Since the CX season ended, I've been following the advice of Sam Elliott's character in the Big Lebowski and taking 'er easy dude. I took 1-2 weeks completely off, but I'm not one to take months off from doing anything so I've been working out when I feel like it, and riding the bike outside in the amazing weather we've had this winter. Seems like every weekend I've been able to get out on the mountain bike and/or dirt jumping bike.
Basically I ride or work out when it sounds like a fun thing to do, not because I have to or should. You could say that's true all year 'round for me, though. It's never a chore, it's part of my life. I haven't had any races to train for but I still enjoy the feeling of being tired out.
Today's Cold Bear Challenge winter mountain bike at Hillside Park was my first race of 2012. We are fortunate this year to have 3 series of winter MTB races in the Twin Cities: Hillside, Murphy Hanrehan, and Carver Lake. It's great because by the time the summer racing season starts, I'll have some good racing in without having to resort to road, crits, TT's or similar unappealing activities. Obviously one doesn't want to be burnt out by March, but these races are fun and keep the skills sharp without getting repetitive. The conditions can change from day to day or even lap to lap, so they are always interesting.
Today's race was mostly on dirt, with some packed snow and unfortunately for me, some small ice sections. The temp was an unbelievable 40°+, feeling downright hot in the sunny start/finish area. I love racing in the winter. The air is so clean and fresh and dry, no bugs, the woods are open and not full of undesirable plants, and the aforementioned unpredictable course conditions are fun to ride in.
After some deliberation about which bike to ride, fat or skinny, I went with skinny. Although I have a shiny black 9zero7 fat bike that is pretty cool, if it's not really snowy there's no reason to ride the thing. So I rode the hardtail, which I had originally put away for the winter sometime around Thanksgiving but had taken back out when it was clear that winter was delaying its arrival. The hardtail is not the ideal choice for the rough and rugged Hillside but the full suspension bike(s) are not in working order currently.
I entered the 2 lap race for skinny tires, where we had 13 entries. Most people that were doing 2 laps entered the fat bike class, apparently trying to get as much use out of their expensive, purpose-built steeds as possible. The race started fine, although at this time of year I wouldn't care if it didn't. I was just riding faster than normal with about 80 other people at the same trail at the same time. I finished the first lap without issue, somewhere around 47 minutes and in the top 5 in my class, although I could see a couple guys pretty close in front of me.
My warm up was not very hard so the first lap was kind of my warm up. I decided to up the pace and try to race hard for the second lap. This aspiration ended abruptly.
I came around a corner a little too hot. There happened to be someone at that very corner filming the race on video camera. I may have been hot dogging for camera, and stuffed my front wheel into the end of a log. I flew at least 6 feet down the trail in a superman impersonation. I actually had to walk back up the trail to get to my bike. It was one of those crashes that is embarrassing at first but later seems pretty funny. It didn't cause any harm to myself or bike and it sort of gets the crashing out the way. But not today.
Shortly after, I came to the twisty downhill limestone stair case. Normally it isn't a problem other than being bumpy. As I came toward the stairs I heard a guy saying "Corner is slippery." The problem with this is that he was far away. I barely heard him say it, and was wondering which corner he was referring to. There are plenty of corners in any one spot at Hillside. Then I saw him at the next corner so I assumed he was talking about the corner he was standing at. Bad assumption apparently. As I came almost the end of the curve in the stairs the front tire came out from under me and down I went. Luckily I was moving forward at decent speed so my knees hit the limestone with forward momentum and came away with some scrapes and soreness but nothing more.
It took about 20 minutes of pedaling for my knees to stop hurting but at least they eventually settled down. Feeling my luck had run out, I was more cautious the rest of the race. Normally I'm good at not crashing if nothing else, but sometimes feel that's simply a consequence of going slow. So it's good to crash now and again to show that boundaries are being approached. Usually it's preferable to do it somewhere other than on top of limestone slabs though.
I managed to catch the people who passed me while I was on the ground or pulling my bike out of the brush. I finished in 5th place. Really it was just fun to race the bike again. It's only been about 6 weeks since the last CX race, but that's plenty.
I'm really looking forward to this season and it's great to get things started.
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