Getting a little dirty....

I decided to begin my racing season at this past weekend’s opener of the Singletrack Cycles Westside Mountain Bike Series. It was a great chance to stretch my legs a bit in anticipation of the 2011 road racing season. The race was held at Dash Point State Park on a really fun course made up of slightly muddy and rooty singletrack with just enough elevation change to give the heart and lungs a real workout. The weather gods even cooperated, providing racers with sunny skies and temperatures in the upper 30s. All in all, a great recipe for an early season mountain bike race.

Being primarily a roadie, I generally don’t race my mountain bike more than a few times a year and then usually with no real expectations. My approach to this race was just to use it to add a little intensity to my training and as an excuse to escape the snows of the Methow Valley, if only for a day. My race started pretty calmly with me settled in near the back of a thirty or so strong field strung out nose to tail on the twisty singletrack trails. It took a good part of the partial lap that opened the race before enough space was appearing between riders to get a good look at the trails and to begin to think about passing.

As the course began to reveal itself (I didn’t get a chance to pre-ride), I was reminded of just how much fun the correct amount of mud can be. You need enough to get dirty and make the ride a little tricky, but not so much that it bogs you down. I was very happy to have left large aggressive tires on my bike as opposed to the faster rolling tires I might have usually opted for. Although this early season effort put the hurt on me at times, playing in the mud for most of the race left me giddy.

From a competitive standpoint, the race passed pretty unremarkably. I passed a few riders here and there, got passed by others, and continually swapped places with a couple more. When the end finally came, I’d finished 20th of 27, or about what I would have expected for my current fitness. I had a lot of fun and may try to add a couple more mountain bike races to my schedule before the road season kicks off for me in a couple months.