28/7/2009 Mid-Season Update
Time flies when you're having fun. It also flies when you're training a ton, which is also fun. It has been a busy summer so far here in the big Wisco and is only going to get more busy. Racing action so far this year has been pretty steady with fairly good rides at Cable Area Off Road Classic, Crystal Lake Classic, Keweenaw Chain Drive, Miner's Revenge, and most recently 24-9. At Cable I was riding really well before a slipping eccentric caused me to lose a bunch of time, but still post a respectable result. Crystal Lake was my first WORS race in 15 years or so. I was pretty under geared, but managed to ride an ok race after getting stuck in traffic for the first lap or so. The course was actually pretty fun with a good amount of fairly technical singletrack. It was a bit on the flat side, but a good race course for sure. I would go back. It was also cool to actually put my NORBA license to use for something other than 'cross... The Keweenaw Chain Drive is always a highlight of the season, and this year we pulled a big posse from the bay area up for the good times which increased the fun factor exponentially. The new singletrack that was added to the course this year was superfun. The weather was some of the best we've had in recent years, and I felt quite decent and managed to pull off an ok race. I stopped going forward about halfway through the race, but definitely didn't crack and lose a bunch of time. As seems to be a common theme, I rode basically the whole race on my own. I'm not the world's best starter and combined with riding the SS, I tend to get kind of blown off the back at the start in many races. By the time I get things sorted, the guys I should be riding with have a pretty large gap. I pull back some folks, but they generally seem to be going backwards...
Racing hasn't been the whole story this summer. We've been putting in some pretty long days on the mountain bike down in the Cable area and over in Duluth in preparation for Wilderness 101, which is going off this weekend. It's been pretty fun to get out on the mountain bike and do some killer long rides, like riding a double 40 with a good amount on singletrack thrown in. We did that ride the day before Curt and I drove up for Miner's Revenge. Curt and I rolled up to the Amman vacation home in O-town around midnight, which made the 11 a.m. start time the next morning most welcome. We got to the race and registered and were told that we should put the smallest gear possible on since the course had no flat in it. 32x19 it is. We also immediately started hearing about the raging party that went down the night before. Camping there next year is a must. We took a quick lap on the first bit of the course and it was killer. After a bit more "warming up" a bit more we lined up for the start. They said go and I got a pretty hot start on an appropriately short, gradually uphill double rollout. Tom Carpenter got the hole shot and I pretty much didn't see him again. I went into the singletrack in like 4th or so, and despite a bobble on a switchback managed to be sitting top 5 by the end of the first singletrack descent. Tinger pulled off a sweet mid-air pass on in the middle of the descent to pull ahead of me. With Tom off the front, the two of us and Mark Klein were duking it out for much of the first lap leading into the section in the mine shaft. That's right folks, I said mine shaft. Headlamps were mandatory since we were racing our bikes through a mine for about 1/2 mile each lap. Racing your bike through a mine is seriously rad. It was like a sweet night ride on singletrack, but with a ceiling. For a bunch of pictures by my boy Chris Schmidt, go here. After the mine we hit up some sweet riding before heading straight up a ski hill. Time to push the bike some more. Despite being off the bike I managed to be in 2nd place at this point. Just over the crest of the hill I heard a psssssst and looked back to see Mark pulling off course with a flat tire. I set about to shredding the downhill to the best of my ability. Turns out my ability isn't all the great as about halfway down the descent I heard someone flying up on me. I pulled off in a corner as Tinger rallied past, absolutely railing the descent. By the bottom he had 30 seconds on me. And so it would go. For each of the remaining 4 laps, I would pull him back to even or a minimal gap by the top of each of the couple of major climbs and he would roost the descent and put 45 seconds or so on me and I would pull it all back together... In the end, descending skills won and he put about a minute on me for 2nd place. Any mountain bike race where descending skills trump a slight advantage in aerobic fitness is a proper mountain bike race in my book. Even if you completely ignore the fact that we were racing our bikes through a mine, this was quite possibly the coolest race I've done. ever. The course was brutally hard going up and going down. The brief moments of flat were the only easy bits on the course. The section in the mine was actually one of the easiest parts of the course. I will be back. After the race we kicked it old school style before heading back to Ashland. The next weekend the hometown Mudrutters Bay Days mountain bike race made a comeback. I like to think we put on a quality event and I think everyone had a good time. We've got some good ideas for improvement so that things will be even cooler next year. You best be there!
This past weekend was the annual trip to Wausau for 24-9. This year was a bit of a rough ride for the Pom Pom Squad that Shagged Me. Aaron came down with pneumonia the week before the race and we were unable to locate a 4th in time for the race. So we raced with three. I was having a killer first lap until I drilled my knee into a rock towards the end of the lap. I could barely ride my bike for the rest of the lap, but after some great advice from Mike W, ice and ibuprofen, I was back in action for the rest of the race. After a couple of laps I was 100%. But my quite slow first lap was the nail in the coffin. We stuck around in 3rd for a while, but had to pull the plug in the middle of the night with an eye towards a reasonable performance this weekend at Wilderness. I turned in 7 laps for about 98 miles. This weekend should be pretty fun... Hopefully I'll be fully recovered by then.
That's all I've got for now. Post wilderness McKnight and I are taking the slow road back from PA to O2S and trying to find some good trails and brews. Assuming we find some wireless on the way back, I'll be updating on the way, so check back. Out.