Alex’s Race: Men’s Cat 1/2

My first race of the season and second MTB race ever. Here’s what I learned: 

I think pre-race anxiety goes away over the course of a season but it sure as hell comes right back the next year.

Nothing like getting in your car, driving down the Jersey turnpike, and beginning to wonder why you left it so late to leave, why you didn’t buy bananas earlier in the week, why you don’t know how much clothing you should wear for the ever-changing weather patterns, why you really should have arrived with enough time to futz over tire pressure, feeding strategies, and get a pre-ride in. Suffice to say, the first race of the season and I was a ball of nervous energy. I decided that of all the anxiety types out there, this is one that I’m cool with.

XC & CX – It’s all about the start

The start was really familiar from CX races: wide open grassy sprint; 180 degree turn; progressively narrowing taped course before entering single-track. The order we went into the single-track pretty much set the leading group for the rest of the race. I entered in P5 and for the majority of the first lap (the race was 3 laps of ~30mins) we stayed together and quickly opened up a gap on the groups behind. The guys on the front were pushing it and when we hit the first gravel/fire road section, my friend Chad Shackelford came to the front and buried himself. I was grateful to have a wheel to sit on, and was pretty confident it was going to put the rest of the field out of contention pretty quickly. Which is more or less what happened.

Lots of pedaling here in South Jersey

The course was pretty flat with tight, twisty, rooty singletrack, joined by sections of fire road and quasi-technical features (a climb, a few bridges, a set of ~15 spaced out gravel steps). Not much opportunity to pass and as I settled into laps 2 and 3 I was gapped off the lead group and riding mostly alone. The course looped back on itself at times so I could always gauge my relative position and knew that I was still close to those ahead and that they were beginning to splinter.

It all counts for something

My race came together in the final 5 minutes. 3 things happened in succession: I started to get mini cramps in my calves; I noticed that the guy behind me in P5 was in striking distance (especially if my cramps really flared); and P3 seemed to be losing steam. 

I spent these last minutes doing everything I could to just protect my 4th place, trying to push consistent power and avoid any sharp accelerations. And as I did so I got closer and closer to the racer ahead of me. I caught him just as we went up the final bridge crossing. We had just a few turns to go and as we entered the finishing straight we both opened up our sprints, him along the left side of the tape, me on the right. I pulled ahead and crossed the line exhausted but exhilarated. We soft-pedaled through the finish area and when I turned to congratulate him on his race, I realized that I had just out-sprinted a kid who couldn’t be older than 15. 

It’s a funny thing, these teenagers that you wind up racing in amateur CX and XC. You feel a little guilty, like, ‘should I really be out-sprinting them for…. third place at a regional amateur bike race?’ But I say any chance you get to beat a teenager will probably be your last chance. In 2 months they’ll be cleaning up in these competitions. So get it while you can and have fun watching their wheels eventually ride away.

Shane’s Race: Women’s Pro/1

Well, it’s been a while since I suffered like that. The problem with this race is that it’s all pedaling. There’s not a lot of elevation change, the technical features are pretty minimal, and a lot of turns are flat and relatively wide. There’s never a forced respite. It was fine for the first hour, and then suddenly it wasn’t. My legs hurt, my lungs were over it, and the group was gone. I gotta say, it was a really fun time.

While I prefer a little more technical course, it was a good warm up race. For a long while I was able to ride in a group and pretend that the two teenagers behind me weren’t actually going to smoke me at the end of the day (spoiler: they did). Unlike Alex, it did not come down to a sprint. They just rode away from me mid-way through lap 2 and didn’t look back.

But fast mountain bikes are so much fun, it really didn’t matter how much it hurt, I was having a great time whipping through the trails. On to the next!