Team Mango

indie race #3 - whidbey island

last sunday’s aptly named “whidbey island mudder” was for me a reaffirmation that mountain biking is by far my favorite sport to participate in — if nothing more than it satisfies my boyhood need to play in the mud.

a couple days before the race, the weather had been quite soggy. driving up to catch the ferry in mukilteo on sunday morning, i drove through some torrential rain. but just about every other car lined up to catch the ferry that morning had a mountain bike attached to it somehow. a little rain, or even a lot, wasn’t going to scare any racers away. in fact, the possibility of mud seemed to draw them out of their warm, cozy homes.

the course for “the mudder” was laid out on someone’s private property — about 15-20 acres of densely forested land. after registering, i took off for a slow test lap to check the course. besides the short rise leading away from the start/finish line, the terrain was amazingly flat — flatter than many of the courses i used to race in nebraska! under the tree cover, the course was a moist forest trail. in the open, though, large areas of mud awaited us. i did my best to steer clear of the mud bogs on my test lap, so as not to gunk up my gears before the race. mostly, the course was a meandering maze with tight turns, some nice technical sections, and a few manmade jumps and dropoffs. the big one was a 10 foot, almost completly vertical drop with a ramp up and sharp left turn at the bottom. this is where most of the spectators would gather in hopes of seeing either amazing bicycle maneuvering, or some hard falls.

the race promoters were testing out a new race format for the series — the technical timed short course. for ‘sport’ class, we would all ride for 75 minutes. each time we crossed the start/finish line, our race number would be logged and our laps counted (each lap was about 3.0 miles). after 75 minutes, a bell would ring, signifying that all racers would finish whatever lap they were on.

because the course was so tight and didn’t present a lot of passing opportunities, i jumped off the start line and powered up the short hill, finding a spot about mid-pack before diving into the singletrack. the first half lap was bumper-to-bumper traffic, although i managed to pass a couple gents, and got passed myself by a couple others.

i felt surprisingly good after my first lap and settled in a groove that i thought i could sustain for 90 minutes. lap #1 took me about 13:30, so i spent lap #2 doing some higher math in my head to figure out how many laps i could get in before the bell (about 5 1/2 laps), and what it would take to squeeze a full six laps (i’d have to reduce my lap time to about 12:30 — not bloody likely). so i held my pace and decided to adjust it depending on how i felt later on.

by the third or fourth lap, the course was really ripped up by the 75+ sport class riders that were on it presently. the covered sections were still holding up, but the open, muddy sections had been thoroughly dug out and were getting really boggy. one section in particular consisted of a fast, sweeping turn on soggy grass, which dumped into a six foot long section of axle-deep muddy water. i didn’t have the joy of experiencing it, but if one were to blow through this puddle just behind another rider, he/she would have been bathed in a wall of mirky, brown, cold water. anyway, after exiting this small pond up a muddy embankment, there was a 30 foot long unrideable stretch of ankle deep mud. this meant hopping of my steed and tromping through the goo. on the far end, i would jump back in the saddle and spend the next quarter mile trying to clear my cleats of the thick paste stuck to the bottom of my shoes. as i pedaled, i would wiggle my feet back and forth trying to scrape the mud off. but when they were clean enough, my cleats did not so much “click” into the pedals as they did “ooooozzze” into them.

around and around i went, counting the laps, and enjoying the ever-thickening coating of mud on my bike and my body. one thing i didn’t enjoy, though, was the coating of mud on my water bottle, which made my swigs of gatorade a little on the gritty side. surprisingly, my gears were remaining relatively mud free and i didn’t have any problems with shifting the entire race. my front disc brake worked like a charm the whole race, but my rear brake (a v-brake on the rim), was pretty much useless.

i had just completed my fifth lap and was about 2 minutes into my sixth when the 75 minute bell rang. my arms and my lower back were starting to get sore from the intensely technical course, so the thought of doing one more lap was a bit daunting. but i continued on and finished feeling quite good (and like i could have pushed myself a bit harder).

i checked in at the scoring table, then headed back to the car to clean up and stuff some food and water down my throat. after resting for a bit, i returned to the finish line to wait for the results to be posted. as the result sheets were displayed, all the racers gathered around to see how they did. i was a bit startled to see that they had shown me only completing 5 laps, not 6 like i had counted. as i continued scanning the results, i heard another person compain about how they know they finished better than what the results showed. and still others said they know other racers finished in front of them. mass pandemonium broke out and i’d say roughly a quarter or more of the racers were soon protesting the results. the race official was being berated with complaints about bogus results and misplaced finishers. entire classes of riders were holding their own conferences to the side to determine amongst themselves what order they finished in. in the end, the final results were largely confirmed by the riders themselves, not the race official. my own gripe was not so much about what place i finished in (i was shown 10th out of 13 riders), but that the number of laps i had completed was shown incorrectly. however, i knew the name and race number of the rider i finished immediately after in the race, and i was indeed shown finishing right after him in the results, so i called it good and went home.

a few days later, the results were posted on the website, and showed me finishing 13th out of 13, but the 9th place finisher was still in 9th. i emailed the official and said “WTF?” and explained my case. he agreed that i had been shown in 10th and took me on my word that i had finished immediately after the guy shown in 9th and readjusted the results. he didn’t have an explanation for the change in the final results but understandably was a bit confused at this point with the myriad complaints he had to field after the race. he admitted “that’s the last time i ever organize a race with that format!”.

so, another sub-mid-pack finish for me this year, but once again i jump a little higher in the overall standings — i’m now 8th out of 42 riders in ‘sport men 30-39’. next race is june 4th at the “bavarian bike & brew festival” in leavenworth!

Posted by jason at May 23, 2005 11:04 PM