By: Jack Drew
The mountain biking team just concluded their state championship, in Glenwood Springs Colorado.
One senior on the state team is Austin Quillinan.
“State was in Glenwood Springs Colorado, none of the racers had ever raced on this course before, it was brand new,“ Quillinan said.
October 22 was the mountain biking team’s last official race day; this was the state meet.
This was a new course that no racer had raced on before, even the Colorado league had never used this course before.
It was a fresh course for every racer involved in state this year.
The course was about 4 miles with approximately 594 feet of elevation per lap.
This year’s state course was shorter than normal, the usual course size is about 6 miles, but there are many courses that are even longer than 6 miles.
The team arrives at the location a day before the actual meet that way they get a chance to pre-ride the course.
“There were 600 competitors and 160 in each race, so the races are split by age and gender,” Quillinan said.
All of these racers are split into 4 groups: varsity, junior varsity, sophomores, and freshman.
If the sophomores and freshmen are fast enough, they can petition to be in the more advanced groups.
Every single one of the races happens on the same day, so the list of times that they will be racing at is sent out the day before, that way the racers know when they need to be at the course and ready to race.
The state meet this year started at 9 am and went to 5 at night.
These times vary from course to course, so there is never a permanent when the racers will be going, the group could be racing first at one course and then last at another.
The usual state goes through two days but because Glenwood was expecting snow on the second day of the meet, they went through all of the racers in one day.
Unfortunately, the Laramie team only had 6 racers at state this year.
“The first wave of the competitors are the top 80, so the top 80 competitors go out in wave A” Quilinan said.
There are two waves in the races; the first race consists of the top 80 in the group.
Placements are decided by the number of points you have, points are given by how you did in the previous races or the previous years.
If you do all of the races you can also get bonus points.
Thomas McCoy is another senior on the team.
“We did ok this year but last year we crushed it,” Thomas McCoy said.
The team placed third in their division last year and this year they placed tenth.
The team was a lot smaller than last year, so the racers had to work a lot harder to get the placement they got.
Some of the other teams in the competition have 20-30 racers and the Laramie team this year had 6 at the state meet.