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#
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