Monday, April 14, 2008

The ground beneath is nothing more than your point of veiw

Got the go ahead with a new bike sponsor of the 2008 season. This year I'll be cruising around on a new Scott Scale tricked out with an XTR group, Fox fork, and some sweet Stan's wheels. Just picked up the frame today along with a bunch of clothing and some miscellaneos stuff. I threw the frame on the scale as soon as I got back to the house today and the read-out was 2.1 lbs, with a foot and a half of seat mast sticking out. Once I get it cut down to length it should be sub 2lbs. Can't wait for the rest of the parts to come in later this week, cause I'm pysched to build this thing up and ride it.






Fair Hill was also this week. Suprised at how many people showed up because no one really talked about it all month. The Elite feild was the most stacked feild I can remember in a local race. 40 Pro/SemiPro/superfast expert riders! That plus a sub-90 minute race made for a painful day in the hurt locker. Jeff Shalk, Harlan, Chris Beck, and Kyle got out to an early lead after a couple small incidents back in the pack slowed us down. Brandon and I cleared the feild and worked hard to bridge up to the leaders by the end of the first lap. We sort of dangled there for the next two laps. Chris flatted and the two of us moved into 4th and 5th. Starting the final lap, Harlan must have felt like the pace wasn't high enough already, and shot through the feed zone for the holeshot into the woods. Brandon and I were still worked from the efforts to get back on and couldn't go with this time so we cruised the rest of the lap together. Jeff won the sprint with Harlan, Kyle pinned down a third place, and Brandon got a little time on me in the last minutes of the race for 4th and I rolled in 5th. Very happy. These MASS races have gotten to be no joke the past 2 seasons. Almost every one of them now is more like a mini-NORBA national rather than a local race. The competition is super stiff week in and week out which makes for some really interesting racing. Looking at the starting lineup before the race, I realized that even a top-10 wasn't going to be garanteed with the qualitly of riders that showed up. Thats some sweet racing.

Also got to race the new wheelset this weekend. They are quick!. Stan's Olympic 347's, DT24o hubs and Stan's rotors come together for a superlight race wheel that should hold up for a long time. The best part are the rotors. 59 grams, what!?!
PS.- Just noticed that the new frame has a 1.5 headtube on it. Which means I could have run a lefty...

2 comments:

Matt said...

Aaron,

Congrats on the new bike and 5th place. The pace you guys were running looking insane! 27 minute first laps is crazy fast. That should be one really light race bike you got there.

-matt

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