On Sunday, May 28th, there was a bike race. On Monday, May 29th, there was a slog through sludge carrying mud encrusted bicycles. But for those of us sitting by and watching on the 28th, the racing in this made for TV event was fast, furious and entertaining.

There were a few guys with guts (both figuratively and literally) doing some truly amazing jumps on the course before the start of the Roost Master. I suspect that even a hack like me could have dropped them on a lap around the cross country course, but they sure could make a bike fly.

The Roost Master course had two short climbs (one quite steep), a section of dual slalom, and a fast downhill into a couple of jumps. One was a double jump that most or all of the men launched from, and a few of the women did. In a qualifying heat, Julie Furtado was rather hesitant hitting a double jump and nosedived into the second half of the jump and went over the bars. She came up waving to the crowd and proceeded to win the heat easily. In the finals she really duked it out with Allison Syodor and nipped her at the line.

Tomac and Tinker won their respective qualifying heats and were the only two really in contention for the win in the final. Tomac looked like he was really hurting (as he usually does), but suprisingly enough came around Tinker on the final steep climb to win the Roost going away. After his victory, Tomac cruised by on his cool down lap and was met by his wife who gave him a victory kiss and asked if he had fun. At this point, my friend and I realized we had been highschool classmates of his wife (Durango High, Class of '78). We thought about saying hello, but as she had been part of the cool ski racing crowd and we had been part of the nerdy-dweeb crowd, we just slunk away, pleased to have some faint connection to a bicycling god.

I'm not particularly concerned about the damage done to the trails by racing in this condition -- there's a strong cycling community in Durango that's willing to put in the effort to repair whatever damage was incurred and, frankly, it's not as if this area was particularly wild or virgin. I don't advocate riding in these conditions, but when you have a course that can take it, a promoter that will adapt to condtions (the course was altered because of the weather) and an organization that will make things right, why not?

I met up with and raced with my high school friend Eric Edstrom. Eric is an organic chemistry professor at the University of Montana and in his spare time is beating up on veteran sport racers. He's the guy with the huge bike in the photo (he's 6'7", I'm the normal sized guy in the T@I jersey) and has the leg strength you'd expect of someone his size. He took second in this race to a local who dusted him down the last slippery downhill. I ended up fifth, which pleased me to no end. I've seen some "official" results saying some guy got 1st in our categroy with a time almost 30 minutes better then the actual winner. Well, the results at the race sites didn't list him and they gave us the prizes for 2nd and 5th places so I figure it must be an error.

Hopefully, I can make it back next year and race on a dry course.