx), but it simply wasnt fast enough to reach the podium (fastest Pro time of the day was a 2:04). I wound up in 6th place in the combined Pro/Semi-Pro field, missing the podium by one spot. I know I can do much better, and if I see Vegas Bob
at the next race in Elings Park race, I'm stealing his Tomac Carbide for about 15 minutes!












Tabasco at the Angel Fire MSC race two weeks ago.