Team Mango

indie race #1 - belfair

another year, another race season.

i’ve really been looking forward to this season after abandoning last season due to a cavalcade of illnesses. i started my training in earnest in december with weights and some light cycling. i soon abandoned my training owing to a huge workload at the office and managed only to get in one good ride per week.

but at least i was staying healthy.

the biggest news this week comes in the area of technology. this year… well, actually saturday night before the race, i finally made the switch to disc brakes (avid BB7 mechanical disc brakes). i’ve always heard that one should never be wrenching on one’s bike the night before the a race, but i’d had my new brakes and wheel sitting in my shop for months and couldn’t resist trying them out.

my kestrel CSX frame does not have disc brake mountain tabs on the rear triangle, so i was only able to install a disc on the front. but that suits me fine since 90% of braking effective comes from the front wheel anyway.

the installation was amazingly easy. simply bolt the calipers to the fork, mount the wheel, and adjust the pads and that’s that.

when i first arrived at the race, i had about 2 hours to spare before my start time. so, i hopped on my bike to test the brakes out. when i first applied the brakes, the disc was squealing HORRIBLY! this was going to be embarrassing if i had to do the whole race with loudly squealing brakes. but i did some quick adjustments and rode around for another 15 minutes and the squealing soon dissipated.

and for those of you who have experienced the tremendous difference when upgrading from cantilever to v-brakes, the disc brake had an equally impressive jump in grabbiness over v-brakes! i almost went endo on my first couple of hard stops, but soon got the feel for them.

one other new gadget is a recently upgraded heart rate monitor — the polar S520. besides monitoring my heart rate (what else would you expect a heart rate monitor to do?), it has a built in bike computer (speed, distance) with a wireless remote sensor. also, i’m able to upload my readings to my PC so i can create these nifty and extremely useful graphs! (the graph below is from sunday’s race).

anyway, on to the race…

this race is the first in a new series called the “indie series”. for some reason, round and round productions, the promoter of the WIM series i used to race in, scheduled all of their races in spokane this year. because of that, the good folks at JF2 racing decided to hold non-NORBA sanctioned races for those of us in western washington — hence the “indie” moniker. this first race was held in belfair, washington, just west of bremerton on the kitsap peninsula.

given my lack of adequate training, i started the race by taking my rightful place at the back of the pack early on. there would be no grand delusions of killing myself in the first 1/2 mile to fight for good placement that i knew i could never maintain. besides, i didn’t want anyone to be around if my brakes started squealing again.

the course was run on what was usually a motocross trail. i hate these courses. they are full of whoop-dee-doos ad nauseum, lots of exposed roots, and loose golfball-sized rocks. on the other hand, it was probably the flattest course i’ve ridden in washington. there was only about 200’ difference between the high and low spots, so i’m guessing the elevation gain was 800’ per lap max.

the roots, most of all, made it a very technical, yet very slow course. there was rarely an occasion where one could build up any speed. technical skills are where i excel, so the course was great practice if not enjoyable.

about halfway through the first lap, i was alone. at times it seemed more like a leisurely ride through the forest rather than an organized race (except for the $25 entry fee and the race number attached to my handlebars). i regularly saw yellow caution tape, so i knew i was still on course. but i pedaled on, concentrating most on technical skills while still moderately challenging my lungs and heart — i kept my HR in the high 160’s to low 170’s.

on lap two, it was more of the same, although i toned it down a notch as i was running out of steam. my arms and hands were also getting numb from the brutal and relentless pounding of the rough trail. there were a few steep climbs that required a dismount, and a couple times i had trouble clipping my shoes back into the pedals. i fiddled around, trying to get my shoes to clip in while simultaneously bounding down the next stretch of rooty descent. with no feet to support me, that left my crotch to handle the blunt force of each drop. oooowwwww….

oh, and i fell once.

on and on i pedaled, crossing the finish line in 1:40:58 (from my HRM). for a 14 miles course, that’s a meager 8.3 mph average. and since this was a fairly low-budget production (non-NORBA sanctioned — that’s a totally different story), there was no official timing device. they simply wrote down our race numbers in the order we came in (i was 16th out of 20 in my class) and awarded points accordingly (60 points for me, 250 points for first place). to race time is kind of like school without grades, although it would have been nice to compare my time with those who were actually in shape. anyway, i collected my points and am already looking forward to the next race in april here in seattle.

i suppose i should start training again.

Posted by jason at March 1, 2005 12:48 AM