Over the Hump Series

I should have done a write up on this a couple of months ago, but be thankful I'm getting around to it now. OC is very fortunate to have some passionate mountain bikers out there that are willing to start up a XC race series from scratch in our very own backyard. OTH (Over the Hump) came to life this summer on August 26th. The mindset behind the organizers was to put together a summer race series that would be held on a weekly basis during the middle of the week. I think it's a fantastic idea to be able to race for an hour after work. Irvine Lake is home to the series. The plan is to eventually make this an 8 race series for 2010, but 2009 just saw 2 races. The overall support and participation for those 2 events were awesome! I couldn't believe the amount of racers, family, friends, and vendors that came out to show their love for mountain biking. It really looks like that OTH is going to be successful in the future with their grassroots style racing.


I decided to up the ante and race in the Expert field for the 2 races. The race in August turned out to be brutally hot and super dusty after the start. The course itself seemed fairly tame during the pre-ride, but proved to be quite challenging to race on. The singletracks generally got bogged down from slower riders in the Beginner and Sport groups since all categories were on the course at the same time. That's ok and is part of racing. Not much you can do with crowd control when there is just over an hour of daylight and the race typically lasts around an hour or so. The Expert group did 4 laps of a 3.75 mile and 250ft ascent course. My first Expert experience really was no different from racing CAT2 this year. The only really difference was I could not battle it out with the leaders. My lap times were inconsistent and that needs to change come next season. I need to go fast every lap. I guess more training is in effort. I finished the first race in 19th place out of 33finishers with a time of 1:06 even. Kind of where I expected to be. The second race in September was a better race for me overall. I was able to knock off about 2 and a half minutes from the August race. I finished 19th out of 36 with a time of 1:03:32. I really enjoyed the 2 race series and I'm looking forward to it's expansion come next summer.