It's official

The decision has been made to not contest the rest of the US National Endurance Mountain Bike Series. Robert Herriman, Alex Dolpp and myself had been debating all week whether the three of us would go to Colorado for next week's race but in the end it was a mutual decision not to go. It would be a lot of money plus vacation time, especially if you did not already have the time off reserved.

Part of me is disappointed since I currently sit in second place in the Master's 50+ class after the first two races and am fairly confident that I could probably finish in the top 3 overall, the other part of me says it is for the best, too much money just to race. I can say I withdrew to give the others a chance :-) I don't know if my legs would have been up to it anyway.

The concept of the national series is a good one but it will be interesting to see how many racers actually do the required number to qualify for year end awards. I think you will see a lot doing one or two that may be local but not the whole series. There may be some classes where the top five may be decided by those who can make the races, not necessarily the fastest. But that is true in a lot of series, if you just show up you have a chance at the overall win. I will admit that my overall win in the local series last year was due in some parts to going to more of the races than those who were faster than me. In this case the cost to play in the national series is too steep. I will say the guy leading my class has won the first two and is a top notch racer, he will probably win the series and deservingly so.

I hope next year the series will expand to include more races to choose from and the rules changed to allow more racers to have a chance at the overall awards. If so I plan on contesting the series. If not, I will still do some of them as I found that I really like the format.

So now I will focus on the local endurance series again, at least most of them are close and I will have some team members racing in them as well. I don't have much of a chance for a series awards so they will just become personal tests or just to have some fun.

Since I had the next two weeks off in case I was heading west I guess I can do a lot of riding instead. My younger son is still on his vacation next week and I may play some golf with him. I'm making him a new set of clubs (one of my former hobbies) and it will be interesting to see how they work for him. Plus there are a lot of things I probably should be doing around the house. But if the weather is nice it will be hard to resist riding. Hmm, I wonder if I could get in 1000 miles in a week?