Been a while, but let’s first take a look at what happened just a few days ago.
I raced downhill. This is Niseko, bottom of the Hirafu downhill trail that rolls down toward the beautiful Mt. Yotei. The race, last of the Hokkaido DH series events, was organized by DoRide and sponsored by Georide Japan, the distributor of Commencal bikes.
It’s kind of natural for my generation of riders to enjoy various different types of riding, including but not limited to downhill, cross country, trials, and street. This time, some rider friends of mine were talking about participating in this race, one of whom having been away from anything other than dirt and street riding for as long as myself, so next thing you know I was in. First time in like 15 years, aboard a matching 15-year-old bike.
There were 4 classes for the participants of the event: elite, novice, beginner, and ladies. Since comeback kids can’t go straight back to elite, I raced novice.
And I won. Yay!
The details of my run kind of sucked, played it too safe. Eight seconds behind the overall winner over the less-than-5-minute course. Well, the trail had been around for several years and yet I’d never ridden it before the day of the race, so it was maybe just fair. Anyway it calls for a revenge. Looks like I’m being pushed back up to the top level so it’s all clicked in.
Here is the prize for winning the novice class.
At least I can officially and proudly declare: I won the Commencal Cup.