The drive up was cool (literally). Are we going mountain bike or sled dog racing today??
Preview of the race course.....haha, not really, this is the road in, but it gives you an idea. Little did we know what we were in for!
The friendly US cup folks were downing some hot coffee I am sure.......if they were smart they had a bottle of Kahlua in there somewhere too.......
Thar's cold in them thar hills!! (I never get sick of bad puns in case you were wondering). Up there is the original race course.
The Finish Line.....well, not completely. We wound up going through here 4 times, so it was the start line, race course and finish line all in one. Very efficient!!
The registration line.....yet again, not completely. Little did we know we were standing on the race course. Yup, it was just like that (but miles of it). Sweet!! :)
There is something special about the post-race beer, a fine tradition if there ever was. In this case we just needed to avoid ingesting Giardia at the same time.
Put a little snow in my ice chest and made a snowman when I got back.....of course Nathan had to put some down Jarod's back too!
Well, I have been thrown a few curve balls at races before, but never one like this!!
The entire race course was changed at the very last minute.....I really had no idea what we were doing, something about 4 laps. I asked the race director about 30 seconds before start time if we climbed up the road to 4-Corners and looped back on the final downhill section....he just kinda laughed and said 'follow the arrows'. (the real answer was not even close!)
The entire Cat2 group took off at the same time, up the road and quickly took a hard left into a creek, and then another one.....and another one! Pretty much completely soaked less than 5 minutes from start. Surprise!!
Then it was time for some fast and flowy singletrack, maybe the only section of the entire race that wasn't muddy (except for the paved section)?. After that it was through the start line, hard right and time for roughly 2 miles of sloppy roads with thick, viscous, soul sapping mud pits to get through, tough!
After that you came back to the start and did the whole thing again 3 more times. Yay!! :) The creek crossings turned out to be a great chain cleaner for every lap though!
I had anticipated riding in snow covered mud and rocks and had some fairly burly tires which were not ideal for this flat almost Cyclo-Cross course. Total Elevation for the 16 miles was ~350 feet.
I thought I was doing OK but in the end didn't, came in 9th out of 14 even with a strong effort. It looked like we were pretty tightly grouped, so will be interested to see the results. I think there may be some new really strong competition in my category.
Next race is in two weeks, Bonelli Park (bring it on!! :) !!
my Garmin Edge 500 stats:
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