In 1998, my wife brough home this little sheet of paper she found at a grocery store in Buffalo. The Raccoon Rally mountain bike festival! Ohh, that looks like fun. She says "Why don't you do this?" She kicks herself for that move almost every weekend now.
The rest is history. I did my first mountain bike race. 23 miles up this mountain with absolutly bo training. I sucked, but I finished and I was hooked. It took me almost 3 hours. I returned in 99, and decided I needed a bike with some suspension. I didn't get back again in 2003, I raced sport and felt I did ok, but was still a mid pack racer. In 2004 they added a road race, and that made the weekend complete because I had just gotten a road bke. That was also when I decided to race expert becasue I had a really good race, and was still obliterated by guys that raced at the same pace as the expert field. If I'm racing against experts, I'll just race the expert class.
Since then, I haven't ridden my mountain bike much. I've been hooked on cyclocross, and the road rides start at the end of my driveway, not a 30-90 minute drive away. Drive for 1 to 3 hours to ride for an hour doesn't make sense to me.
So once a year (give or take) I take a weekend, drive for 6 hours to do about 5 hours of racing. This is actually the first time I've ridden my mountain bike with any intensity in over a year. Add to that the effort of the road race, and I've got NO expectations for this race except to have fun. Well, my idea of fun is still to compete, ride fast, but I don't really expect to get any kind of result.
The expert field is about 50 riders, I know I can beat some of these guys. I also know I won't see the front for very long. Dave is riding the expert race also, and he was able to relax for half the road race. He was really disappointed about it, but his legs should be happy today.
I've got another buddy on the trail. TrainWreck has shown up to the rally, and has volunteered to marshal the race. He told me he'd cheer me on, so now I have to do something good.
We start on the grass directly to a gravel road leading to the woods. Sure enough a gap opens on the road, and half the field rolls away. I'm hoping to go hard to the top of the climb in the first lap knowing the race is much easier after that. Only real problem is my legs don't really want to climb today. As we hit the woods, I moving, but not comfortable. Dave comes up to me, and leads me up some of the way in. I grit my teeth to hold his wheel, knowing if I can climb with him, it'll help. I guess I expect my technical skills to help me stay in front of him, so any rabbit I can find.
We climb together to the start of the SnowSnake trail. I'm wondering if I'll stay with Dave for the whole ride. As we make the turn onto SnowSnake, there is a pretty nice descent, and Wreckage is right there... he yells, "BIG RING AND GO"... I'm such a sucker for peer pressure, I do exactly that, and attack the descent... WOO! I can still ride. I feel pretty good on the technical stuff, and not very fast on the climbs. This is all about having fun... once I'm off SnowSnake. It's not technical, just a lot of up and down stuff.
At 23 minutes, the first sport rider passes me. So it took him 23 minutes to make up the 5 minutes staggered start. About a minute later the second guy passes me. Should have raced expert, but it's not my problem. I get to the end of SnowSnake with the sixth place sport rider. I figure my first finish line is over, now I'm going to work to remember how to race a mountain bike!
They've changed the course a little. The sport and expert course is the same for the first lap and only changes in teh second lap. Over the top of the mountain we do most of the extra loops, and they are flying descents with some short stubby climbs. There are a few that I need my little ring for, but I'm trying to stay in the big ring as much as possible, and it is fun. The trails are slightly damp, but not super muddy. I keep seeing things I remember, but don't have the sequences down to remember what comes next.
This stuff is REALLY fun. The trails are not technical at all. In fact, it's almost like a road ride, and a cross bike would be fine for just about everything except some of the climbs on SnowSnake. There are some bumpy sections, but no rocks or roots. Just fast hard packed dirt. I'd really like to see what my cadence is like on the mountain bike. As I'm moving through I remember to attack the short climbs, and recover on the descents. I'll use this like an interval workout.
I'm riding near a couple of guys, a really young guy that keeps passing me on the climbs, and an older guy that first passed me during my only mechanical incident when I shifted to the little ring and the chain got jammed between the rings. I hopped off and quickly got it straightened out, then immediately passed him again. He seemed to be right there for most of the rest of the lap.
At one of the course splits, there is a marshal that says it's mostly downhill from here, and I start to remember what comes next. I attack to get around the other two guys and lead it through the flying downhill, and the little sequence to the ski hill switchbacks of Bova! I get enough of a gap that I can't see them as I enter the downhill...this is good. At the end of the descent is a short climb, then some twisting stuff to the top of the ski hill. I caught another expert at the top of the hill, and lead him down Bova.
Bova is a butt over your rear wheel, pick your way around 6 dusty switch backs. I hated it my first time through, but I'm getting the hang of it... I really should practice that stuff more, so I can do it really fast. I make it down, and Wreckage is there cheering me on again! Get ready to spin up Patterson. Hour and a half for the first lap.
Patterson is Much easier than SnowSnake. It's an old narrow gauge logging railroad bed, so it has a constant grade to the top of the mountain. Spin your way to the top. I dropped my last expert companion but can hear some chatter behind me, I try to set my heart rate at 155 and spin the gear that keeps me there. In the past, I've picked up blown riders here... lots of them, but this year, I'm either ahead of them, or they are not blowing up as fast. I don't think I passed anyone.
About half way up, an expert comes by me. I grab onto his wheel and try to hold on. I do for a while, but he's moving. So I let it go. A few minutes later a sport rider comes up on me. He's still top 10 (I figure 7th), so I hold his wheel for a bit, but he's moving to fast also. Back to my 155 for the remainder of the climb. Not to bad, I was only caught by 6 sport riders over the first lap, and one on the climb of the second. Over the top, and the expert rider that I dropped at the top of the first lap is gaining on me. Ok, my climbing has kept me in front of him, so I figure I can hold him off from here. I want to catch that guy that dropped me on the climb though, so I start to chase over the loops.
The second lap the experts redo all the loops, while the sport racers go almost directly to the fast descent and ski hill. Over the loops I catch glimpses of the guy in front of me, but see no one behind me... this is good. I kept chasing hoping to real him in, I don't think he knows I'm back here.
The biggest boost of the day was when the trails rejoined, and I started to catch the sport riders. I was FLYING past them. Which made me feel good, even if it was because they were so far down on the field. It's really incredible how many red jersey's there were on the mountain. I was looking for an expert in a red jersey, and I'd catch a guy, realize it wasn't him and keep going.
Last I saw him was just before the woods leading to Bova. Down the ski slope, and I caught a sport male and sport female at the bottom. I got around the male before the road and the female on the road, and could just see the guy heading into the finish gate at the end of the gravel road. I drilled it to make sure I had a gap on any other experts, and looked back to only see the two sport racers. As I came into the finish, the course was not well marked, and I almost missed the turn. Some guys pointed me correctly and I worked to the end. Right before the line the sport guy decided to sprint for it, and came by me. Whatever, I'd have held him off if I hadn't had to figure out the turn.
In the end they split the field by age groups. I was 12 in the 40-49 Male category out of 16, 25+ minutes down on the winner. Dave came in 8 minutes behind me for a very nice finish.
All things considered, it was a nice weekend. I felt pretty good about my mountain bike race, even if I wasn't mid pack in teh experts, mostly because I raced on Saturday, and haven't really ridden the mountain bike much. I treated the race like a cyclocross training ride.
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