Race #2 of the season in the books. Once again I dropped down from the 62-mile race to the 36-mile race. I am glad I did because I stunk at this race.
At 2:06:36 I finished 51st out of 144. Yeah, I sucked. The good news is that I was 18 minutes faster than 2011 and 2012 (more like 11 minutes faster than 2012 due to flat tire). The bad news is my climbing. I carried excellent momentum into the hills but once I lost that momentum I was not able to generate any significant power to get up the hill. The elevation profile is below:
I was very happy with my times on the ‘flat’ areas. This makes sense given most of my training is for endurance. When I compare my climbing times vs. the last couple of years, I was slower on some of the hills. There is an issue
in comparing times: The start line was changed to the city of Hastings. Example of how that impacted climbs: The ‘Three Sisters’ and ‘Hubble Hills’ were at the beginning of the race instead of near the end.
Hill Name | 2013 | 2012 |
Three Sisters | 4:11 | 5:25 |
Hubble Hills | 5:18 | 5:48 |
Gun Lake | 5:00 | 4:44 |
Little Pine | 2:28 | 2:13 |
The Wall | 2:24 | 1:54 |
Grave Yard | 2:04 | 1:55 |
Regardless, it still shows that my climbing times are not improving. Also, I couldn’t stop my calf from cramping on some climbs. This is very unusual for me. When I approached the finish line, I noticed there were a ton of riders behind me. I stood to sprint the last 100 yards and almost went over the bars. My legs were just mush. So I had to do a sitting sprint.
I am tired of not being very competitive at mountain bike racing. In 2008 it wasn't 'IF' i will get the podium, but instead what place "ON" the podium. Not it's everything I can do to finish the race. The training requirements are very different from triathlons to mountain bike racing, but I'm still very frustrated on my decline in performance.
I still enjoyed the race and impressed at it’s growth. I believe it was 3,000 racers and right on par with Iceman in terms of size and atmosphere.
I was bib #2563
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