As I mentioned earlier, I started mountain biking a lot last year, and even did some races. Last Sunday was supposed to be the start of the racing season for me this year, with a race at at Black Diamond organized by Budu Racing. The plan was to go race in the Beginner class and finish in the middle of the pack, instead near the end, which is how things went last year. The airtight reasoning that led me to this plan was the fact that, on the basis of no hard evidence whatsoever, I figured I was in better shape than last year, and that this would automatically translate into better results.
Of course, I forgot the cardinal rule of competition: it never goes the way you think it will. That’s always been the case for me, whether it’s been motorcycle racing or taekwondo tournaments. And this time was no different.
The day started out promisingly enough – I’d gotten a good night’s sleep, got there early and registered without an incident, and found my friend James, who was also going to race in the Beginner class. Since we still had a while before the race started, we headed out to pre-ride the course.
Halfway through the pre-ride, I noticed that something wasn’t quite right with my bike – each time I pedaled hard, I could feel something give, as if my rear wheel or drive train was moving. After limping back to the starting point, it became clear what the problem was: I’d lost one of the bolts of my rear suspension, so it was flopping around. At this point, it was 15 minutes to the beginning of the race, so I went running around asking anybody who also had a Santa Cruz bike whether they had a spare bolt.
Predictably, nobody did, so I swore a bit, wished James good luck in the race, packed up my bike, and headed home. Halfway home, though, I realized that I might have a spare bolt at home, and that if I made it home and back in time I could still race in the Sport class, which didn’t start for another couple of hours. 30 mins of fast driving and some frantic digging through my spare parts bin later, it became clear that I didn’t actually have a spare bolt. Crap. At this point, though, I was determined to race no matter what, so I texted James to ask whether I could borrow the bolt from his bike [since he also has a Santa Cruz]. Luckily, James was still at the race and agreed to lend me the bolt, so I raced back down. … but it still wasn’t quite that easy. It turned out that the bolt from his bike didn’t quite fit, so he generously offered to let me ride his bike for the race.
In the meantime, two other folks from the Project 529 crew, Nate and Sergei, had also shown up, so we headed out for another bit of riding to warm up before the race. However, halfway through that pre-ride, we realized that we’d better high-tail it back to the start if we didn’t want to miss the start of the race. A brief bit of hectic pedaling and cutting through roped-off trails later, we arrived back at the start with a few minutes to spare.
It's worth digressing a moment to explain the difference between the Sport and Beginner classes: the Beginner race was 2 laps, and supposed to last about 40 minutes. The Sport race was 4 laps, and expected to take about an hour. So, Sport: twice as long, and faster. Given that I'd already ridden two laps of the course, was on an unfamiliar [and heavier] bike, and was previously just aiming for middle-of-the-pack in the Beginner class, it's fair to say that my expectations were not high. I was basically just racing because, well, I'm pig-headed and determined to ride in a race, any race, that day. My stretch goal was to not finish last.
In any case, we lined up, fidgeted a bit and ... we were off. The course was a mix of different types of terrain: it started out fairly technical with lots of baby heads and a couple of steep but short climbs, transitioned into some flowy singletrack, then went back to being very bumpy but with no elevation changes. All in all, a pretty fun course.
For the first half of the first lap, we were pretty bunched up -- there were a couple of pileups as people fell in the tricky sections, we'd stretch out a bit on the easier sections and then accordion together again as the going got tough and people in front slowed everybody down. I stayed in touch with the middle group for the first lap, but by the start of the second lap had lost them, and from then on it was a pretty lonely race -- there was nobody close enough behind me to make me really work hard, and I couldn't see anybody in front of me that would have spurred me to try to catch up. So I just pedaled around trying to keep up a decent pace. By the end of the second lap, I was hurting pretty badly; by the middle of the third lap, I was wondering whether I had another lap in me. Thankfully, I was put out of my misery shortly thereafter, as the two leaders came by and lapped me, so that my race was over after 3 laps.
End result: 15th out of 18. So, goal achieved, but not exactly something to write home about.
Let's hope the next race in a couple of weeks goes according to plan, for some value of "plan".
[Cross-posted to the Project 529 blog.]
