Midwest Fat Tire Series - Smithville Lake, Mo

Pretty small turnout even with the perfect weather. Everybody must already be on Summer holiday or something. Course got about 1" of rain on Saturday, but was surprisingly in great shape. Only a few spots of actually mud that didn't pose any problems, but plenty of spots that were greasy and could very quickly have your bike pointed in the opposite direction. Only 3 of us older Vet Experts and just 1 younger Open Expert. I really like the course and it suits me perfectly so I made the holeshot stick and immediately started to drive the pace and get the others off my wheel. The 1 and only Open Expert, John Shottler, stayed on my wheel for the first half of the first lap. He had the fastest overall time on this course last year so I knew he was capable. This course is almost entirely big-ring-able, so I used that to my advantage and ripped up all of the very-gradual climbs and dropped down the tricky twisty descents quick enough to forge a gap. The 2nd half of the 10-mile look gets noticably more technical and rockier and that played into my favor. I kept it in the 46 and increased the gap heading into lap 2. The heat of the day was just starting to hit so that 2nd lap was a bit slower but I kept a good rythem and never got into difficulty and came in with the fastest overall time for the day.