Burnin at the Bluffs

I finally participated in my first mountain bike race this weekend. Even though it is not your standard Norba race, the Burnin at the Bluffs was a good intro into mountain bike racing. I entered into the Burnin Virgin's category along with road teammate Darin Marlow and other Big Shark racer Mark Granneman. It was supposed to be a 12 hour race, but ours didn't last that long. Mark went first and he had three flats on the 13 mile course and had to walk almost 5 miles back to the start. I went second and had a great time. Bad thing was that I crashed on mile 2. I landed right on the same leg that had the road rash from the Gateway Cup and completely tore it up again. It hurt like hell, but I continued on getting a final time of 1hr and 23 minutes. My time on the single lap wasn't too shabby compared to the other times in the race. I had never been on the course going into it blind and am really happy with my performance. I had planned on doing 3 laps in the race, but decided to throw in the towl and get my wound taken care of. I found a ride home from a guy at Wash U. I quickly took down my tent, packed my bags and headed north. When I got home I cleaned the wound and put some tegderm on.
I had planned on having a great time after the race with my teammates and neighbor Carey, but thought the injury was a little more important. I had ridden down early in the morning with Carey leaving St. Louis at 4:45 am in order to make the team meeting at 7am in at Council Bluffs Lake Recreation Area. We missed at turn and got to the meeting a tad late.
I plan on doing some more mtn races in the future and will for sure do the Burnin at the Bluff again next year.
If you would like to see what my leg looks like, just scroll down a bit and look at the photos from the Gateway Cup.
Smell you later.