Survived a Coyote Attack

Well, I’ve been a little slacking on the updates here, but before I get too far into the hole I guess I should lay down what I’ve been up to recently.

The NM Off Road Series (NMORS) which is sanctioned under the USAC/NORBA umbrella had its kick-off event in the wonderful town of El Paso. TX.

What, you may ask? Texas isn’t New Mexico, and believe me, we KNOW that!!! But in the spirit of comraderie with it’s sister city of Las Cruses, the NMORS allowed the boys down there to put on a race in the series.

The event took place on March 30th and was called the Coyote Challenge. Well what a challenge it was. The course was setup on the trails at the Franklin Mountain Park just north of El Paso. It wound through 9.5 miles of beautiful desert landscape complete with arroyos, cactus, dry creek beds and ledgey canyon faces. It’s the kind of terrain that makes Southwestern Mountain Biking so enjoyable.

Now the Expert Class would be expected to do 3 laps around this little torture track. With the start being a little longer to spread folks out, it would come out to 30 miles more or less.
The terrain there is some really pretty foothills that run right up into the mountains but it is rocky. Most of the trail was littered with loose baby head rocks and it was tough to get any type of rhythm going. The climbs were loose and just wasted your legs if you went at them too hard. Bottom line is it was about the toughest 30 miles of racing I’ve ever done.

So how’d I do? Well I finished!!! And that is saying something. But to be honest I was what is called in race parlance the DFL Expert. DFL is an acronym for Dead Freakin’ Last and I will be the first to admit my performance wasn’t steller. As I commented to my teammates, I’m not sure I’m an Expert Level Racer yet, but I did complete an Expert Level Race.

Now for those not too familiar with USAC race catagories, understand that “Expert” class is one step below the Pros. “Sport” class did two laps out there and if you look at my split times here you’d see I would have finish 4th in the 50+ Sport class out of 12 racers.

So I am a decent “Sport” racer. But the bottom line is not many Sports want to race Expert because it is so grueling. My attitude is that which doesn’t kill ya just makes ya more ornery. So I’m racing Expert and loving it.

Now before you take this too deep to heart, understand that one of my mottos is that "half the battle is just showing up, and the other half is finishing." So even though I was slow compared to the other Experts, I gutted out the race and ended up “snagging” 2nd place points in the 50+ Expert Class. I was in effect on the podium.

How so? Well there were only 3 people racing 50+ Expert and although I was more than an hour behind the 1st place guy in my class, the other guy DNF’d. So hey, I rolled into second place in the overall points so far in the series.

Like I said, many times it isn’t the fastest rider that gets the prize. It’s the one who keeps the cranks turning, doesn’t do anything real stupid and works hard to finish. I have no illusions as to where my little run in the Expert class will end, but for now I have some point padding going into the next rounds, and if I keep showing up and keep finishing, ya never know how it will end up.

So don’t give up out there, even if you are DFL!!!