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Speed Lessons

I was fortunate to race in my very first downhill mountain bike race ever yesterday at Stevens Pass Bike Park. The NW Cup Finals was amazing, and I am sure I will muster a race report later.The Project529 team was out in full force, but the master class was given by our own Nate Marsh.

Sometimes you can learn by doing. Sometimes you can learn by following. But sometimes, to really understand the difference between great and good, you have to see things up close and personal. I stood up on the last part of the course to see the racers coming through some of the bermed corners, and to gauge their speed, body position, and use of braking.

To really understand the short time span in this photo, note the dog doesn’t even get a full cycle of wag, the guy on the far right barely gets a half step, and the woman next to him maybe a step and a half. Iverson is past you in the lane in that time span. 10 feet. Ichiro beats a throw to first. 15 feet. Nate closed down this Cat1 racer. 35 feet. They started 30 seconds apart by the way.

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Race Report–Cap Forest 50

The NW Epic Series hosted the 4th annual Cap Forest 50 down in Olympia, WA. This was my second attempt at the race, though my goals were somewhat different from last year. Last year was simply “can I do this?” Since most of this year was focused on triathlon training, I hadn’t spent nearly as much time on the mountain bike. Once I finished the Lake Stevens Half Ironman on July 21, my motivation fell through the floor. I basically took most of the last 5 weeks off, hoping that the hard 8 months of training would carry me through this 50 mile effort. For the most part it did.

Though I was only 10 minutes faster than last year (would have been closer to 18 minutes if I hadn’t missed a turn on course – more on that later), I was in much better shape as I crossed the line. I wasn’t fighting the bike, and according to Strava, I absolutely decimated my downhill segments compared to last year. So all of that is great news. I’m a bit bummed that, for the most part, the race season is over. A bit. I need a break. I still have the Tiger Mountain Enduro coming up in a month. My plan for that race is to have as many runs on Tiger between now then to really hone my downhill skills on the short travel bike.

My Maxxis tires worked very well in the conditions. I rode an Aspen up front on my SRAM Rise60, and a Crossmark on the rear. I love my Smith Pivlock V2s, but really want a yellow or orage lens for the variable light conditions we get out here. The Ignitor was the wrong lens for the conditions.

Since this is likely the last race report for the seasons, I figured I would do something fun. Here’s my Cap 50 by the letters.

A – Awesome. That’s all I can say about the organization of the NW Epic Series. I have competed at 4 of their races in the last 2 years and they really do have their stuff together. Huge support from volunteers, great sponsors, amazing on-course refueling, including mechanics at every aid station. Just awesome.

B – Ballz! The descents on the course are crazy. You know you are going to have fun when the race organizer says during the pre-race meeting “part of this is a bona fide downhill race course. IT’S OK TO WALK.” The course is fun, and I had a lot more fun this year than last year. My skills are up, but for most of the descent, all I could think about were some of my Project 529 team mates (Nate, VB, and Mark were front of mind) and how much fun they would be having on these 30+ minute downhill sections.

C – Cardio. I have a lot of thanks to give to my coach for the year. Ben Bigglestone of VO2MultiSport has done wonders for me. I have a long, long way to go to be competitive, but I could tell that I was so much more prepared for this race than I was last year, even if I did slack off most of the last month.

D – Dicks. I hate to be negative in this post, but man, there were so real dicks on the course. The nature of XC racing is that there are going to be inevitable stacks ups at the beginning of a race, especially with so much uphill at the front. What I don’t get are the two clowns that decided that they would hike a bike on anything resembling a steep climb. Worse, they wouldn’t get. the. hell. out. of. the. way. Seriously. Get off the trail and let everyone else by you. I get that you think you are racing, but you are holding everyone up, and they are all yelling at you. Worse was the guy behind me. I wish I had looked at your number plate. I almost punched you in the face. I was stopped. So was the guy in front of me, and the next 7 people. Why you decided to start commenting about how much you “hate rich assholes who buy carbon Specialized bikes and then can’t ride as fast as [you]” was beyond me. I don’t care that you think that “carbon doesn’t make you fast – hard work makes you fast.” I know you were talking about me. This went on for some time with various derogatory comments. This was the real gem: “The rear cassette on that bike costs $400. You know what I would do with $400? Feed my family.” My first instinct was to turn around and punch you, because I had had enough of your mouthing off. Then I settled down, and was about to turn around and say “you sound so intelligent, I am surprised you don’t make more money so that feeding your kids isn’t such a problem.” I decided not to bring his kids into this. In the end, I simply pulled over, and without even turning around, let him pass. You’re a dick. Riding with people like you makes people unhappy. It’s bad energy and I didn’t want to be around it. Dick.

E – Ejected! There’s nothing like crashing. Well, not unless you get ejected from your bike. According to the data, I was moving at about 14 mph. My pedal hit something. I flew through the air. Surprisingly, my high school Ju-Jitsu kicked in and I rolled out of the fall on the trail and came up standing. And completely confused about what happened. Oh well. I got thumbs up and a fist pound from some of the people behind me.

F – Frickin’ Wasps. Last year it was bees. This year there were wasps. The bees were out, but they left me alone. Sadly, the guy who tore through some brush kicked up a very angry mob of wasps. There were 6 of us riding together, and we counted at least 18 stings among us. I got one in the neck and on the back of my thigh. The leg shot still hurts 24 hours later. Grrr.

G – Gravel roads. If you want to line yourself up for some suffering, come out to Cap Forest. The 7 mile fireroad to the top sucks. But in that sweet suffering kind of way. Not nearly as steep as Tiger Mountain, it just goes on and on and on.

H – Hills. There are more than enough ups on this course for anyone. It makes for some great descents, but the total climbing was close to 6K feet. Tough day in the saddle.

I – Inches. There are parts of this course that are basically no different than riding skinnies. At high rates of speed. With turns. Most of the course was well cut and wide. Most. There were several segments where you really couldn’t see what was around the corner, and you could barely see the trail. My bike handling skills are suspect already. This course had plenty to make me nervous.

J – Jumps. I am sure this will eventually end in tears, but now that I know how to jump a bike, I look for them on the single tracks. That can lead to some interesting results. The tree I almost hit. The hair pin corner I all but overshot. The trail going off to the left that I didn’t see before being airborne. Yeah, tears are in my future.

K – Kids. There was a kid on course who was killing it. We climbed the second half of the fire road beast going stroke for stroke. Young Asian kid. Blue stripes on the jersey. If you read this, great job. I rode harder to keep up with you.

L – Long. 50 miles for mountain biking is long. This isn’t 50 miles of fire service roads. It’s got quite a bit of straight up single track. It’s a great place for riding here in the PacNW. We really should get out there more.

M – Missed Turn. There’s nothing greater than flying down a fire road toward the end of 50 mile race. You know you are close to the finish and you are hammering. You probably should be watching where you are going though. That cost me about 6-8 minutes. It took me a while to figure out I missed the turn, and then I had to pedal back UP the fire road. Ugh. Total suck. That said, if it wasn’t for the amazing course markings by the organizers, the lack of course markings may have gone unnoticed and who knows how long I would have ridden off course.

N – Near collision. Not sure who you were or what you were doing. You had a number plate on your bike. You were not in a 2 way traffic zone. If you had given up on the race, you should not have been going that fast going in the wrong direction. We almost collected each other. I am glad we both decided to dodge right. That was a GoPro moment if ever there was one.

O – Oh my goodness, that’s a tough race.

P – Proper trail markings. Refer to M.

Q – Queue. As stated above, stackups happened. For a race of this size and distance, I can only hope that the organizers will think about maybe trying wave starts with chip timing for next year.

R – Ride More. The 529 motto. I love the motto and have lived it this season. It was a great one.

S – Sasquatch! Around mile 47, I was trying to reel in another rider. Were hammering through the slightly downhill single track section. He went through a twisty section and I lost sight of him. What I saw scared the crap out of me. Bear in mind, at this point my mind was so completely addled by exhaustion. I was scope locked on the trail, and my attention to detail was vague at best. What I saw through the trees was a very large gray animal and some arms flailing about 8 feet off the ground. My brain said (and I am 100% serious about this): “that’s a fucking sasquatch!!” Turns out that it was a very angry man on a horse, and the horse had just reared up and almost kicked the other rider. I can laugh about it now. It sounds so ridiculous even telling the story. But for a short moment, I thought we had happened upon the great mystery of the pacific NW.

T –Team. I missed the rest of the 529 guys. I was the lone rider out there for this effort. Bummer. The upside was that there were 2 of them out there riding the downhill. Geo all but ran me over with his car, but I give him marks for sneaking up on me. Glad they stuck around for the beer garden.

U – Unbelievable. The fact that we are lucky enough to get to spend 5+ hours doing anything so incredibly selfish as riding around on bikes is ridiculous. Thank you to all of the series organizers, sponsors and volunteers.

V – Volunteers. Can’t say enough about them for the NW Epic Series crew. So helpful. So nice. So organized. Great job. Seriously, can’t say enough. You guys rocked it.

W – Wasps. WASPS!!!

X – Xylem. Definition – the woody part of plants. Applicability? I smacked into a few of these during the course of the day. One of which pitched me over the handlebars.

Y – Yowsa! There are some seriously high penalty corners on this race course. Super high penalty. At one point on a downhill section I was reeling in another rider when I decided I needed to take it easy as I was scaring myself. I got on his rear wheel and he asked if I wanted to pass. When I didn’t, he picked it up. And up. And up. He was moving around quite a bit. I was still under my limit, but was getting close to it. He suddenly stopped. I stopped, confused. He said “yowsa. I’m riding way too fast right now and you’re stressing me out being that close. You’re faster, let me see if I can follow you.” I appreciated the honestly. We both had a chuckle right there on the course.

Z – Zen. That’s where my mind goes when I am on a bike. Same with running, though not as nearly much. Not so much when I am swimming. That’s something for me to think on this off season.

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Race Report-NW Epic Series–Stottlemeyer

4 hours 12 minutes. Crossing the line last year in 4 hours and 12 minutes I knew I had to make a change. Sometime around March of last year I had decided I wanted to get my riding engine back, and that I was going to start racing again in earnest. My best training days were long since forgotten in a haze of child rearing. My plan last year was simple: ride more and I would get back to where I was.

Having made that decision last year, I signed up for a 30 mile race in the NW Epic series at Stottlemeyer. I figured, wrongly, that I would get back to my previous race shape in a couple of months. The calamity of youthful exuberance is funny because of inexperience. Those same errors made in your late 30s are far less so. I should have known better. I crossed the line in 4 hours and 12 minutes. The leader won in 2hr29min. Yeah, I was almost 2 hours off the lead.

During that race, there was a moment when I was struggling, and I mean really struggling, up a fire road climb when the 60 mile leader came through. He was on lap 4 to my lap 2. To repeat – finishing 60 miles before I finished 30. I remember that moment because Logan Wetzel, a name I would become all too familiar with in the coming year, went flying by me like I was standing still. I remember that moment very clearly because I let loose an expletive along the lines of “holy f@ck!” I must have surprised him, because he looked back over his shoulder, standing on the pedals, flying up the hill, and with a huge smile, and not a hint of irony, said simply “yeah!” Then he was gone.

It was that memory that stuck with me over the last 12 months. I really didn’t want to get passed that late into the 60 mile race. When I marked down Stottlemeyer on the calendar for this year, way back in December, I had a goal. Improve. It wasn’t very specific.

As I have been training with Ben at VO2Multisport these past 6 months, I have had moments where my bag o’ crap was getting in the way. He had already given me the gem “if you only look at your average pace, expect to have an average race” when I was whining about how my training pace looked so slow compared to what I had been doing in my late 20s and early 30s. He’s done his best to reassure me, but my neuroses continue to haunt me.

I pulled together a really good half marathon earlier in the season which built up some confidence. My XC trail riding has been improving to the point where I have been the top rider for my team for the last two races. That’s mostly due to Ben’s training and my engine. I think Nate had the best comment this weekend when he said “if you ever learn how to actually ride a bike, we’re all in trouble.” It was high praise from the king of awesome when it comes to going downhill fast. My technical riding skills need work – but it’s all fixable.

Stottlemeyer was the first of my big races for the season. I really wanted to do well, and as we got closer, I did set a goal. 3 hours and 30 minutes seemed like a reasonable target given my performance last year. I still haven’t had a monster great ride on a bike yet this season. Even when racing at Lord Hill, a course seemingly built for my particular talents, I performed just OK.

With the race just days away, I was very concerned about my training schedule for the half ironman, and what it would do to my legs. On Thurs night I had to execute what worked out to be a 90 minute hammerfest to get a gut check on my half-iron pacing. Riding around the pacNW for me has been humbling. I thought I had a big engine, but long climbs tend to cause me to go too hard too early, and the lactic acid just pools. I was, therefore, elated with the results from Thurs, as the ride was mostly on flat-ish roads (E. Lake Sammamish, for those interested). Here’s a segment cap from the Strava posting.

An average speed of 23.2 was way outside my expectations. And that was only part of the ride. I maintained around that pacing for the entire ride. The session was 4×12 at HIM pace, with rest, warmup and cool down thrown in. I felt great and all of the sudden started thinking maybe sub 3:30 at Stottlemeyer was possible. Not to let me rest, Ben had me run a half marathon on Friday morning before work. That too was done without killing my legs. The pace wasn’t a PR or anything, nor was it meant to, but to have run a solid pace over that distance and not have “dead legs” was great.

With all that as pre-amble, Saturday morning was upon us as most of the Project529 team members who were racing were gathered in the Edmonds Ferry line-up. It was going to be another gorgeous day of racing out on the Kitsap peninsula. We were all pretty excited. The fact that this distance was a first for Brian, Raman and Jun was also a bonus.

It goes without saying that most races will have a glitch or a problem. Mine surfaced early when, about 1 hour before the race, I made the horrifying realization that I had left my HR strap and riding computer at home. Given that all of my training had been to HR plans, this was a mini-disaster. The team tried to rally and find me a setup, but we couldn’t. Alex had a spare watch and strap, but the batteries in the watch were dead. I appreciated all of the effort, but I resigned myself to my own mistakes, and knew that I would have to ride on feel. Not the best plan.

I also made the change of mounting up my new SRAM Rise 60 front. Unfortunately, I made a small mistake when mounting my Maxxis Aspen on the front, and it didn’t bead correctly. Had it not been for Bryce at the FSA tent, I would have had a very, very short day. I thought my wheel was out of true from my quick warmup. He correctly diagnosed the problem, and fixed it for me. Great guy, and awesome to have such great volunteers on course.

This race was meant to be a rehearsal for my fueling and sodium strategy for the half-iron in 3 weeks time. I am still tweaking the formula to get little to no GI distress, and reduce the cramping. The Gu/water mix that worked reasonably well last weekend at Soaring Eagle was back in action, but this time I mounted the flask on the seat post. The location worked out MUCH better than last week, and I know I have solved that problem going forward.

When the gun went off, my strategy was simple. Ride with Raman, Brian and Alex through the first lap, and then press the issue. This strategy was in effect for about the first 45 minutes. The pace was slow, but that was more because of the riders that got in front of us when they red lined it to get forward, only to be sucking wind on the first few climbs of singletrack, and holding people up.

As the first lap was progressing, I had zero idea as to what my heart rate was. I am sure I was pestering Raman because I kept asking his, and the time, to ensure I was consuming my calories and not pressing too hard. I was feeling good, and we were cruising along. When we got to the first section of trail where the single track dumps out to the flat-out section, I pulled Raman along in my draft, but at some point he told me to take off. So I did. I loved that section of the trail because it’s not technical. It’s fast and flowy, and provides huge grins.

Deep into the first lap I caught up to Nate. I pulled up behind him as we got to the second long single track section and was ready to witness poetry. It’s hard enough to follow Nate when he’s on his Santa Cruz Nomad, but he just built up his Santa Cruz Tallboy LTc and was racing/riding for the first time this weekend. Nate on a 29er is bad. Nate on a lighter bike is even worse. My pacing blew through my comfort zone and into what I call “yikes” as I tried, very unsuccessfully, to follow him on the singletrack descents. My only saving grace was that as he would close down riders in front of him, they would wait until there were two riders behind them before letting us through. So went the inchworm of fear of my lap.

Somewhere in that part of the race, I lost the front and the rear. As I was sliding off the trail, I put power to the rear wheel and saved it, but my left knee smashed into the handlebars and the pain was intense. At one point I thought I was going to pull off and retire from the race, but I convinced myself the pain would subside (despite not even being able to stand on the pedals) once some more blood circulated. I was mostly right, in that I was able to box up the pain, but it’s still hurting two days later.

We eventually arrived at a fire road section and I asked Nate if he wanted a draft. He said “it’s a long race, and my pace is good. Go get ‘em.” So I clicked down a couple and took off.

The rest of the race was rather uneventful save one moment deep into the second lap when the 60 mile leaders came through. This time they were on lap 3, so I knew I was doing better than last year. Logan and the rest of that train were riding at a pace that made Nate look like a baby. Even today, as I write this, I am marveling at the pace. I tried to get on the back of the train as they passed me just as we dumped onto a fireroad. I figured I still felt strong, so why not? That lasted about 50 feet. Logan is my rabbit, and I continue to work to get faster. That group was inspiring.

I definitely started to feel some pain in the second lap, and the snap was out of my legs on some of the harder climbs. It might be that I was down on calories. I need to chat with Ben about that. The only thing that kept me really pushing the effort was a mantra as I attacked the singletrack. “Nate is behind you, and with every turn, he is closing you down. Move it.” I really did not want to get caught.

With the final little bit of goat track singletrack in front of me, and knowing that I was mere minutes from finishing, I was stocked at how good I really felt. The race had gone pretty well, despite not having a computer, HR monitor, or timing element. I felt mostly good, and not like I was pushing beyond the limits of my legs. As I popped out of the forest and into the finishing chute, I looked for a clock, but there was none. I crossed the finish line feeling great, and really happy. Truly happy.

It wasn’t until quite a bit later that I found out how I did. 3 hours 4 minutes. A full 1 hour and 8 minutes faster than last year. I know I could have gone faster earlier, and maybe arrived under 3 hours, but that just rolled off my back. In times past I might have dwelled on that, but in that moment, as I left the finishing area to quickly change and wait for the rest of the team, I was really, really happy with how the race went. There’s always next year for more improvement, but that was a monster chunk of time to take out.

Almost every 529 team member finished. Unfortunately Rob had to pull off after one lap with some back cramps. Both Raman and Brian came in under 3:30, which was their goal. Very happy for them. My genetic freak of a best friend showed up largely untrained, certainly not trained for this distance, and went faster than he did last year. It boggles the mind how strong Alex is. Jun also had a great day, finishing strong and just over 4 hours. Ty also took 30 minutes off his time from last year. Mike, also new to Stottlemeyer this year, put up a very impressive 3:28. As for Nate, he almost caught me, finishing just two minutes behind me, but 23 minutes faster than last year.

As I get ready for my next big test of the year, I am feeling better about my bike legs. I have no idea how I will react to the heat and humidity in Hawaii, and I am not sure how well the bike course will play to my riding skills/abilities, but I leave this first test with a pretty big grin on my face, and happy to know that I was way more prepared this year than I was for this race last year, which bodes well for the next test. The VO2Multisport plan continues to push my body to new records and beyond my goals.

My specific goal for the half? Sub 5:15. My super stretch A goal? Sub 5. There. I’ve finally said it out loud. My previous PR on a chip timed course is 5:44, at the Gulf Coast Tri, where I stomped at 2:39 bike, only to put up a 2:25 on the run. My last half iron was 6:38 at Buffalo Springs, a course that detonated my legs on the bike, and beat me into savage submission with the heat and climbs on the run.

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Race Report–Budu Racing–Soaring Eagle

With the sprint distance portion of my mountain bike racing season coming to a close, I was pretty excited to have two things happening. First, the race was at what amounts to my home course. I know the terrain, have ridden the course (most of it anyway) many times, and feel very comfortable there. Second, it was an incredibly beautiful day. Just about every race has been in cold and or wet weather. This was a day where there actually a risk of cramping due to heat.

With this being a home race, the Project 529 team was out in force. There was a healthy handful of yellow Santa Cruz bikes; more than I had seen at any race this season. The turnout overall for a Budu race seemed light, especially given the weather. However, it was Cinco de Mayo, so who knows.

I had a single plan for the race. I wanted to keep my heart rate under control, and work my nutrition plan ahead of the NW Epic race next weekend at Stottlemeyer and the half Ironman next month. My experimentation with nutrition this week was to pre-mix Gu and water in a flask, and consume my calories that way. I also wanted to work salt tablets into my race plan, as Hawaii will have heat and humidity which we don’t have here in the Northwest.

It’s never a good plan to introduce too many new things for a race, and I knew before the gun went off that I would likely have problems with how I stashed my bottle with the Gu/water mix. During my pre-ride, my knee hit the plastic holder which I had zip tied to my top tube, and I thought that there was a change the bottle would pop out during the race. I should have listened to that inner voice.

As the gun went off, I was pretty shocked to see Christian (“VB” as we call him) take off like a scalded cat. He was sitting in 4th or 5th position heading up the fire road. I knew that he wanted to drop into the downhill single track and let his downhill skills carry him forward, and I didn’t want to get in his way as he is leaps and bounds faster than I am downhill. The two guys between us were holding his pace, so I figured I would just settle in and let the race come to me. He’s fast, and I was white knuckling that section of the course. Following him was was without question the fastest I have ever gone through there.

As soon as we turned into what I will call the “goat track” section of the course, we caught some of the 50+ racers who went off in the start wave ahead of us. As we closed one of them down and were yelling for him to pull over, he pulled off to the right. He was nice enough to let VB go, and the two guys in front of me, but for some unknown reason he pulled back onto the trail in front of me. I collided with his frame and went over the handle bars into the weeds. I was…pissed. Looking back, I know how mad I must have appeared because as Alex went by me, he was shouting at me to settle down and collect myself.

I remounted and threw my plan out the window. That’s my biggest problem. Lack of rev limiter, and the red mist descends when I race. I got back on the bike and dropped the hammer to get back to VB. In short order, my knee knocked my Gu flask off my top tube and hit the ground. More swearing. To stop at that point would have been stupid, as we were still quite bunched up from the start. So to sum up, within 10 minutes, I have hit the ground and my nutrition is lost to the forest. Perfect.

I continued to hammer, but knew that I needed to settle down. I needed to let the race come to me. I slowed my thoughts down enough to consider that there was a chance that my flask would still be on the ground on lap 2. I had planned on a swig at the start of lap 2, so this would just be a 10 minute delay. Just as I was processing those thoughts, I passed Alex at a log pile crossing on which he put himself on the ground. Then we made the turn up the big climb. I was completely cotton-mouthed and my HR was 181. Exactly the opposite of where I wanted to be. So I settled into the climb and took on some water. I really tried to focus on getting my HR down and calming my mind, while at the same time allowing my engine to work as I knew it could.

I finally caught and passed VB and continued to move forward through the field. The first lap was a bit too fast for me, and I knew that if I was going to make it through all 15 miles of the race, I needed to cool my jets a bit.

As I started lap 2, I saw my family had arrived. There’s something really special about seeing your wife and kids cheering for you on the side of the course. It gives a bit of a boost to an otherwise weary body.

Lap 2 was pretty uneventful. As we hit the first uphill section, I was able to look behind me and see that VB had made up quite a bit of time on the downhill section. I didn’t want him to get around me, but knew that I had nothing for him when the trail goes down. However, he passed me when, as luck would have it, my Gu flask was on the side of the trail, intact, and I was able to stop, pick it up, take a swig, and pull at my jersey to get it into a pocket (under my camelback) so as not to risk losing it again. I almost immediately got past him again on a climb when he pulled over with something in his eye.

The back half of the lap was spent playing tag with a couple of riders. I was sandwiched in between a 50+ guy and someone in my age group. When I finally managed to get in front, the age group guy started stalking me. I could hear that he was close enough, and when I asked if he needed by, he just kept saying that he didn’t feel that ambitious. As we made the final turn up the fire road, I knew I had put time into him and didn’t see him again either.

With my Gu flask handy, I took my last swig, and my last salt pill, and still felt good. My sweat rate was high, but this was also the first 80+ degree day of the year, and certainly the warmest riding conditions I have seen since last year. I felt really good and decided it was time to really push on the last lap. Sadly, my body had other plans. Everything started to slow down. My tires felt like they were glued to the roots instead of going over them. I was making tired mistakes. My lines were not clean.

Even with my pace seemingly slowing, I was still closing down riders from the other classes. As we crested the final climb of the day, I knew that I was in good shape, and I really wanted to get the guy in front of me. In looking at the time sheets, he finished :58 in front me. From where we were on the course, I think I managed to get within 20 seconds, but every time I got close, he managed to find another gear and go faster. We accordianed like this for the last mile and a half, but he eventually put too much time into me. I made a mistake on one of the final turns, completely over cooking it, and knew my race with that guy was done. Then on the final turn, I almost dumped the bike, having put my foot down and only just managing to save it.

Overall, I had a good race. Despite my feelings that I was going much slower, it turns out I was faster on lap 3 than 2. I was the top rider from Project 529, which was a great feeling as well. The timesheets tell an interesting story. I was 29th overall in Sport class, which probably had 70-80 riders in total. I was 8th/14 in the 30-39 age group. Two minutes would have put me into 6th place. First through fifth was populated by the guys who, if you asked me, would be great if they were riding in the expert class. 1:08 to 1:12 was the time bracket for the top 5, with six minutes back to sixth place. However, our first place guy, at his pace, would have put him in last place for the expert class. Those guys are FAST.

From a nutrition stand point, I am not sure Gu is working for me. The last two race weekends, where I have gone exclusively Gu, have left me in GI distress for hours after the race. I need to talk to my coach about this. It’s possible that I am taking on too many calories, or not enough. I don’t know enough about nutrition to know what to do.

I also have learned a few more things about myself. I really, really need to get the rev limiter under control for these sprint distance races. The pace at the front is unyieldingly fast. At the first race at Dash Point, which was a shorter race overall by 17 minutes for the leaders, I was 17 minutes off the front. Soaring Eagle this weekend was roughly 1/3 longer in distance, and I was only 12 minutes off the front. I went from almost DFL to a top 10 finish. I’ll take that progress and build on it for next year.

I won’t be doing any more full lap pre-rides on day of race. Even though I rode the pre-ride much slower than race pace, that was still 40 minutes of hard-ish riding I probably don’t need to be doing. Next year I will get a better pre-race warmup routine.

That’s it for the short course mountain bike racing this year. Next weekend is the first of the epic distance races – 30 miles! It should be tons of fun, and I hope to improve on my placing last year, where I was 58th of 69 in the Mens open division, and 1h43m off the lead with a whopper of a time of 4:12:01. My race fitness this year far exceeds last year. The stretch goal for this year is 3hrs, with a realistic goal of 3:30.

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Race Day–Dash Point

I should have known what type of day it was going to be when I couldn’t find my wedding ring. I should have known what type of day it was going to be when my race day ritual was disrupted due to a lack of bread. I should have known what type of day it was going to be when I went over the handlebars 30 seconds into a first sighting lap on a course I had never seen.

Let’s back up.

I have been training incredibly hard for the last 2 1/2 months for this race season. While I am doing quite a few mountain bike races this year, my primary goals are to race in 2 half Ironman races this summer. About a year ago I entered my second ever short course XC mountain bike race. I raced in the beginner class. I got handled. I finished DFL in my age group. I sat at the start finish line at the end of lap 1 of 2 for what seemed like 5 minutes. During that time, all of my friends were yelling at me to continue. At that moment I made a decision. That decision was to finish the race. I also decided that I was going to work my tail off all summer so that I would be able to ride with the group I was riding with and not be sucking wind. It was a brutal realization of just how far out of fitness I had fallen since putting my triathlon racing hobby on hold while my wife and I tended to our 3 littles.

I spent the better part of last riding season flogging myself on the bike. From March to September, I rode 140 times, for a total distance of 1,750 miles, and 205 hours. I climbed over 102K feet, and burned 114K calories. When I started, I weight 192 pounds. By the end of the season in September, I was, oddly, about 182 pounds (I thought more would come off). The training paid off, however, and I was starting to get my riding engine back. I was making a name in my riding group as the guy who goes up hill fast.

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