Coming along nicely

This past Sunday was my second race of the year and the third race in the Singletrack Cycles Westside Mountain Bike Series. It was held on the trails at King County’s Soaring Eagle Park near Sammamish. Having last raced nearly a month ago, I was hoping to see a little improvement in my riding and my results just to let me know my early season training is progressing as it should. While this is event was still “just for fun” in my mind and having no real expectations for it, I decided I needed to approach it a little more seriously to test my early season fitness appropriately. The race started up a gradual climb for maybe a ¼ mile before entering the singletrack that made up nearly all of the course. Another feature of this opening stretch was a fairly significant muddy section over the upper half that tried to slow you down just when you were fighting for position to enter the singletrack.


I charged up the hill with the rest of the field, trying to hold my position through the sticky mud and be as far up as I could entering the singletrack. I certainly went out harder than I had at the first race of the season. I was moderately successful and entered the singletrack approximately mid-pack. This course was far less technical than the Dash Point course had been and really had only a few spots that were really muddy or rooty. I tried to push as hard as I could throughout the race, but kept developing bouts of nausea. Whether it was from effort or too big a breakfast, I’m not sure. I’d ease my pace a bit and then begin to feel better.

For two and a half of the three laps, I felt pretty good, not great, but good enough for this point in the season. For that last half lap though, I really began to feel the effort and lost any sense of smoothness or flow on the trails. All my turn ins were late and I began to miss my lines. I made my way through it though and ended up 14th in the Sport 40-49 field. Definitely an improvement over a month earlier as was the gap to the leader. All in all, the training seems to be progressing right on schedule with my first road race less than two weeks away now and I’m excited for my “real” racing to begin.

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.