I decided to race this one a few weeks ago for two
reasons: it utilized some new (to me)
trails in AL, and it was long and probably hard enough to be a good
endurance/marathon race without being truly “epic”. As a new race, and without much apparent marketing,
it only drew about 60 pre-registered entrants, and I didn’t recognize most of
the names. One name I did recognize was
Brian Toone, a very accomplished Cat 1 roadie and climber extraordinaire. He has a great blog, and from it, I found
that he’d reconnoitered (and killed) the race course. I arrived late afternoon
on Saturday to preride at least some of the 15 miles or so of singletrack and
to enjoy meeting some new people at the pre-race cookout/campout. The venue was a nice little fishing lake near
the city of Sylacauga AL that abuts National Forest land that the mtb trails
are on. So, I picked up my registration stuff
and then went for a ride. The trail was
very buff (smooth) and swoopy. And not
much climbing. This is fun stuff to ride
fast, but not so great for a race IMO because it doesn’t challenge the
technical (or lung) skills enough. Plus,
you get going so fast at race pace (I was easily holding 15-16 mph just
cruising) that one wrong move or wheel slide and you will hit the forest furniture
(trees) hard! So, about 5 miles into my jaunt I heard a “pop…fizz”—there went
my tire. So much for smooth trail. Well, smooth it was as far as roots and big
rocks. Smooth it wasn’t for Neolithic rock
tool sharp “tire slicers” rocks embedded in the dirt. It was such a
big gash that I didn’t even try to put a tube in and ride on. So, hike-a-bike back to the car…luckily I could
cut a couple miles off. I brought the necessary
repair equipment (minus a compressor to inflate tubeless tire, but the lake
caretaker had a mini compressor that did the trick). So off I went a little later (but a little
cooler out now) and rode the trails.
Meeting and hanging out with a bunch of the Cyclists of Greater
Sylacauga (COGS) was fun. I slept well
right at race “headquarters” and with a 5:30-ish AL sunrise had plenty of time
to eat and relax while watching the competition arrive.
The 10 am start was en-mass on a gravel road, around a 120
degree turn across a grass field and into the woods. I lined up at the front (very easy to do,
most folks opted to stage back a ways).
I figured I’d go for the “holeshot” so I could ride that fast trail
unobstructed. At least one other guy (Adam
Gaubert) had the same idea and was a bit faster, so I ended up second into the
woods. Adam was plenty fast, so it
worked well and we got out of sight of the rest of the racers. The trail did reveal two cool surprises—a giant
(15” diameter) turtle right in the center of the trail (I avoided him) and a 4’
snake….but not just an snake. It had a perfectly rat shaped lump (I could
make out the head and body lumps) in its middle. I tried to point this out to Adam, but as he
later told me “I thought you were saying something about eating my lunch”. We turned off the singletrack and onto the
forest service road after about 5 miles still with nobody in sight. We worked well together, trading pulls, for
about 15 minutes before a figure appeared from behind. My strategy was to go as fast as I could,
despite the possibility of “overcooking” my legs, to get as much time on Brian
Toone as possible. There was a King of
the Mountain (KOM) about 12 miles into the race with a $100 prize. Well, once I recognized that the figure was
Brian and made plan “B” to be to stay as close to him as possible up the 1200
foot climb. He pulled away as the road
got steeper a few miles from the KOM, and I was surprised to see Adam stay
pretty close to him—I didn’t expect Adam to climb so strongly based on what he’d
shown (fooled) me thus far. I was giving
it everything I had, so I resigned myself to ride hard, but smart, to the top
and see if I could catch them along the undulating skyway (hence the race name)
and down to the turn-around at about mile 25.
I hit the turnaround about 2 minutes after passing them (separated by a
couple hundred yards with Adam leading).
So I did a quick bottle fill and two slurped gel packs and I was
off. I took quite a bit of encouragement
from the young girl that said “wow that was fast!” as I was leaving. It was
good to see that the next two riders coming down were about 7 minutes behind me—a
comfortable margin, even with a flat (more on that later!). I felt really good on the climb back up to
the skyway (really just a rough jeep trail, but very nice views), and expected
to see my adversaries at some point soon.
I really was taking risks on the loose, rough downhills, but no flats or
crashes. Still, no sight of Adam or
Brian, and the aid station estimates of time splits kept going up! Finally it was back onto singletrack, and
this time for about 10 miles. Time to
chase really hard! I was moving very fast
for 3+ hours into the race, trying to focus hard so that I wouldn’t crash
hard. Finally I saw a bit of dust in the
air at a corner—somebody must be close ahead!
Sure enough, I came up on Brian and he immediately let me go by. As is my custom in this circumstance, I
drilled it! I had full confidence in a 2nd
place finish and visions of 1st place. Then…..pop….fizz. No!!!
Sure enough, flat. I was so
focused and so in denial, that I continued to roll on (much slower) until Brian
came up and with a “sorry about that dude” went on by. I stopped briefly and looked at the hole in
the tread and, not thinking clearly, decide I needed to roll on with the flat…couldn’t
fix it with a tube. That, and I thought “just
a little farther, I can still be in 3rd”. Well, 10 minutes turned into 15 and my legs
started to protest. Riding on a flat,
especially on uphills is very hard! I
started to get very dejected as I realized that I might trash the rim as well
(I didn’t) and still get caught (remember the 7 minutes at turnaround?) I had really messed up to not try and fix the
flat. Finally after what I calculate as
an extra 20 minutes or so I reached to finish.
Everybody, especially Brian, was amazed to see me ride in on a flat. So, I ended up 3rd—it would have
been nice to possibly have taken first (Brian was only 3 minutes behind Adam at
the finish, so had I not flatted it was a real possibility), but that is part
of mountain bike racing. I’d like to do
this race again, but hope that they add several more miles of singletrack—if just
to put Brian at a bit more disadvantage!
No comments:
Post a Comment