Soaring Eagle, The Sequel

I looked at the weather report last night and it showed a nice dry day with a low of 40 for the time I'd be arriving at the race and about 45 during my race. Since I've been lied to by those "weathermen" before I brought a good selection of clothing to the race....Glad I did. As I started heading up toward Sammamish there were cars coming down covered in snow! And as I got up top there was snow everywhere. WTF...It's just about April! It was also 34 degrees which was a far cry from 40. Thank goodness the race was exactly the same as before so I didn't have to pre-ride and possibly get wet and cold. Instead I rode up and down the road for a while and then lined up for the race. I was soo cold as the start was late that I still had my jacket and warm up pants on and Rory called the lineup so quickly I barely got my clothing situated for the start. The there were only two things different in this race than the previous one....First, the parks department had put gravel on part of the fire road so everyone was fighting for that thin line but it ran out and then we found the second thing that had changed. Our race wasn't on dirt but was MUD. I don't mean the 90% water 10% dirt mud puddle stuff, but the creamiest peanutbutter you've every seen. And as the race went on it started to dry up a bit and it was HARD to go forward. I'm a small guy. 132lbs and this course required POWER. I don't have that and it showed as I hurt something fierce just to try to be competitive. But then it seemed my power was waining as forward motion was getting harder and harder but then I noticed something...my rear was going everywhere and I finally stopped and found that I had maybe 5lbs of pressure in my rear tire. I stopped and struggled to get my CO2 gun loaded and cranked up the pressure. Wow, I can roll again! So in I came in 8th out of 14 which was disappointing as I was hoping the technical nature of this course would play to my strengths. Not! So now I'm in 3rd place in the series for Expert Men 40+ and another guys is only 3 points behind me. Man this is dissapointing. Hopefully this will be my drop. So now I'm home and putting stuff away and cleaning my bike. Dirtiest my bike has EVERY been and that is saying something as I've ridden in some terrible stuff. It took me 90 minutes to clean all my stuff. Good news is I got some nice pictures of the sport racers!

Budu Race #3 @ Lake Sawyer in Black Diamond

Let's start this post with this; I had no plans to do this race. I was suppose to race the Tour de Dung. But this weather....f'n cold and snowy made me rethink a road race and pushed me to do this race. I've ridden Lake Sawyer a number of times and it's a super place to trail ride and work on your technical skills but for some reason the race course there is on the worst trails they can find. I'm sure it's due to who owns what portions of land and will let the race occur. This race is virtually flat with one short hill that due to the snow was a run up today. But most of the rest of the course is winding singletrack that is nothing but baby heads. Strange name that defines a trail that is just solidly full of round rocks the size of a baby's head. There were only a few sections of doubletrack that would allow passing so the race was very much a processionnal with a start section that itself was mostly skinny and didn't allow for much passing. So on we went, me sitting on Dan B's wheel until we got to the first doubletrack and he attempted to make a pass, hit the rider next to him and went down in a tumble. With the snow sticking to him he looked like a snowman. I yelled and he said we was OK so on I went. I passed the other racer and ended up riding alone for a long time. I eventually caught and passed another rider in the younger age group and he jumped on my wheel. He was really good in the technical stuff and I could pull away in the straights. But then he'd be back. Like a Lampre he just hung on and multiple requests to let him pass were declined. Next thing I know Bob from the team is behind the other guy and talking to me. Bob was just warming up and decided to pay me back for all the times I've sat on his wheel and annoyed him. Though it wasn't really that annoying today as it was nice to have someone to talk to. As we were getting close to the last lap I saw Sean ahead and turned it on as any "rabbit" will make me push. I didn't catch him but I did get within a few seconds of him. The race ended up being 15 1/2 miles and took 1:34 to finish. I felt like a slug going thru the baby heads and figured I was about last but it turned out I was 5th and that was enough to push me up to 2nd place overall in the series for Expert 40+ men. I'm sure it won't last but it's nice to be doing so well in Expert. Even though the course wasn't the best and the weather sucked, I did have a good time struggling thru the course. But due to the weather I didn't take any photos today which is a bummer and I'm sure I'll get some emails from people asking about it. Enough with the snow...let's get spring going!

Budu Race #2 @ Soaring Eagle Park in Sammamish

My alarm woke me at 5:45am this Sunday morning and what I heard outside was the POUNDING of rain. Seriously tempted to turn off the alarm and just sleep away the day I decided that I'd look at the radar to see how bad it really was going to be for the day. Darn...not that bad. So up for a quick shower and breakfast. I loaded my gear...including every type of clothing option imaginable and headed to the race course. I got there at 7:42am. My race was at 9:30 but there is VERY little parking at Soaring Eagle and I wanted a front row parking spot to make the logistics easier. I got one!!!! I got registered and B.S'd with some of my friends and then took photos for a bit of the beginners race. My race was next so I got geared up and rode up and down the street to get warmed up. I had pre-rode the course yesterday so I didn't need to get wet and dirty before my race this time. I got a second row start position on a VERY muddy fire road. We all wanted the hole shot as the rest of the 3 1/2 mile loop had literally zero passing opportunity unless the person in front was willing to pull over and let you by. Nice thing is mountain bikers are all pretty cool and will do that for you. We started and the craziness to get the whole shot began with everyone sliding all over the place on the muddy fire road. I ended up rolling into the singletrack in the 5th position for my group. The first two guys blew off the front but a group of 3 of us were stuck behind a slower guy in the singletrack. It wasn't until 3/4 of the way through the first lap that he slid out on a climb and we were able to get by him. At that point Larry Parfitt put the hammer down and I chased hard. Looking down I saw my heart rate at 176 out of a max of 183. I eventually dropped of his wheel which let a super fast single speeder get by me. At this point I started racing my own race. We completed the first lap and I got around another guy. At this point I was by myself but racing strong. I eventually caught Dan on the start of the third loop and sat on his wheel. He was going a bit slow and he said he wanted to chill on this lap and hammer out the last one. Since I didn't see anyone behind us I cruised along with him for this lap. Dan had 3 crashes up to this point and I got to see two more. The last one twisted his bars a bit so when we got back to the fire road he had to stop and straighten them. I decided to not hang around and put the hammer down...the best I can. I ended up catching the single speed guy from earlier and he was getting pretty tired. He let me by and I pulled him through the head wind sections and encouraged him on the 4 climbs. Once we got up top and he had a chance to recover I could tell his superior bike handling skill were allowing him to sit my wheel and I was slowing him down so I offered him the lane and got out of his way. He was stunned that I offered it to him as we only 1/5th of a lap to go to the finish. I just felt for this guy racing a singlespeed in the open expert class and felt he deserved the shot and if I could have hung with him we could have duked out a sprint finish. But that didn't happen....he took off like a shot and beat me by 11 seconds. Wow! He deserved 3rd place over me.
I hadn't ridden at Soaring Eagle in like 5 years and when I pre-rode on Saturday I was like....man I should ride here more often. It's close to my house and the trails were very dry. But I was very worried about racing here. The course is sooooooo narrow. But you know....I still had a great time today. Maybe it's not all about the racing but the challenging yourself, hanging out with cool people and enjoying some outside time.
So now my race is done and it's time for my "other" job. I change and grab my camera and head up the trail reverse of the direction the racers are going. I take over 500 photos of which 499 turned out well. But I also ended up running the entire course to take those pictures. I ran 3 1/2 miles in jeans and hiking boots with a huge camera setup.
The really really cool thing about today though was my wife won her race. It's her first win at Sport class. She did really well and I got to see it while running the course and taking pictures. She looked super and had a HUGE gap over 2nd place (3 minutes). You see, this is only Molly's 2nd year racing. Last year she did really well at Beginner but her technical skills are...well....sub-par and so this year I've been taking her to Lake Sawyer and Tolt and that has helped a LOT. She rocked today and I'm so proud of her for working so hard at this. It's also great that we have something like this is common so we can hang together...other than my bike budget being split in half since she wants the same stuff I want so everything gets ordered in pairs!
We'll, sitting here writing this entry has allowed my body to completely stiffen up so I'll sign off for now and head to the showers!
Congratulations to everyone who came out today and a special thanks to the Budu folks for a great race!
Pictures can be seen at http://picasaweb.google.com/joemartincyclocross/2009BuduRace2SoaringEaglePark#