Minnesota State Championship Series

DULUTH -- Short recap of the annual Mont du Lac Sunday:

Great race. Except when it rained. Then it stunk.

That, I should say, was at least the consensus.

Some of you actually liked the way the Mont du Lac singletrack greased up with the afternoon rains that peppered the Comp and Expert races.

"I love it when it gets slick and greasy up there!" Comp rider Jeff Colbert told me after the race. "Me and the Zilla? We LOVE IT when it rains!"

(That would be Colbert and the "RichZilla," aka, Rich Omdahl, both of whom race for LCR. Colbert took 12th overall in the Comp Race. The Zilla took 17th).

And then there's Mr. Salsa, Maplelag's Jay Richards. He took second overall in Expert Sunday. His 15-year-old son Jake, passing Experts on the first lap, won the Comp.

After the race, Jay wrote on his blog, "the shot of rain showers along with nice weather [made] the day pretty much perfect for racing in my opinion."

OK, well, we mortal riders prefer crash-free and relatively dry conditions. That's why riders like Mike Minnetti just walked off the course early on. "Why ruin the whole season for just one race?" he asked.

Brendan Moore, who placed fourth in Expert, called the race simply "Mont du Sludge."

As for me, after my third crash in the muddy, slick, roller-coaster descents -- it was a dramatic head-first into a tree, most excellent, thank you very much -- I just slowed down and rode the trails for pleasure.

But let's rewind here for a minute.

The day started out, well, perfecto.

"If you were a Citizen or a Sport rider, you couldn't have asked for better weather," said Race Director Ross Fraboni. "It was cloudy, cool weather. And the trails were dry."

It couldn't have been more than 10 minutes after the start of the Comp/Expert race, though -- you know, after that quad-ripping and lung-busting opening climb -- that the rain began to fall.

Just up top, of course.

"We really didn't get hit down here at all," Fraboni said from the ski area's chalet. "But we saw the clouds over the hill and it just unleashed."

The rain quickly broke up the Expert field, putting an almost five-minute gap between Moore and Eric Oftedahl, who ultimately took fifth.

"It was a whole spectrum of weather," Fraboni said. "It really turned into a soupfest out there."
 
For a while anyway.

The rain actually seemed to come in waves. As in, midway through the first lap. Then midway through the second lap. Midway through the third lap.

You get the picture.

"The first lap was great -- until it started to rain," said Expert Matt Horner. "Then just when it started to dry and get tacky, it would start to rain again."

Horner also broke one of his cleats early on, which meant he rode with one foot unclipped for more than half the race.

But neither of us were about to DNF.

The way I figured: Well, first there's the whole pride thing. But it's also probably one of my favorite courses of the series, just because of its diversity. Great climbs, great wooded singletrack, and twisty, hair-raising descents that always deliver the goods.

It's seriously the kind of stuff you find out West. How can you beat that?

Plus, for most of us, there's the drive. While COGGS and Duluth area riders may get to enjoy these trails on a regular basis (Tuesday nights, anyway), those of us from the south rarely make it up this way.

Enjoy it while you can, I say.

And that's, obviously, what the winners did as well.

Next up? The roller coasters of Mount Kato.

Hang on.

Troy Melhus is a Twin Cities writer and an Expert rider for Peace Coffee Racing. He can be reached at tmelhus@mac.com.