Thursday morning Phil headed to do another shop visit while I watched the Olympics. When he returned we made a plan for pre riding the first day of courses. Unlike on race day, we drove to the courses to avoid a 10 mile bike path/road ride on practice day. From the parking lot we pedaled the short distance up to the start of stage 1, threw our knee pads on and checked out the course. Contrary to most of the enduro stages so far this year, this stage started out with a short descent into a decent sized climb. After the climb the course flattened out a bit with a bunch of LOOSE corners. The name of the game for race day would be: don't crash. After stage 1 Phil took the van over to stages 3 and 4 while I rode stage 2 over to meet him. Stage 2 was kind of a blur, climb, flat, descend, repeat. The trail eventually dumped you out on a two track and it was time to climb up to stage 3.
I think the best way to describe stage 3 is INSANELY SHORT! This was going to be a tough stage for me because it was less than 2 minutes long and had a bunch of rough road in it. Being so short I knew the times would all be fairly close together, meaning every little mistake I made race day would cost me. We transferred up to the start of stage 4 and ate a quick snack before heading down. Stage 4 was going to be a blast to race! Swoopy corners, short climbs, and blown out switch backs at the end! It was going to be a tough stage, but it was also going to be a fun stage.