What is your race season looking like

[Notaskitrail]

Anyone going to do any races this year? any ideas of what races you will do this year?

I am planning on doing 3-4 races this year and I am waiting for the schedules to come out. If anyone knows of any race dates, please post.

Last year I went to races in Ipswich and Weymouth to check them out. This year I am going to enter those.

[dirtyjack]

I'm looking at a repeat of my usual suspects:

Massasoit Lung Opener
Weeping Willow (wish it were more singletrack and less fire road)
Domnarski's farm
Landmine
VT50

there's a mtb race in Weymouth?

[wgreaney]

new to the sport and want to try racing, any links for these events?

[Notaskitrail]

Sorry I meant Hingham-Landmine

Link- but not updated for this years' schedule

Home

[auntesther]

Without seeing the calendar and knowing for sure, but hoping to do:
Battle at Burlingam
Weeping Willow
Hodges Village Dam
Wompatuck
hopefully a few more scattered in between those over the summer. Target would be 6-8 races total.

[dirtyjack]

new to the sport and want to try racing, any links for these events?

and here's the VT50 site

[auntesther]

new to the sport and want to try racing, any links for these events?

Try Home, EFTA Eastern Fat Tire Association - Home and BikeReg.com - online cycling event registration . Should be some good info there. Bikereg.com is good in that it will link the event website ( if there is one) off their site....helpful for course maps and things like that.

[dirtdan]

For race info I always checkout bikereg.com to see what's happening.
Planning on weeping willow and wompatuck for sure and then whatever other ones fit into the schedule...

[dirtdan]

Does anyone have a preference to the Root 66 series or the EFTA/NECS series races? I'm going to do at least one race from each but I wanted to try and completely all/most of the races of one of the series...
Any thoughts, advantages/disadvantages of each?

[multitool]

efta seems to have more techy courses. root 66 courses seems to be more roadie like

[auntesther]

I have enjoyed races in both series that I have done...but one in EFTA favor is they seem more organized from my perspective.
Example: you go to the EFTA site and they regularly promote riders based on their results. I did a root66 race last year and the winner absolultely clobbered the field by a pretty large margin. Looking at prior results, this racer has downgraded into this class and had been winning pretty handily all season. Should have been upgraded but wasnt ( probably shlouldnt have been allowed to downgrade).

[justwanttoride]

efta seems to have more techy courses. root 66 courses seems to be more roadie like

uhm you have that backwards

[dirtdan]

Tough call on which series to "commit" to. I ride both Willowdale and Wompatuck a lot, and they are in EFTA and Root 66 respectively... I know when I did Landmine Classic last year I really liked that there weren't laps but instead one nice long course (for the 25 milers). In Willowdale you did laps which isn't as appealing to me... Any idea on which series has more "non lap" races? Thanks for all the help! I have some friends doing these races as well this year for the first time so I want to pick the right fit for us all.

[justwanttoride]

I have enjoyed races in both series that I have done...but one in EFTA favor is they seem more organized from my perspective.
Example: you go to the EFTA site and they regularly promote riders based on their results. I did a root66 race last year and the winner absolultely clobbered the field by a pretty large margin. Looking at prior results, this racer has downgraded into this class and had been winning pretty handily all season. Should have been upgraded but wasnt ( probably shlouldnt have been allowed to downgrade).

EFTA is an Independent series, they have there own rules and do upgrade riders once they've accumulated enough upgrade points. I think 2 last year.

Route 66 is sanctioned BY USA Cycling, so USA racing rules apply. They have a completely different upgrade structure. Check out the rule book online.

I have raced every race in both series the last 2 seasons and have found few "sandbaggers". Most choose to upgrade on there own.

[justwanttoride]

Tough call on which series to "commit" to. I ride both Willowdale and Wompatuck a lot, and they are in EFTA and Root 66 respectively... I know when I did Landmine Classic last year I really liked that there weren't laps but instead one nice long course (for the 25 milers). In Willowdale you did laps which isn't as appealing to me... Any idea on which series has more "non lap" races? Thanks for all the help! I have some friends doing these races as well this year for the first time so I want to pick the right fit for us all.

Unfortunately the Landmine coarse is the only single lap race in either series. The Treasure Valley Rally coarse is two 10 mile laps and the coarse is amazing!

[adumb]

i try to add one every year

last year was

massasoit lung opener
hodges village dam
landmine- really wish they did they marathon race a different day so i could do the xc and the marathon event
vt50

i plan on doing the nh100 and adding another xc race which will probably be one from the efta series to check out what they have going on.

[icycle]

The Treasure Valley Rally coarse is two 10 mile laps and the coarse is amazing!

Thanks for the kind words justwanttoride, we do a lot of work putting on the TVR and it's great to hear. Planning more new singletrack for 2013! Mark your calendars for Aug 25. The race will bring out your inner beast

[dirtdan]

Cool. I'll do Treasure Valley regardless of which series I commit to. I'm really looking forward to the season. It's a lot of fun riding the courses that the people who ride these trails so much map out for us.

[Yakfish]

Not sure which I will do this season. Last year was my first real season of racing and I enjoyed the sport/Cat 2 Masters races. I was mildly competitive, coming in mid-pack plus or minus a little. Hard to figure out which I will do since so much depends on the family activity schedule but I hope to do more, or different ones, than last year. I think I did 8 races, finishing with the 12 hours of Bradbury solo.

Hopefully the Root 66 schedule will be posted soon. I liked both series and mostly raced where I did not need to drive too far from eastern MA. For those I competed in I found the Treasure Valley Rally to be the most technically demanding, lots of rock garden stuff, did some good bleeding at that one. Glocester Grind had the most mud pits with rocks included in them, both of these are EFTA races. The most aerobically challenging for me and with some tough technical sections was Pat's Peak, a Root 66 race.

Other than those listed above I raced Massasoit, Willowdale, Hodges Village, and the Landmine marathon. Racing is kind of weird for me since while I am racing I frequently ask myself why the hell am I doing this but then immediately after all I can think about is planning for the next race.

[justwanttoride]

Thanks for the kind words justwanttoride, we do a lot of work putting on the TVR and it's great to hear. Planning more new singletrack for 2013! Mark your calendars for Aug 25. The race will bring out your inner beast

Already had it on the calendar! Looking forward to the new trails too.