Monday, April 14, 2008

Going Great...until I wasn't

Well, the first mountain bike race started out fairly well with the exception of one small tiny little detail. My water bottle launched off the bike in the first 400 yards. The little voice in my head said 'STOP, GET THAT, YOU WILL NEED IT' and then the other little voice said, 'YOUR AT THE FRONT DUMMY, YOU'LL LOSE A TON OF TIME'(It sometimes gets a bit crowded in here). Would somebody please shoot that second voice for me. I might've lost about 30 seconds retrieving the bottle, but it would've also saved me big time from going into total cramp at about 2 hours into the race. I rode strongly, but without water til almost an hour in, it wasn't rocket science what was going to happen. I did manage to get a bottle from a rider in one of the earlier starting categories who'd snapped a chain and was walking his bike back in. I quickly pulled up to him and asked 'you dont need your bottle now, do you? Please give it to me.' Luckily, he did. It was unfortunately too little, too late. I was figuring the race would be about 1 hr 45 minutes. It wound up being a 2 hour race. I came in almost 2 hrs 30 minutes. Because of the cramping, I wound up losing at least 20 minutes as in the last few miles, every time there was even a slight rise on the trail, I couldn't even pedal. I lost 4 places in my race as I had to sit on a rock on the side of the trail sucking down what was left in the bottle. I'd lost the other 6 or 7 places as I limped in from there. I'm going out and buying a camel back today. I will be damned if I have another race where I drop out of the front 5 because of something stupid like a lost bottle.


Beyond the fact that I had some bio-mechanical issues, I actually rode a really good race. On a fairly non-technical course, made a bit tough due to slick conditions, I was holding my own against riders on geared bikes with my much lower geared single speed. Not too bad considering there was no logs or major rocks to go over and also quite a bit of roadway on the course. Shortly before the cramp, I'd pulled back a large group of riders and was starting to go thru them when the body told me to have a nice day. I know I would be right at the front of the race if I broke down and got a geared bike. It's nice to not have to deal with the extra work though and also, I'm not sure I can justify the 11th bike. Well, I can justify it, but it's really more the case of how much space do I have to store all of these things? I currently have 10 bikes (and use every one of them throughout the year) and around 15 wheelsets and it's getting a bit cramped in the basement. I'll have to sit and think on that one. It is only just one more bike.....

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hello. This post is likeable, and your blog is very interesting, congratulations :-). I will add in my blogroll =). If possible gives a last there on my blog, it is about the Servidor, I hope you enjoy. The address is http://servidor-brasil.blogspot.com. A hug.