East Macon - Nice Place to ride

Today I rode out at East Macon for the first time, as I was heading out there I was wondering if I needed to buy pepper spray for the dogs or get a club for my steering wheel based off the previous info I had read and the mental picture I had painted. However as I arrived out there I found instead a great trail and from my first impression a fairly nice park complex - amazing the difference between reality and assumptions! Anyway I arrived out there at about 8:30 am and found someone (Dean) had already headed out on the trail. So based off the directions I had received from Jeff I headed off down the trail and started riding not long after I came across Dean raking a section of the trail and talked to him for a bit and got some clarification on which way to go and headed off again(feeling a little guilty about not having a rake to help him out but not for long!) The trail was in great condition and even the sandy sections where fairly moderate. From what I hear they are a bear when they are dry(speaking of bears I will probably be switching to the 2.25 TrailBears for the race just for a little better handling of aforementioned sand). After the first lap I found Dean at his car putting up his rake and ready to ride another rider( didn't get her name) was there to do some trail maintenance as well and a third rider Joey also showed up( drove all the way from Atlanta!). So the three of us set off to do the actual race course, BMX track and all in the race direction Dean led on what I assumed was a standard hardtail cross country bike until we started discussing bikes at which point he mentioned that the beast he was riding was a 40lbs BMX downhill monster (wait a minute I was just huffing and puffing keeping up with him going up a hill on my 27.5lbs ETSX-30?!) we ran that lap pretty good pace Joey was doing great considering he had just been recuperating from a broken leg, knee and.....Well just one wicked injury. We decided to do one more after that and I led out for that lap and decided to see what I could push for a time on my third don't know for sure what it was but Dean said I did pretty good so hopefully I can hold my own for my first beginner race. Overall the downhills where fast with good lines to get through, some good technical climbs with tight lines around the roots and the sand was manageable, there was one tight left turn at the bottom of a gradual downhill that I will need to work on my exit thru it to keep some speed up but overall a good fast trail. Looking to ride it at least once a week until the race if not more so if your out there I will see ya on the trail!