Got up around 5:30 (not my favorite thing to do) got dressed and headed off to Bobby’s house to ride down to the race with him. When we got there it was cold, probably about 45 degrees and I was pretty worried about being cold, since I hadn’t thought to check the weather before getting ready and didn’t have any warm clothes to wear (I will now always check the weather before a race moving forward). Fortunately about 30 minutes before the race the sun came out and it started getting warmer.
I felt pretty poor warming up, my heart rate was really high for what I was doing and when I did some accelerations they felt hard to do than they should have. I was a little worried but kept telling myself that my fitness was good and that I would be ok. Got a good start and was 4th heading into the woods. Felt like I was working pretty hard to stick with everyone, and since I knew I still had another 3+ hours. A couple guys were pushing off the front, and I didn’t think I’d be able to stick with that pace for another 3 hours so I hung back and rode with my teammate Chris Audet, being able to follow his lines and speed though the corners really helped since I hadn’t been on the mountain bike for about two weeks (the times I was going to ride it had been raining).
About 40 minutes into the race I started to feel better, both in terms of how I was feeling and my handling. From there on I felt pretty good until the last 45 minutes (but that was just because I was getting tired after 2+ hours of riding, but I was still able to feel like I was pushing and didn’t have to pedal easy or conserve. There were definitely some guys that had gone out way to hard and blew up badly and it was really reassuring to pass them, because from about 20 minutes into the race I had no idea where I was in terms of my class because the trail never really doubled back on itself so if someone was more than 30 seconds in front you probably weren’t going to see them.
I ended up 4th, which I was a little surprised by, and immediately after that pulled on my Swiftwick compression socks and had my Infinit recovery drink, both of which helped me feel better and not be too sore. Overall I was pretty happy about the race, it again showed me that I need to work on my longer intervals (a regular theme at this point): I felt like my endurance was good and I was able to really push hard on the short hills but on the longer sections I had a tougher time holding my hard efforts. On this course that’s not what you wanted to struggle with since there were a lot of long flat sections to really push.
I was really happy with how all my equipment worked. My Epic Evo 29er worked great, giving just enough give on the bumps and roots, but giving a great pedaling platform to pedal hard on the many pedaling sections of the course. My tires setup seemed to be pretty ideal (Fastrak2.0 on the front, and a Renegade 1.95), traction was really good even though it was a little wet and neither of those tire has a whole lot of tread. I definitely feel like any knobbier of a tire would have slowed me down though the fast sections than would have helped me though the corners. That being said I ran pretty low tire pressure 21 psi front/24 psi rear, so I get a little more grip out of my tires than people that like to run higher pressure. For my hydration/nutrition I used my Infinit long mountain bike mix in my wonderful Purist Watergate bottles (really how wonderful can a water bottle be? Actually pretty awesome, check out this review), one per lap and my Camelbak to supliment some extra water.
Special thanks to Riley Audet for doing a great job handing me bottles after the first and second lap, this allowed me to not have to carry water for the whole race.
I'll post race results when I can find them.
A few pictures courtesy of Wayne and Lindsay.
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