Bike racing

This past weekend I participated in most of our home mountain bike (MTB) race, and it was awesome.

It started out early Saturday morning with an uphill time trial (race against the clock up a mountain) up a trail called “Old Farm.”  It’s still hard for me to imagine how it’s possible to ride the 2 miles up the side of this mountain without having to get off the bike, but apparently it is.  There are huge roots and boulders with steep grade up to them and after them, that maybe someday I’ll have the guts to attempt riding up them haha. So it was partly a running race as well, and I finished middle of the pack.  Immediately following the timed uphill race is a timed downhill race back down it…but I got a flat barely into it and ruined the tire on the back, which was a bummer.  I walked back up to the top and caught a ride down with Ben W.  The next event was the dual slalom, but I skipped on it and went home to get a new tire, some tubes and see Lauren before the Short Track under the lights that night.

The short track race is a <1 mile loop for 20 minutes, with some sections of rock and tight turns out through the VT rec fields, and whoever can get the most laps in that time wins.  There were about 30 of us in the race and after a sprint to the course, this guy with a green jersey, who had won the uphill in men’s C (my category), was a little bit ahead of Jan and I.  We rode hard for what seemed like a long time, myself going back and forth with Jan in 2nd and 3rd.  Problem was that with the tight corners, it was hard to go much faster than we already were on the course, and through the whole race weren’t able to make up much time on green jersey guy.  Ben W was going to give me his sunglasses if I won…but by the end of the 20 minutes I had to settle for 2nd place after attacking Jan on the last lap.  Lauren had come out to watch the race, and I was really happy to get second with her there watching too.  Talking with Nick and John after the race got me even more excited for road season this year haha.

Number two! Look at that VT ownage

That was it for Saturday, I was super tired and just read a little bit before going to bed…lame haha but I had a race to get ready for the next day! Sunday morning I barely woke up in time to get out to the cross country (XC) race, which was a 10 mile course out in the Jefferson National Forest on the Poverty Creek Trail System.  I remembered how hard the course was last year, but for some reason thought that I was better now haha.  We started with a quarter mile on a gravel road before hitting the single track, and I put in a little effort and hit the single track with a lead on the whole field.  Into the woods on Poverty Creek was fun, it’s a hilly but not too technical trail and Matt Londrey and Jan caught up to me.  I rode hard ahead of them for a while, and we had to be getting pretty far away from everybody by the time we hit the technical stuff.  Having read “it’s not about the bike’ this summer, after I couldn’t shift into my small ring, and couldn’t clip in with my left foot….I soon realized that out in the woods on a MTB….it often is about the bike.  My left cleat came loose off of my shoe, and I had to stop to try to fix it.  By the time I got the dirt out of the screws and got the cleat back in though, everyone had caught up and passed.  Well, there went my race…I tried to ride hard for awhile, but by then trail was getting the best of me.  Prickly Pear is the name of it, and it’s rough haha.  It’s basically like trying to ride through baby head sized rocks up the side of a mountain, then back down, and again and again.  My right cleat came loose as well, this time as I stopped and tried to clip out, just the shoe turned so I fell right onto my side in a pricker bush…and was still pulling them out of my arm last night haha.  I somehow managed to finish, outsprinting a UVA guy at the finish! I was pretty let down by having mechanical failures put the nail in the coffin for my race…but that’s MTB’ing.  Turns out that I wasn’t the only one who had trouble, I didn’t even hear of a person whose bike didn’t break in some way on the stuff.

After the race, I got Stephan to give me a ride back to my car which I had parked at the top of the service road because it was so rough on my car that I just stopped and rode my MTB the four miles to the start of the race.  A bunch of us met up at Moe’s and I finally used the last of my Moe’s Money from the crew 5k freshman year haha.  The burrito I got was huge and delicious, and after endless nachos I was stuffed.  Sunday night Dave, James and I fired up the charcoal grill and grilled Filet Mignon for dinner, with steamed sweet corn as a side and it was a really good! We watched Thank You For Smoking and then played some guitar hero before I called it a night.

Altogether it was a great weekend, I realized how tough racing MTB’s can be regardless of fitness (and how expensive because they always break), managed to give back the pump and multi-tool I borrowed to their proper owners and get a tube back from the guy I gave my spare to during the race, and hopefully my ankle heals quick.  Next weekend’s race is at W&M and VCU, I think I might go!

Also thought I'd throw in this pic of my SRAM shifter completely disassembled, it came apart pretty easily haha