MEANWHILE, BACK AT NATIONALS.

Irmiger leads out the first climb, which was a crusher.

It was more devestation this weekend from JHK and his wife Heather Irmiger as they both took home National Mountain Biking XC Championships right here in our backyard in Sol Vista Resort in Granby, Colorado. The Pro fields did an "abbreviated" lap several time to make the race more spectator friendly, while the rest of "us" did longer laps which had sections of rocky technical climbing which the pros did not do. I did not think this made much sense but that was the program. JHK battled with Todd Wells just as he did at the Teva Games this year in Vail, but when Wells lost a crank arm late in the race JHK was free and clear for the victory by OVER SIX MINUTES.

The course;

Racers were greeted with a stiff climb right out of the box which immediately put you in the RED bad place, then the race was on. Friday's racers had a nine mile lap which included plenty of techy ascending on rocky, windy singletrack which required plenty of power to navigate. The majority of the descending was super loose, dusty, rutty singletrack which required a HIGH level of concentration while remaining loose and relaxed, it was worthy and super fun as well. "Patriot" was the lower part of the descent and was crazy loose, steep, twisty and had a spectator friendly carnage steep, loose pitch which I personally provided entertainment on when I piled it into the padded tree on riders left, much to the cheers of the crowd, lap two was better, just requiring a quick dab at the bottom to make the hard left hander at the bottom of the pitch. For me personally, this was not "the" race I trained for all season, but I hoped to do well. First lap was great and I finished lap one in a battle for second, lap two the lights went out and four more stronger guys got me placing me 6th at races end. I was happy with that. Robert Stanley had a great race and won our Cat by nearly five minutes, and all though I have beat Robert before, today was his day and his championship...job well done.