The 2011 Mohican 100 course was looking great with nice weather the week before the race and into race day it was best conditions I’ve seen for this venue. The start of the Mohican is always a hard one with sprint out of main street Loudonville straight into a steep climb at full effort. This year I felt great from the start and was able to jump to the front of the pack into the first single track section. This is a good place to be on this course because of several short steep climbs early in the race cause bottlenecks for the main pack. I jumped into the lead to stay out of any trouble in the single track and set the pace with Brandon Draugelis through the first 30 miles of single track. The high pace shed all but 5 riders, myself, Brandon, Jeff Schalk, Michael Simonson and Christian Tanguy (winner of the first two 2011 NUE races). Our group worked together well the first 55 miles, then I started to really feel the hard work I had done early! Jeff and Michael were able to pull away from everyone and I dropped off the back from all 4 riders.
The day was really heating up at this point and even hit 92 degrees, far hotter than I’ve ridden in all year! I was in a bad way for about an hour, but I started to feel better towards the end and was able to hammer the final 10 miles of single track to hold on to 5th place. I’m very pleased with the result and I’m feeling the best I’ve ever felt for this time of year. I still have about a month or so to really hit my stride but I think it’s going to be a great season!