Phantom HS Hollister, CA

Nothing beats a great weekend at the races when the weather is perfect and riding conditions are even better.

This past weekend was exactly that at Hollister’s “private upper ranch”, the Grand Prix track. It was Round 6 of 13 of the D36 (nor-cal) Spring Cross Country Series. This place sees about 4 weekends a year of Cross country racing which always makes for some awesome riding.

There is a perfectly groomed long MX track on the infield of the ranch and the hill are full of little, tight goat trail style single track, mixed with some very fast hard packed fire roads. This years A/B race was about 10 miles in length, making for about 25 – 27 min laps. Because of the epic conditions… My wife, Kelly decided to partake this weekend too and raced on Saturday in the beginner women class, which runs for about a hour on an abbreviated course. She got a 3rd place start and held off the pack until a pretty nice sized fall caused the bars to get misaligned with the front wheel, so she had to finish the lap like that, make a pit, we tweaked it straight again and got her back out to finish up, she ended up about 10th out of 18 which wasn’t too bad all and all.

I raced on Sunday AM and ended up getting 5 laps in, which puts the total time around 2.5 hours. Got an awesome 2nd place start out of 24 guys on the shotgun start, rode in 2nd place for the first hour and stayed about 20 seconds behind the leader. I needed to pit for fresh goggles and took a small amount of gas too since I was there, and at that time 3rd sneaked by me into 2nd and I was in a tough battle for 3/4th that this point. After a good race with zero falls, and all I could give, I walked away with a 4th place trophy about only 1 min behind 2nd place (1st got a full other lap in). The decision to pit may have been the deciding factor, but I needed new goggles and it happens like that sometimes…

This 4th-place finish should put me within 1 point of advancing to the “A class”. We tend to see about 30+ entries per race in the B-vet class, but I think the St. Patty’s day celebrations may have gotten the best of a dozen or so of the regulars… a 9am race is a hard to run with a hangover!!! The more the entries, the more the advancement points if you trophy.

My goal this year was to advance by June and by the looks, I’m well on my way to making it sooner…!!! Thanks to all the sponsors that help make this happen:

• DH Cycles (local KTM dealer)
• Durban Racing
• IMS Racing
• FMF, Renthal
• Pro-Wheel racing
• Utopia Optics
• Cycra
• N-Style
• No-Toil
• RedBull
• Cruz Tools
• Pivot Works
• S.U.S.inc
• Garvey (and my Wife)

Thanks to the killer Pit Crew this weekend… Durban Racing was out to support despite the “Irish Car-bombs” the night before!!! … Al, Steve, Nick, Kelly and my Parents…

Cheers’ and Happy St. Patty’s day!!

Enjoy!