After nearly a month of not riding, then riding, but not training, I gave racing another crack yesterday at the Mt. Ogden 100K. Last year I had a blast at this race, the trails are rad and the promoter does a fantastic job. It seemed like the right race to try again with. Plus I had a SA-WEET new bike so I figured, at least a little ‘new-bike-strength’ to help.
It’s a baby TWO-NINE! A little bit of this with some twists and tweaks to make it work. I built the bike Friday afternoon, rode it for 20 minutes during a monster rainstorm and raced it the following day. The bike was perfect and simply amazing. I could not be more stoked and if there is anything to re-motivate me to race, that bike has got to be it! Sadly, wonderful though the bike may be, it isn’t magical. A month without training is a tough thing to overcome. I deliberately chose to race the 100K and not the 50K because I thought the slower pace and heavier emphasis on mental toughness would be a benefit with less than stellar fitness. Though that may have been the case, when my pace is ‘barely moving,’ it doesn’t really matter. KC rode away from me about twenty minutes into the race. That girl was pushing a monster pace and I did not have a prayer to hold her wheel. I spent the rest of that lap getting very familiar with my granny gear. I managed to get reaquainted with my middle ring briefly during lap two but it wasn’t nearly enough as KC already had a huge lead and continued to put time into me on what, at the time, I thought had to be a faster lap. On the bright side, the ripping descents were super fun. The way the course is set up, we climb high up on the Snowbasin Ski Area, then descend far below it. The climb is (somewhat) broken but the descent comes in one big chunk. So, with two laps, we did two descents that had to be close to 20-25 minutes uninterrupted. It was…ridiculous. And enough to keep a smile on my face, despite the disappointment.
I am bracing myself for the Park City Point 2 Point this weekend as that race would be a monster with the best kind of fitness. I’ll be experiencing it with…not the best kind of fitness. At least it will, again, be ripping fun trails and I’ll be on a ripping fun bike 