NOTE: I started writing this entry soon after the race happened, but it fell by the wayside. I just noticed it sitting on my desktop, so I thought I’d post it for the record… and to continue my exercises in self-deprecation. I’ve got one more entry for the last race of the season which I’ll post… oh…. next year sometime?
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Sunday, July 10, was the “Padden Mountain Pedal” — the fifth race in the Indie Series. My support crew — Pam, Alexander and Louise— joined me for a day trip up to Bellingham for the race. Instead of a test lap of the course, we all took a relaxing spin around Lake Padden before the race. Then the three of them went off to play in the park while I did my dirty work.
From the start line, I took off with the bulk of the pack and decided to see if I could keep up with the pace. I did… for about the first mile. But as soon as the course turned upwards, I started lagging behind and the pack breezed by me. Oh well, typical for this season, I’m just here to finish.
The course was an excellent mix of terrain and trail types. The first half wound gently uphill with a fast, smooth, gravelly doubletrack. There were a few uphill technical root crossings, but nothing that made anyone jump off their bike and run. There were, however, a few very short steep rises that were slippery enough to force most riders to run instead of spinning their wheels. At the top of the hill (about 500 vertical feet up from the start), the trail turned into singletrack and descended the other side of the hill. It was a long series of switchbacks, with each leg being about 500 yards long. The trail was exceptionally smooth and very fast, which made some of the small maneuvers along the trail quite exciting. Each switchback ended with a 180 degree turn which required a leg out for stability.
On the last leg of the switchback section (on my first lap), the trail came up to a large tree directly in the path of travel. The trail then made a 90 degree turn to the left while simultaneously dropping down about 6 vertical feet over exposed roots, then a 90 degree turn back to the right at the bottom, then continuing sharply downhill from there (I’ll call it the “big ass drop” or BAD). As I hadn’t preridden the course, I had to assess this situation on the fly. I decided to go for it. I got down into the roots then immediately felt my weight too far forward. The ass end of my bike rose up and I made an emergency ejection, stepping clean over the handlebars and coming to a running stop while my bike bounded end over end behind me. It was one of those wipeouts where I’m not sure exactly how I survived, but I did. No one was behind me, so I picked up my bike and continued on.
About half a mile later on a flat straight-away, I reached down to discover that my water bottle had flown the coup, most likely during my previous endo. Great, now I’m screwed, I thought. Hopefully Pam was standing at the start line watching so I could have her give me her water bottle. As I finished my first lap, I kept a sharp eye out for Pam, but didn’t see her in the crowd. The water station further up the trail would be my only source of water now, I guess.
Lap Two started out tamely enough, huffing it up the hill to the top and back down the other side. I broke into the switchback section again and came upon the BAD again. I wanted to get a better look at it before trying the drop again in earnest, so I decided to hop off the bike and run down the drop to check out a potential line for the next lap. At the bottom, a young woman was standing there waiting to take a photo of some friend of hers attempt the BAD. I asked her if she’d seen an errant water bottle lying in the woods nearby, but she hadn’t. I hopped back on my bike and hurriedly took off. Half a second later she yelled “wait! here it is!!!”. In my excitement I hit the brakes a little too hard and went endo again — this time with an audience. Lovely. I ran back up to her and indeed she had found my water bottle lying underneath a fern. I thanked her profusely, if not a little embarrassingly, and took off, quenching my incredible thirst.
The rest of lap two was a complete technical disaster. At every tricky part in the trail, I seemed to lose my balance. The simplest switchback turn dumped me on my side. Several times I couldn’t clip out of my pedals in time and went down still attached to my bike. After another endo, I fumbled with clipping back into my pedals and went endo again! What was wrong with me? I stopped for a moment to catch my breath, shake off, and have a little zen moment to calm down (somehow I doubt that serious competitors ever stop mid-race to have a zen moment…).
I took off again, rounded the start/finish line and successfully completed laps three and four with much trouble at all. To redeem my previous performance to this point, I successfully maneuvered down and through the BAD (on my bike) on both laps three and four! A little meditation did the trick after all. My shoddy coordination had disappeared. However, my stamina was quickly fading and I was walking more and more of the uphills. I wasn’t surprised at all to finish second to last out of about 20 riders.
Posted by jason at August 26, 2005 2:42 PMYour lack of coordination was probably an early symptom of gall stones.
Posted by: johnny methane at August 29, 2005 1:39 PM