First Race of the Season

Tonight the family will be heading out to Buck Hill for the first race of the 2007 MTB season. Andrea will try sport, Jordan citizen, and I will be challenging myself in expert. Conditions are just about perfect, and the heat (86 F) will be good for acclimating to the conditions yet to come. I will provide a complete recount of the race later tonight.

Race Report (Matt):

Let's just say that it is probably not good to feel as rested as I was at the end of the race. I think I finished 39th out of 47 in the Advance field. Not what I had hoped for but not last place either. Since there is no Comp class at the Thursday night races it is somewhat hard to tell how this will stack up in the MNSCS series. The drive in from Hutchinson takes a little over an hour and a half so we did not have much time to get all the bikes down, register, and have a decent warm up before the race start. After the race meeting I headed down to the start line to find I was nearly the last person to arrive. I did not have a good starting spot because rec and beginners classes were all bunched up behind the advanced riders. Therefore, I picked a spot near the back on the far right side of the road (in the grass). Mentally I had no ambition to push it hard at the start, but in hindsight it would have been a better idea. The race starts with a gradual hill on a gravel service road then veers to the right and down across the base of the ski runs before entering the single track. As usual there was a fairly large pile-up at the entrance of the single track at a short steep section. I had to get off my bike for a few seconds to run up a short section and quickly remounted. The pace was slow, however, and the leaders were gone. There was virtually no place to pass in the single track sections, therefore, I just followed at the pace of the riders in front of me. I feel confident that I could have rode the single track sections faster and with a better start. The conditions were extremely dry and dust and it started to take a tool on my lungs. By the end of the first lap I started to ca ugh really bad and it go worse any time I started to push it. This continued into the third lap and I never really felt good for the remainder of the race. I was actually having trouble taking in air; I have never experienced this before.

Near the end of lap two I came up on Jordan who was nearing the end of her lap in the beginner class. She was standing off the trail and I could see she was upset and frustrated. I stopped to help her out as she explained that the bike was making some weird sounds and it was making her worried. I gave her some much needed encouragement and she was able to get back on the bike in a fairly difficult section and ride like a pro. I will have to look at her bike to find out what the problem is; I do know that her chain is too long and needs to be shortened. After Jordan got back on her way and was out in the open I resumed my race. Despite the problems with my lungs I felt I could push hard and I could hang with most racers on the hill sections. For some reason I didn't feel as though I was going fast enough in the single track sections though. The remainder of laps 3 and 4 were fairly uneventful and I just put it in cruse control for the remainder of the race.

Race Report (Andrea):

Summary:

All in all I finished in about 1 hour 6 minutes with the leaders finishing in about 53 minutes. A full 13 minutes behind the leaders or about 25% off the leaders time. I will update the results when the are posted on the Penn Cycle site. I placed 39th out of 47 riders in advanced.