This year I focused on the 8 hour series for my training and my main goal was to complete all 3 races and try to win the overall solo standings. The spring was pretty early in the season I hadn't really started training for it and ended up 5th, which surprised me a lot. The summer I focused my training a little more on that and rode though the high heat for a second place finish, I was happy with it but there was some names that just weren't around for that race. So onto looking forward to the fall and hopefully some of those names would show up.
Checking out the conformation list before the race it looked like there would be some pretty good racers out there, I counted about 6 or 7 guys who I thought would be pretty fast and hold a good pace all day.
Now onto race day. I was a little late to the start line so I lined up along the side where I could see some of the competition I figured would be pretty fast. As usual I was feeling pretty stressed at this point, there were guys with a lot more experience racing these things plus an elite racer. My plan was just to stay on my bike and not stop for anything until at least 2:30 since I had never done that before. The gun went off, we had a kilometer and a half to sort things out before the first single track. Some how it ended up that by that first single track there were 5 solo's who found each other, 4 under 39 and one over 40. It was a nice little solo train for that whole first lap with Spak leading. Second Lap went out with the other AWI racer Jacob leading the train but the train lost two members, so it was just Jacob, Matt and myself. This continued for a few laps, the three of us riding together, I would make a small little gap going up the first hill then the AWI boys would catch up though the single track by the time we would get back to the start, I just don't know how to go up those hills slower. On about lap 4 or 5 we ran into all kinds of carnage on a particularly slippery rooty corner, Jacob was in front of me at this time and I am glad he was, somehow he found a nice little line though all the bodies, bikes, roots and trees so I just calmly followed behind him thanked him for leading me though it. At this point we had put a little gap on Matt. The next lap Paul (the over 40 solo rider) had caught up and we saw Matt a few sections of single track back, at that point I think Jacob decided that he either wanted to drop me or to put a bigger gap into Matt. I followed him as best I could until he got into a longer set of single track before a small group of riders, they wern't too slow but enough that it put my back about 10 seconds from him. I could see him for quite a while and didn't think it was too important to really push at this point in time. So I just held my pace and kept having fun on the bike.
Then the pain started, legs started to cramp up I started to get those early signs of hunger which usually lead to me pushing hard but not going fast for a lap or two. I didn't want to give into that pain so I just stood and pushed harder when it would happen and I took some extra food at the next lap and made sure I ate on every lap for a while. The 2:30 mark came and went and I was still just riding though the pit area getting gels and bottles from my team, I continued that until the end of the day.
I finished up lap 12 and I think it was Glen anouncing at the time, all I really know was that I heard that I was still in 2nd and that Jacob was still a pretty steady 1:45 in front of me, so I picked up the pace and dropped 1:30 on my next lap, I was expecting to hear that Jacob was just in front of me, but nothing, later I found out that was the time he decided to go out for a "hot" lap. I ended the day in Second 5:30 behind Jacob. With Eddy coming in 3rd behind me for a second time, but this time doing the same number of laps, I am very impressed.
It was another good day on the bike, nice sunny skys, great temperature for riding. A huge thanks to my girlfriend who fed me all day long, gave me updates on where I was and encouraged me not to stop, I couldn't have done it with out her. Also a huge thanks to my parents for making the trip down to cheer me on, the cow bell was great every time I came around.
I will send out my condolences to the family of the racer who passed away of a heart attack on the course, he was doing what he loved from what we heard.
No comments:
Post a Comment