First win in my new class!

I'm stoked! Moved up from Singlespeed Sport class to Singlespeed Expert class this season in my local 3-month long "bragging rights" race series and I'm really happy with how last night's race turned out :)

Yesterday was race #2 in the Wednesday Night World Championships (aka Prairie City) and there was another large showing in Singlespeed Expert Class of about 27 or 28 racers.  This course was  bit longer than last week (I got 6th last week), but was set-up really really fast with some long high-speed downhill sections, and some really fun flowy twisty sections with rollers and berms to keep things flowing and interesting.  There was one “major” climb after the first downhill section though that defintely was taking a toll on the 3rd and 4th laps.   Had a good night despite a horrible start out of the gate and ended up capturing my first win in this class.  I'm super super stoked.  Here are some pics:

Start of the SS Expert Class.  Dan Tebbs, owner of a local bike shop called Victory Velo (blue jersey in the front) jumped out to an early lead that he held for most of the 1st lap. I got such a horrible start (messing with my pedal) that I don't think I'm even in this frame).

The rest of the SS Expert field off the start.  I’m kinda at the back of the pack in this pic (red & white jersey) and had to work my way up to the front:

 About halfway through Lap 1, clawed my way through the field to catch up to Dan....so we were 1 and 2 at this point. He's up front having just passed those two Expert class geared riders, I'm just not quite to the crest of the climb behind them.

 Caught Dan somewhere just before the end of lap #1, and then all of a sudden it was kind of lonely.  Although,  I kept looking over my shoulder from time to time because I knew that Dan is one super strong rider and he wasn’t letting up,  so I just kept on hammering.

My buddy Matt has been out on the course taking pictures this year and he’s getting some killer shots.  Dig the color in this one….somewhere on lap #3….

Through the S Turns on the last lap….this was a really fun section with some high banking turns.

And some last bit of traffic from other race categories toward the end….can’t wait until next week already.

1st place allowed me to snag 20 points toward the overall series championship which is huge because a couple of REALLY fast guys didn’t show up tonight (i.e. Dean Bailey, Phil Smith, etc), so every little bit helps because I’m sure there will be nights where I’m not feeling it or can’t make a race for whatever reason.  Going to be a fun 3 months!

Here’s my ride stats via MotionBased.com:
http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/7960152

I'm really stoked though because looking at the lap times and overall times of myself and everyone else who raced....I was faster than all of the Expert GEARED riders too.  Stoked!!! 

edit: oops, that last part isn't entirely true.  just checked the results again and I didn't beat the geared winner of the expert 16 - 25 class.