Team Mango

Back Into It

I decided at the last moment to enter my first mountain bike race in four years on Saturday. I’ve been doing some light training this winter and spring, so I thought this would be a nice race-as-training-ride event. It was the sixth race in the Westside MTB Series put on by BuDu Racing. And even though they don’t officially sanction their members for MTB races, this would be my first race wearing the ByrneInvent team kit.

As the 60 or so Sport class riders were gathering at the start line to be seeded by age group, a cyclist came speeding up the road behind us yelling “WE NEED A MEDIC!”. Some guy in the stunt jump area of the park where the BMX’ers hang out had apparently taken a hard fall and sustained a head injury. The race official called 911, and delayed our race for half an hour so that the emergency vehicles could get through. Within minutes, two fire trucks, the fire chief’s truck, an ambulance and 3 police squad cars sped past us and made their way to the jump area. I didn’t hear any details about the injury other than overhearing someone that watched the paramedics do their work say that they had to induce paralysis in order to insert a breathing tube. This sounded to me like a pretty extreme measure for paramedics to be taking in the field, but apparently it *is* done. I also heard someone ask another person who had witnessed the crash, “was it bad?”. The response was a wide-eyed and very solemn, “yeah, it’s really fucking bad.”

The 30 minute delay allowed me and others the opportunity to warm up some more and get familiar with the course. I’ve done many races at South Seatac Park, but the course is always different, owing to the maze of trails that can be cordoned off in countless ways. So a quick lap was just the thing to prep me for the race. Best of all, it allowed me to scout out the best opportunities for passing riders on what has always been an incredibly tight course.

The emergency crew cleared out of the park, and the starting gun went off about 45 minutes after our scheduled 11:00a start. There were 20 riders in my age group, and as we sped up the road before entering the singletrack, I found my usual place in the middle of the pack. A guy 3 riders ahead of me was already slowing me and some other riders down after 5 minutes. We waited until the trail crossed one of the park’s road and then all made a burst to get around. I wound up at the front of this small pack as we entered the singletrack again, which meant that *I* would now be holding up traffic if I didn’t keep the pace up. To my amazement, I began pulling away from those behind me, and began to edge up on another guy in front. Again, once I caught up to him, I waited for the wide spot in the trail, but powered past him. By the end of the first lap, I had passed 3 or 4 riders and not been passed myself. I hit the lap button on my heart rate monitor at 0:20:30.

Lap two was spent largely on my own, with no one in immediate sight of me, either in front or behind. So without other riders with which to gage my progress, I concentrated on keeping my pace up without setting myself up to bonk later on. My lap 2 time was 0:20:03.

On the third and final lap, I caught up to another rider. But just as I thought I was ready to pass, he would gain some ground on me. I caught up to him again only to have him pull away once more, and on and on like this through most of the lap. But my chance came on a steep climb, when he lost traction and had to put a foot down. I cranked up past him, and he gave me a good-spirited “nice job, man!”. He added, “we’ve almost got the guy in front of us”. Indeed, a few turns later and I saw my next target. I had almost caught up to him at the highest point on the course when it turns into a long, curving and very fast descent. I kept on his tail as best as I could and noted that he was a little wobbly on some of the tighter curves. And then the moment that I had been hoping for happened; he took a sliding fall on a turn right in front of me. I yelled out “rider down!” to alert the riders behind me, which also prompted him to jump out of my way as I sped through. This would be my last passing opportunity, so the rest of the race consisted of trying to outrun anyone behind me. In the last few turns of the course, I could hear a few riders closing in behind me, but I crossed the finish line before they got to me. Turns out I had slowed down on a bit on this lap; completing it in 0:20:40.

Results have me in 7th place out of 20 riders in the Sport 40+ group, which completely surpassed my expectations! The Indie Series MTB race are just starting up for the season, so I’ll definitely be getting back into the sport this year. Road racing can wait a few months…

Posted by jason at April 13, 2009 2:11 PM