October 12, 2020
Domnarski Farm Fall XC MTB race
Bucking the trends of this Covid season, after showing that he could still put on a safe race at his usual June annual event, Matt Domnarski doubled the treat by adding a second Fall edition of his XC MTB race. The ten of us pre-reg’d Cat1 Masters 50+ took the start line for two laps of the 10mile classic course, with Sam Morse from Corner Cycle off and away from the line for the Win, as pretty much expected. Tyler Munroe from Riverside Cycles and I (Thierry) got caught up in a bit of a tangle with dismounting racers on the brief rocky climb just a couple hundred yards into the lap, and over the first sustained ascent then descent of the lap Tyler worked his way up into 2nd, with me in 3rd though quite isolated from Tyler ahead and the rest of the field behind. Crossing the first narrow plank bridge over a creek bridge and into some sustained technical low-lying rocky singletrack, suddenly someone was coming up quickly on my wheel…Tyler, after a brief turn off-course now thundering back! At one of the subsequent narrow plank bridges, I bobbled climbing the rocks out while he passed by into 2nd. But on the Halfway Hill Tyler dismounted on the loose scrambly rock while I managed to maintain traction and get by, though Tyler would get the pass back on the post-climb descent. The same would happen on the final PowerLine climb and descent of the lap, with Tyler and me tight on his wheel closing out our first lap both sub-hour, spurred on by the head-to-head racing, this is the first I’ve been able to achieve sub-hour at DF in many years! While there would be no missed turns again on the second lap, the story would be the same with my pass climbing Halfway Hill and his pass back on the descent, though my subsequent pass on the final PowerLine ascent would this time go unanswered as I gave it all that was left in the tank for the balance of the climb as well as the descent to the finish, passing racers from fields going off earlier trying to put them behind as barriers for Tyler to have to pass as well and hopefully stay away…which so happily for me is indeed the way things played out! Though lining up in the same field countless times against Tyler not only at DF but also Hampshire 100 etc, this seems to be my first time finishing higher on the Results board…a great day on the bike, thanks so much Tyler for the fierce competition!