SERC 5--Conyers, GA

Well the trip started off great.  The weather in Conyers was perfect.  It was in the 70's and the trail was dry and fast.  I have never ridden Conyers dry so I was really anxious to preride.  I rode with CycleYouth founder Andy and teammate Adam Cohen.  The first half of the course we flew through the trail and using Ethan Quehl's cornering technique that I learned at camp last year made the trail that much faster.  The downhills were smooth and the climbs seemed almost too easy.  The second half of the trail was on the granite section and IT WAS BUMPY!  I have only ridden over there once due to bad weather conditions and had to go slow.  So, this side was really new to me.  Andy took us off the course to ride some other sections of Conyers and there were some big climbs that hurt.  But with every big climb comes a big downhill!  After our ride with Andy I decided to do the first half again and I slowed it down a little to pay closer attention to some lines.  The next morning it started raining, then it started pouring.  I was hoping it was going to quit so the first wave could dry up the trail some but it just never quit raining.  When our wave started it had almost quit raining but the trail was already soaked.  Since I had more experience riding Conyers wet I wasn't too worried.  The whistle went off and immediately everything from my tires went straight to my eyes.  I had a hard time seeing where I was at but so did everyone else.  I didn't go into the woods where I wanted so I had some ground to make up.  I could see the leaders and was closing in on them.  I was going to try to catch them on a downhill section and released the brakes and started cruising after them.  BAM, I went down hard.  I went high on the corner and my wheels were out from under me before I knew it.  I slid down hill and ended up about 6 feet from my bike.  As I was running uphill back to my bike I realized my right knee had an issue.  I mounted back up and took off again.  I took off hard to try to catch back up with Adam who passed me during the crash.  I lost my confidence in the corners and that made it hard to catch him.  After the first lap I was on 9th place and had a lot of work to do to catch the leaders since the race was cut short by a lap.  On the second lap I started to gain my wet, muddy cornering confidence again and passed two people.  I started flowing the trail pretty good and I guess I got too confident again because I went down again.  Landed on the same knee again but this time the bike sled with me.  I once again mounted back up but never caught up to anyone.  I ended up 7th and covered in red Georgia clay.  This was not a good race for me but not every race can go as planned.  Congratulations to Carter Anderson for taking the win Simon Xhauflair on 4th, both of CycleYouth.  A big thank you goes out to LeRoy at LeRoy's Bikeworks for helping me fine tune my Niner RDO before the race and Allegheny Millwork for their support too.