{"id":59,"date":"2011-09-20T23:16:59","date_gmt":"2011-09-20T23:16:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tjkopena.com\/blogs\/outdoors\/?p=59"},"modified":"2011-09-20T23:16:59","modified_gmt":"2011-09-20T23:16:59","slug":"eccc-mtb-2011-lehigh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tjkopena.com\/blogs\/outdoors\/2011\/09\/eccc-mtb-2011-lehigh\/","title":{"rendered":"ECCC MTB 2011: Lehigh"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The second week of ECCC MTB racing went down at Lehigh this past weekend. \u00a0A short recap is in the USAC Collegiate weekly wrap-up<\/a>; results are on the calendar<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In many ways this is one of my favorite weekends. \u00a0The proximity to my house—generally about 90 minutes to get there in the morning, 2–2.5 hours to get back depending on traffic—isn’t actually as big a motivator as you might think, though I certainly won’t complain.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Men's C XC starts into the woods.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Probably most important is that this is one of the few current MTB weekends I’ve actually raced at. \u00a0Almost all of the other races have come online since then or significantly changed. \u00a0For example, Highland<\/a> will make up a third of the season this year but, as far as I know, was still an abandoned, defunct ski mountain when I was racing. \u00a0A lot of this change has come about from different season dynamics. \u00a0Gravity is quite consciously more important and consistent now, and over time that’s changed the workable race venues quite a bit. \u00a0In terms of relating to the events as a rider and having a personal race history, Lehigh is probably my strongest connection, ironically together with Catamount, way the hell up in Burlington.<\/p>\n

Lehigh is also a really nice weekend as a conference director as it’s simple, reliable, and predictable. \u00a0No potential problems with mountain operators, no last minute changes or hidden fees, no nonsense. \u00a0The guys basically bribe the cops to let the shuttles run more or less unimpeded, the school signs off on us using the grounds, and away we go. \u00a0You know what each of the courses will be and it’s all so established by now, we could all show up and have some races with hardly any Lehigh riders around. \u00a0It’s the most reliable and least stressful of all the MTB races, so that also earns it a special place for me.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
"Isn't this great? I'm not freaking out about anything" "Crazytimes!!!"<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This year’s races were on the small side, but still solid. \u00a0It was good seeing Jesus Martinez (Columbia) again being challenged in the short track, this time by Rose Cameron (UNH) on his singlespeed. \u00a0We thought Rose did a notably good job selecting gearing for the course, but in the end just couldn’t ramp up the top end speed to track with Jesus on the finishing climb.<\/p>\n

I was also pleased that our timing equipment again proved its worth. \u00a0Almost all of the Men’s A downhillers finished within just a few seconds’ span both days. \u00a0The increased precision with the finishing gate definitely improved the quality of those results, and I look forward to adding a starting gate to really nail things down. \u00a0We again saw good performance from our units, missing just 3 reads over the course of maybe ~150 race run reads throughout the weekend.<\/p>\n

For me it was also great to see some old faces, notably the Millersville delegation of old heads like Greg and Andrew. \u00a0I thought it was pretty cool that a bunch of their guys made it a point to get together for the weekend and get in some ECCC MTB racing, either as usual or in the traditional Lehigh embedded alumni categories.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Andrew Webster (Millersville\/U Delaware) rocks out in the alumni short track.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

More photos from Greg Wesolowich (Millersville\/Kutztown) are in his Picasa\u00a0gallery<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The second week of ECCC MTB racing went down at Lehigh this past weekend. \u00a0A short recap is in the USAC Collegiate weekly wrap-up; results are on the calendar. In many ways this is one of my favorite weekends. \u00a0The proximity to my house—generally about 90 minutes to get there in the morning, 2–2.5 hours … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “ECCC MTB 2011: Lehigh”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[24,39,43,67],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eccc","category-mtb","tag-eccc-2","tag-lehigh","tag-mtb-2","tag-timing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tjkopena.com\/blogs\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tjkopena.com\/blogs\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tjkopena.com\/blogs\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tjkopena.com\/blogs\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tjkopena.com\/blogs\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tjkopena.com\/blogs\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tjkopena.com\/blogs\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tjkopena.com\/blogs\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tjkopena.com\/blogs\/outdoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}