Musckatatuck Park hosts 3 mountain bike races over the July 4th weekend down in North Vernon, IN. Last year the race conditions were a totally different story because while we camped the day before, it rained nonstop for 10 hours. This year was the exact opposite with beautiful cyan skies and high temperatures. This made the trail conditions perfect and extremely fast, but not too dusty. On Saturday I raced both the short track race and the downhill. The short track race was a 30 minute high intensity race where the race official displays a timing clock and when it hits 30 minutes he signals to the racers 1 lap remaining and those at the front of the pack then fight it out to the finish. My results could not have been any better as I won the race by a small margin of time. Next up was the downhill race which like it sounds downhill. Each racer gets 2 runs and the smallest sum of time wins. 3rd place for me in the downhill race.
Day 2 of racing was the main XC event and brought out a large field of 74 regional competitors for my category as we toed the line to rip 3 laps as fast as we could. The starting gun went off and we sprinted the next 200 yards to the start of the singletrack. I rode myself into the #2 slot entering the woods with the rest of the heat right on my wheel.
The first several miles of race start are always sketchy because we are all riding on nerves trying to avoid getting dropped behind the leaders. I noticed my front wheel bouncing through turns and over the rock transitions until I realized I had my Lefty lock out. (suspension turned off) I held my 2nd place position for the first lap until I let another racer do the work for the next lap.
By the time the begain rounding the loop for the 3rd time I could feel the pain of racing at this pace and it was causing my power to fade along with small bike handling mistakes that come with fatigue. One of the trails technical sections took us down under a dark bridge, through a rocky creek, up a muddy bank, up slippery roots, up to slimy rocks and up a steep technical climb.
My front wheel slid out on the tree roots and stopped my momentum giving the competitors behind me a chance to pass. Instead of letting this happen, I took off running next to my bike and through my leg over the seat mid air and landed on my saddle right in the path of the slimy rocks going up the steep climb and cleanly made it to the top. Thank you cyclocross skills!
The rest of this lap I changed positions a few times with my other competitors who also were at the front as we fought for the lead. I crossed the finish in 5th place in my category to see my financee and chief waiting for me across the line.
I rode a short cool down with a friend and found a water spigot about 4 ft off the ground which I turned on full blast while sitting under it, exactly what I needed to cool down after this race! Seriously, racing bikes is awesome.
Thanks to my finacee, my friend Pat Hirschfeld (awesome photos http://www.hirschphotos.com/) and Team Manager, Coach and all my sponsors!
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