The race started on the Laguna Seca Raceway, it was cool to hear the smooth hum of the tires. One guy in front biffed on the pavement, and two more guys immediately slammed into him, ouch! But they got back up and continued. The trail was really crowded with all the racers from all the different groups, suffice it to say there was lots of cursing. Once everyone hit the singletrack, traffic just backed up. You couldn't go around because it was way too muddy, so you had to dismount and lug your bike around the slow people who wouldn't get off the trail. But then I got up to the top of the first climb and the downhill began. Now I may not be the best climber, I'm not even the best downhiller, but my downhilling skills are a damn sight better then my climbing skills! I hit a max speed of 46 MPH on this 2.5 miles of downhill. Unfortunately, there was a lot more climbing to do, I rode on. The race came to a point that I hadn't seen before; I guess we took a wrong turn on the practice run the day before. But I rolled with it and kept going. The next few miles were relatively uneventful, getting passed and passing the same people pretty much. Eventually I came to the kicker on the course, a long gradual uphill that seemed to go on forever. At this point I was pretty pooped and my legs began to cramp; that was very painful. After about an eternity, I finally made it up the hill, crossed over a bridge to another peak and started on the downhill. This was a short and brutal downhill with some interesting quirks to it. It had these two 3 foot drop offs, the second leading into a sharp right hand turn. What made these drop offs hard, was the fact the they were on a 40 degree slope. Now the trick to negotiating these is to put all your weight back and carry some speed, but that is a trick that not many people have mastered. The biggest crowds were gathered there, urging you on and making big oohs and aahs depending on whether a rider made it through or not. As I approached the first drop off I became hesitant, then I panicked and hit my brakes. Oh well, so I missed it, I hopped off my bike and portaged it down the slope. After that it was just a half a mile sprint to the finish, it was great; what a feeling of satisfaction.

After the race I met back up with my friends and we went out to go spend money. First we went to Kooka booth to haggle with the dealer, we got a great deal and before the day was out all of us ended up buying Kooka Kranks. Despite all of the great bargains, some of the dealers were not very nice people, yet there were some cool people there. We hooked up with one of Steve's friend who worked at Kestral. This guy used to work on the Human Powered Vehicle(HPV) at Cal Poly with Steve. This guy told us a lot about Kestral and some of the new stuff that they are coming out with. However, by far the best booth there was the Chris King booth. There was this woman there that was absolutely beautiful. She was about 5'5" with medium length blonde hair. she had this great personality that just seemed to enhance her beauty. I couldn help but stare when she tried sell me on a headset. In fact I was sold in heart beat, nuff said. We practically spent the whole day there talking Chris King himself and that woman.

Anyway, that was my entire race experience; the nervousness, the feeling of satisfaction, and the lure of the opposite sex. All in one weekend, damn.

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