Fair Hill did not work out so well for me. Hung tough in the beginning, sitting in the top 7 guys, feeling good in the singletrack for the first two miles. Got out into the open section and while I still felt good, everyone just rode away from me on the road sections. One guy, Danny Deo, even asked me if I was OK, which I thought I was at the time.
Continued to get dropped bad and about six miles in on an incline, everything fell apart. Looking back, it was heat but when I was in the middle of it, it was just suckness. While climbing a small series of inclines (three sisters for the locals) I just lost everything. Head hurt, stomach hurt, but worst of all, I had zero power in my legs. Started drinking, picking up onopened gels from the trail, and all water bottles I found on the trail were poured over my head. At the ten mile mark, I refilled my bottles and poured water over me. At mile 12ish, I started to feel better and started joking with the riders around me. If a top finish would be out of the question, I would have fun anyway. I continued to have a good time on the racecourse and started passing people again. So much fun, alternating between drinking, passing others, laughing, and making up nicknames for people, like "Pro Trials", some guy who pulled off a 20 foot "crashing" nose wheelie without crashing. I eventually rode away from the laughing crowd and finished 18 of 32 riders, not bad considering 2 guys jumped me in the last 200 feet when I had nothing. It was my worst finish of the year and forced me to not race the next two series races. I am in the process of figuring out the rest of the season right now and feeling stronger on the bike than I did a few weeks ago. I have not ridden my geared bike since that race though and have not really trained since that race.
My overall position in the series in going to be out of the top ten. I have not have the same results as last season for a number of reasons and while I struggled with that in July, I am ok with it now. Having a point series is a good thing, but worrying about points and rankings lead to things like six hour round trips to race for two hours or less.
Let's see if I can put something together to finish the season strong. Or at least to race a few more times.
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2 comments:
What are you saying? 8 hours of driving and a night in the Day's Inn is excessive to get to race my bike 2.5 hours?
It is easy to get carried away with the travel for races. In the beginning of the season, long drives seem so short. When it gets to be every weekend, it gets old fast.
Perhaps marathon mtb racing is a better choice? 4 or 5 hours of driving and the same for racing. The only problem is the extra training time required to finish these races.
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