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.