On Saturday, I began what has, so far, been a very successful block of training.
The kickoff was a ride with Matt over the Mississippi River to the levee system in Arkansas. He’d been making plans to go on his own epic overnight adventure via the same route, only taking it all the way into Missouri. The ride out of town is always scenic…
Once we were across the river, we made our way to the levee. What we soon found put a bit of a damper on our enthusiasm… gates. Lots of gates. You can’t go more than a mile without stopping and hoisting your bike over one or two gates like the one you see in the background of the first photo.
Some rare gate-free views…. and cows.
By about the 11th gate, the novelty had worn off, and our progress was painfully slow. So, we bailed off the levee onto a road that took us west until we were on the north side of Marion, AR. The wind was a feisty 20+ MPH straight out of the south, and, after pushing into it for a while, Matt finally succumbed to “head on saddle” disorder:
…which I found to be amusing
After a few minutes, it was back out into the wind, where we made our way back to the levee and to the bridge, where we did some sightseeing before braving the wind and trucks to get back over (it hadn’t been bad on the way out, but on the way back it was both hands on the bars and hang on for dear life as the combination of speeding trucks and wind gusts buffeted the pedestrian crossing.
With all of the photo, gate, bathroom, head-on-saddle, and navigational stops, we ended up with 70 something miles and about 6.75 hours of time (elapsed). The pace had been mostly easy, so I felt pretty good afterward, and looked forward to the plans for Sunday’s training intensity.
Sunday morning, I watched a little bit of Paris-Roubaix with breakfast while Matt headed out on the scooter to the LosLocos Duathlon to spectate/heckle. I left on my road bike soon after and met him on the outskirts of the course. From there, he motorpaced me for about an hour (my first time to do that for an extended period of time). I fell in love with motorpacing out there- it’s essentially the same feeling/intensity of a group ride, but without any of the obnoxious stuff that comes with a “swinging dick” group ride.
I didn’t take any photos, because once Matt got the hang of being the scooter pilot, I was basically sweating out of my eyeballs. It was an excellent training ride. Here’s a photo from afterward, though…
Life has been turned down to a dull roar since 6 Hours of Warrior Creek. I’ve been recovering- much better, I might add, than I have in the past from racing Ouachita Challenge, which is ALWAYS the same weekend. I was feeling prettymuch back to normal by around Wednesday. The most exciting thing for me? My “winner’s interview” was posted on the Trans-Sylvania Epic facebook page.
Matt, on the other hand, was feeling more than back to normal, and raced the local training series crit…
He was 2nd in the race, but a winner in the “how to not look like a cat 4 on the podium” contest.
All of this resting has given me lots of time to get impatient about waiting for my mountain bike to get here…
Its arrival should happen sometime next week… which lands it right in the middle of a gargantuan training camp week that coach Andy has requested of me. I’ve got a very loose, weather and bike shipping-based plan to go on a grand tour of Arkansas. Normally, I’d just let it sit and ride the bike I’ve been using successfully for the past two years. However, because of the relatively close proximity of the Ogre 150 and DK200 races- both of which I plan on doing on the new bike, I want to get home and get it built ASAP.
So, I’ll end up kicking off the Arkansas Epic in somewhat familiar territory- riding from home, over the Mississippi River, and finding gravel on Saturday, then driving over to Syllamo early in the week to train until I get an exact arrival time on the new machine. At that point, I’ll come home, take a rest day to build, then head back out for places like (in no particular order) Lake Sylvia, the Ouachita/Womble/LOViT area, Eagle Rock, and possibly up to North West Arkansas to explore trails and gravel that I’ve only heard about on the internet.
It should be a fun, quasi-spontaneous adventure, hopefully resulting in killer fitness and a good story or two.
This weekend was pretty laid back… I went out on a group ride with the 901 Racing guys again on Saturday, but, being kinda cold and rainy, everyone was having a good time riding just hard enough to not be cold. We rode through some of the more “scenic” areas of North Memphis, which I always find to be interesting. The air outside of Madea’s Soul Food Cafe smelled like my grandmother’s house. I think it was turnip greens.
On the way back, Matt and I decided to take another “scenic route,” and rode about a mile on the unfinished part of the Shelby Farms greenline- a former rail bed with no tracks and a little overgrowth. It’s pretty mundane on a mountain bike, but the road bikes added a small level of difficulty. We tried taking a different neighborhood route home from the greenline, but ended up somehow bailing on that plan and grinding it out down Macon Road. It’s a lower speed-limit road (35mph), but it’s mostly narrow, and there was a good bit of traffic. Even though we didn’t have and run-ins or close calls with ignorant drivers, for whatever reason, it induced a panic attack. I yelled at Matt to pull over in a neighborhood, and I spent several minutes gasping, shaking, and crying on my handlebars.
It’s been more than a year now, and I still get caught off guard. We made it home, though, and I engaged in retail therapy for the remainder of the afternoon.
Enough about that- in much more awesome, exciting, and inspirational news:
LAUREN FREAKING HALL…
…WINNING GHENT-WEVELGEM.
Here’s a quick summary from the bowels of Velonews… where if you click on the link for “Results: Ghent-Wevelgem,” you only get a listing of the men’s race. It took a little digging, but here’s the rundown.
If you don’t know who Lauren is, we used to race against each other back around 2008-ish, when I was on Kenda, and she had just joined the local ProBike team with infamous local hammer Debbie Milne.
A random from back in the day… Lauren is in the blue shorts:
I bet not many of you have a photo of results where you beat the winner of any of this year’s Euro classics ;)
By the end of that season, she and Debbie were prettymuch unstoppable…
That photo is from the last race of that season- a crit in Birmingham where she and Debbie double-teamed the field until they escaped sometime in the last few laps. I’d done a ton of chasing, so I had nothing left for a pack sprint and decided my best bet was to attack into no-man’s land with 2 to go. I got away and landed the 3rd place spot behind the dynamic duo.
P.S. Floyd Landis was really drunk.
Lauren moved out to Colorado and started working her way up the pro cycling ladder, and now she’s a freaking rockstar with honest World Championship and Olympic potential. It was the highlight of my weekend to see that race result.
In other “amazing/inspiring” news, the Barkley 100 Ultramarathon is happening right now. It started at 6:45 on Saturday. Out of 35 starters (including local Memphis Badass, Billy Simpson), only one man remains on course (Jared Campbell), looking as if he’s going to finish. I don’t know if “brutal” is really a descriptive enough term for that “race.”
In other training news, I decided to call off my quest to further lose weight. I hit the mid 140’s last week, but that coincided with feeling like hell on the bike. I’m guessing there’s a reason why my body has really insisted on staying at 142 pounds, so I’m going to quit arguing with it and just maintain 141-142. With the muscle I’ve put on from lifting/MMAing, I’m definitely a leaner/meaner 142 than I was this time last year. I’ll take it.
That was last Friday- the final round of anesthetic injections to my left hamstring.
Also on the list of needle-related appointments was a trip by scooter out to Chiropractic Memphis for acupuncture. One of my former students is working at Affinity Acupuncture in Nashville and comes to Memphis every two weeks for a Friday/Saturday. It’s the only thing I’ve found that makes my lower back completely pain-free. I’d highly recommend him if you’re in either Memphis or Nashville (comment here or though facebook or email me for his contact info).
I can’t wait until it’s scooter time, all the time.
The doc gave me the go-ahead on the previous visit to train as normal following the injections, so, on Saturday, I took to the road for a spirited group ride. Turns out, when the shortest/most intense intervals you’ve done in the past 4 months are 10 minutes long, the attacks/chases/etc. of such a ride create quite the pain cave.I spent the remainder of the afternoon resisting the urge to eat everything in sight.
It was nice, so I cooked outside:
Here’s a random dog photo. Penny’s tail is always blurry unless she’s sleeping.
Sunday was a much-needed recovery day, then Monday was an interval day. I started with some greenline/trail to warm up, then went to my usual spot in the middle of Shelby Farms where there’s a long, flat, and lightly-trafficked road that’s great for that sort of thing.
That’s been laying on the unfinished part of the greenline for a couple of weeks now.
Today, I’ve taken the chance of another recovery day to do my usual errands, which included a trip out to Bike World/Nimblewear USA headquarters to finally put in the order for my 2014 Brickhouse Racing kit! Looks like it should get here in about 3 weeks. Looks-wise it’s mostly the same as last year. I’ve basically just changed some sponsor logos around and gone with an upgraded fabric/cut for the jersey & bibs.
I know my posts have been a little on the light side as of late. Trust me, I’m looking forward to some excitement just as much as you are. Hopefully the last few “serious” workouts prior to Warrior Creek go smoothly (the high notes- a 5 hour MTB ride tomorrow, another group ride Saturday, and one last grunt of 2x20min intervals on Tuesday) and I arrive in North Carolina ready to smash some pedals… or at least make a good story in the process of trying.
I don’t usually go through my day taking pictures of everything, but yesterday was an exception by coincidence. I spent a large part of the day training in one way or another. First, it was some weights at the UFK “Body Focus” class. With the weather starting to get a little nicer, the roll-up door of the gym was open, and the sun made for some nice shadowy photos…
After class and a hearty post-workout breakfast, I ran to whole foods then back home to ride. I needed 2.75 hours of saddle time, and I wasn’t sure about trail conditions, so I went out for a road ride. I decided I’d add some gravel to make it more interesting, but found a “road closed to thru traffic” sign on the road that links to the gravel. Undeterred, I decided I’d check it out since about 95% of the time, that just means that cars can’t get through and bikes are OK (ok being relative to your comfort level with hike-a-bike and/or bushwhacking). Unfortunately, at the far end of the gravel, there was a bridge under construction, and a full work crew was in the construction site giving me the “don’t even try” look when I approached.
I’ll have to save that one for a Sunday…
Once I was finished riding, I cleaned up, ate, and did some dinner prep. Since MMA class is from 7-8, and we usually eat about that time, I’ve been making all or part of dinner beforehand so that Ryan and Matt can either eat while I’m at class or we can eat soon after I’m home. Last night was baked chicken, kale salad, and baked potatoes…
Last night’s class was a little MMA-style grappling…
Days like that are some of my favorites and make me appreciate today’s recovery a little more than usual, because I’ll do it all again tomorrow.
Recovery is going pretty OK with my injected leg. The cortisone-affected area feels prettymuch normal, and the part of my hamstring that received what looks like 4 or 5 sticks (it’s hard to crane my head around and count in a mirror) is just looking/feeling bruised now. I was able to get out for a good ride and met up with some friends along the way. About 3/4s of the way through, this happened:
Those guys had no clue how to get their car unstuck… guess they don’t teach the art of rockin’ it in the academy! Along those lines, you’ll notice at the very end of the video the lack of a “thank you” from captain grouch in the driver’s seat… he was telling us to get our bikes out of the way because he wanted to drive the car on the high spot where we were parked. Apparently, he was trying to show his partner a “short cut” under the nearby bridge over the trailhead.
I’m very thankful that recovery has been easy enough that I can stay pretty active. I’m incredibly determined this year to keep my race weight a solid 140 pounds and under. I’ve been hanging out in the 142-144 area. It doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re already eating a very clean, filling diet that’s maintaining your weight, it’s basically an act of sheer willpower and hunger to lose anything. I did, however, decide that I’d reward myself once I arrived at said weight… not with some stupid pile of junk food or something like that. I designed a pair of NikeID shoes instead…
I ordered them already, but I’ve imposed a 140 pound weight limit on them.
My #1 advice for losing anyone looking to lose weight? Control your appetite.
First off, low fat diets are totally bogus. The archaic recommendation to not eat fat is based off of old school misinformation and not off of any real science or human research. Fat and fiber make you feel full. Go ahead and eat bacon (the nitrate-free type), red meat, whatever… just watch portion size. While the fat in your food isn’t actually clogging your arteries, it is high in calories, so when you see that a serving of steak is 4oz, you’re in for a nasty wake-up call when you put that juicy ribeye on a scale. So, go for the full-fat versions of everything. While you’re at it, QUIT TAKING THE #@$*ING YOLKS OUT OF YOUR EGGS.
You’re going to get a lot more success by eliminating any sources of refined sugar (other than what you eat just before/during/after training). Eating something that’s mostly carbohydrates and little fiber/fat/protein is going to make your blood sugar rise quickly then fall below normal (I’m not going to take the time here to give you all of the physiology, but that’s the bare basics of it). Turns out, low blood sugar is a stimulus for hunger. Bonus tip: consumption of the artifical sweeteners in diet drinks will also result in low blood sugar and thus, hunger.
I’ve basically lived by that advice to successfully manage/maintain my weight (except after a long ride or bike race- I cut loose a little more then). I’ve also reduced alcohol consumption to 1 or 2 nights a week (because, let’s face it- Just Riding Along wouldn’t be the same if we were stone cold sober).
So, now that I eat mostly “good” food, I’m basically stuck with reducing the amount of food I eat. There’s no way around it, trick, or secret… I’m just hungry. It’s will power. It makes me angry at chocolate bars when I see them. However, I think of things like riding up hills, my love of looking muscle-y, custom Nike shoes, and find something distracting to do. It’s been working slow and steady, but I’m looking forward to adding in some extra training to keep things rolling in the downward direction.
I rode for about 50 minutes yesterday, and everything felt pretty normal. I also called and talked to the doctor about hamstring stuff and voiced my concerns about his diagnosis/prognosis for the area. He said that the current treatment (saturating the area with an anesthetic in 3 rounds of injections), won’t heal the old injury, but he’s reasonably confident that it will prevent the area from “activating” while I ride. I also told him that I couldn’t find much reassuring information about PRP Therapy, and he said that he does it somewhat regularly on area athletes (two of the Memphis Grizzlies and an assortment of University of Memphis athletes) with about a 70% success rate. I’m not writing it off altogether, but it’s not something I’m looking to do any time this season.
He did approve me going to about “2/3rds strength” on my riding, so I plan on enjoying another gentle hour or two this afternoon to work on my tan lines. I also plan on going up to UFK during MMA class time and punching the heavy bag a little while watching my classmates spar and whatnot. It’s still very therapeutic to my brain, and burns off a few extra calories while I’m not riding a ton.
I’ve had a couple of people give me funny looks when I talk about learning Mixed Martial Arts. It’s odd, because if my reply to someone asking “Where’d you get that bruise on your leg?” was any number of specific things… say kickboxing, jujitsu, karate, whatever… they’ll react somewhat normally. However, if I say, “MMA” or “Mixed Martial Arts,” people get weird. So, I feel that it’s time to really explain what the draw is for me to pick up MMA as a side hobby to cycling.
#1- No one is here just to “do their bests and finish.” Don’t get me wrong- I’m not saying that you’re less of a person if your goal is to participate in some sort of competition without the intent to win said competition. I’m happy to see anyone pony up and pin a number. However, the fact that no one gets into a fight without at least having SOME belief that they could win that fight makes it a huge competitive draw for me.
#2- It’s challenging. Really challenging. It’s a sport that takes an immense amount of skill… and you need to be able to think and execute said skills all while being punched in the face or thrown on the ground.
#3- Women are much more equally billed than in the sport of cycling. While you may think of MMA as being uber-infused with testosterone, where women are not much more than pretty things who hold up signs to tell you what round we’re on (I’ll admit, that part is kinda lame), there is a LOT more respect for female fighters in the MMA world than there is for female athletes in the cycling world.
Perfect example: The most recent UFC fight night featured a co-main event- a women’s championship fight, and a men’s championship fight. During the pre-fight tv show, the women’s fight received about 75% of the air time… not necessarily because of anything gender-related, but because the fight was bound to be incredibly competitive. Both ladies were former Olympians, both had undefeated records… you know, stuff that isn’t gender specific that makes for great pre-competition discussion (unfortunately, the fight was over early in the first round because of a devastating knee to the liver).
So, there you go. That’s why I enjoy MMA so damn much…
(weekly manicure)
We’re lucky here in Memphis to have fight nights on a somewhat regular basis. Ryan and I went on Saturday. There was a ladies championship fight…
I know I said that I was all like, “Eff weather, I’ll train in the cold now!” However, the blast of more ice and single-digit windchills at the beginning of last week, coupled with a feeling of impending doom from my “we’re gonna shoot you up with giant needles” doctor’s visit on Monday put a little bit of a damper on my enthusiasm. I did, however, manage a short hike to get a big leaner off the trail. Unfortunately, my gloves’ ability to keep my fingers warm ended before I could make a couple more cuts into the big piece that wedged itself in between the ground and the two trees where it was resting. It’s not threatening the heads of those who ride under it any more, so I’m mostly satisfied…
As I said in my previous post, my anxiety level going in to the injection procedure was really high. Tuesday, I managed to convince myself to ride the trainer for my prescribed interval workout, but the numbers were somewhat uninspiring. I did find some comfort in lifting and going to MMA class. It turns out, when I’m sparring, there’s not much else I can think about… unless I want to get punched in the face or leg-kicked more than I already do. Nevertheless, by the time I was driving home from class on Thursday night, I was in tears about going to the doctor the next morning.
Friday morning, this is what I walked into at the doctor’s office…
I’m pretty sure that, based off of heart rate, I did a couple more intervals while I was waiting for the doctor.
He came in and pretty quickly got to work. While I laid in the fetal position, he first found my inflamed left ischial bursa via ultrasound and shot it with what felt like a large quantity of cortisone. After that, I rolled over, and he used the ultrasound to look at my hamstring in the area where I’d been experiencing pain. To his surprise, he found a mass of irregularly shaped muscle fibers surrounding the sciatic nerve in the area.
I say “to his surprise,” because the first time I visited him, he’d only looked at my seatbone-area before with the ultrasound machine, found the inflammation, then sent me to get 3 different MRIs to look for any other issues. He didn’t see anything abnormal in the hamstring in the previous week’s MRI. Nothing like going through the time and money of getting 3 separate MRIs when the other half of my problem could have been diagnosed the first time I came to his office.
According to him, it looked as if I’d sustained some sort of an injury to the area in the past, and that it didn’t heal correctly. I have no idea when that could have happened. I don’t ever remember having a hamstring injury, though I’m guessing it could be something minor I did that was masked by other general soreness from hard training. He marked the area and injected it with a solution of dextrose and two different anesthetics.
It all hurt really badly, but at least it was over quickly.
Now, I’m waiting. Because the cortisone temporarily weakens the area into which it’s injected, I can’t do anything strenuous until a week from today. I had to keep activity minimal until today, and now I’m basically limited to walking and easy rides until next Monday.
I hate doctors, and, to be honest, I don’t even really trust this guy now. If he’d listened to me and looked at my hamstring on the first visit, I could have been looking for solutions for my hamstring back in January rather than spending a ton of money and valuable training time with the MRIs. I have to go back for two more sets of injections into just my hamstring (no extensive time off for those like this time), but I don’t even know how effective those are supposed to be at treating that sort of problem, because the doc also mentioned something called PRP Therapy to treat the old injury. Upon further research, it looks waaaaay too experimental to even consider. My general distrust leads me to feeling that he just wants to use me as his own personal guinea pig for PRP therapy.
Ryan asked me if I’m hopeful, but, at this point, after trying so many things, I’m just indifferent. I am confident that getting the injections isn’t making anything worse, pain/injury-wise. The only harm is really taking up more time and forcing me out of training during a period in which I need to be training pretty damn hard. It’s just been an arduous process of elimination. I get the feeling it’s not over yet, but at least it’s narrowed down to “things that are view-able via ultrasound.”
As a more positive post script… here’s Marley. He loves blankets more than he loves the couch.
Well, several bike fits, shoes, three doctors, one EMG/nerve study, three MRIs, an arterial doppler, and 5 ultrasound/e-stim sessions later, the cause of my left hamstring ache and toe exploding-off-the-end-of-my-foot feeling on longer rides has been narrowed down to “something in the area between your ischial tuberosity and the middle of your hamstring gets inflamed and puts pressure on your sciatic nerve.”
Along the way, I’ve tried (and still use) a lot of alternative therapies (chiropractor, massage, yoga, acupuncture, and structural integration). While all of them have proved beneficial to me physically, none of them have affected the sciatic pain. So, now that I’m under the care of one of the only doctors I’ve ever really trusted, we’re about to get more aggressive with it. Friday morning, I’m going in to get multiple injections in the area. One will be cortisone in the area of the sciatic/ischial tuberosity/bursa area. Others, going into the hamstring in the area of pain, are non-cortisone, and are given in a series once a week for three weeks.
I know it sounds weird coming from someone with multiple tattoos and piercings, but I’m incredibly shot-phobic. One of my earliest memories from when I was a kid was being forcibly pinned down on a pediatrician’s table like an animal at the vet and being given booster shots in my backside… all while fighting as hard as I could to try and not get booster shots, which only made the entire process that much more painful. Ever since then, my heart races even when I get a mostly painless B12 shot. I went without a tetanus vaccination for waaaaay longer than I should have, too.
To say this procedure is gonna be rough would be a gross understatement.
It’s difficult to swallow what I’m willing to put myself through to deal with this.I love what I’m doing, but between the mental and physical pain of being hit by a car a year ago, an irritable degenerative lumbar disc, and now the choice to get a painful series of treatments to deal with an ongoing overuse-related problem, the health impacts of repeatedly pushing my body past its normal limits are becoming more obvious.
But, I still love what I’m doing. I still love to ask myself, “How far?” and “How fast?”
For now, I’m willing to keep suffering to keep answering.
The prognosis? Still somewhat unknown. Because of the effects of the cortisone injection, I’ll have to take a week and a half off of strenuous training. Luckily, I’m still allowed to ride during that time, but the intensity will have to stay low to reduce the risk of injury to the soft tissue in the area of the injection. It means I’m going to miss out on the Spa City 6 Hour race, which will also effectively take me out of the running for the Arkansas Marathon Series, since they use your top 3 race finishes to calculate points, and my three were going to be Iron Mountain, Spa City, and Syllamo’s Revenge (Slobberknocker, usually in April, was pushed back to the weekend prior to Dirty Kanza, and a 70 mile race is a little much for my taper).
I’m likely to show up at the six hour race, anyway. Not to participate, but to act as pit crew for Matt. He all but wiped my backside during the Breck Epic race last year, so I owe him a solid. Six hours of refilling bottles and unwrapping rice bars is pretty simple compared that.
Hopefully this is going to knock out the pain and let me find a new level of awesome, because the whole “can’t do long rides without stopping multiple times to rest my left leg” thing is really cramping my style.
While I’m still somewhat early in my spring training, I decided that the Iron Mountain MTB Marathon would make a nice season opener. At 42 miles, it wasn’t crazy long, and, from what I’d heard, the course was a lot of fun (as opposed to something like Ouachita or Syllamo, where the course is billed as “challenging” and/or “soul crushing”). It also helps that it was “only” a 3.5 hour drive from Memphis.
Matt and I left Saturday morning (Ryan was at a Homebrewer’s competition and ended up winning the “oak aged” category with his Turbo Porter). During the drive over, I noticed that my throat was pretty sore, but I totally ignored it, hoping that I’d just been breathing funny or something. As is customary for driving through Arkansas to a bike race, there was rapping.
The nice people at Holiday Inn Express let us check in early, and we unloaded some stuff out of the car, had a snack, then made the short drive to the race course. The course wasn’t too hard to follow based on the website map/instructions, so we were able to ride the “start loop” and part of the first lap. The course was exciting- lots of flowy/bermy stuff, and some rocks mixed in for fun. It really keeps you on your toes, because some of the berms end a little earlier than you expect, and some of the blind corners lead you into loose over hard rocky turns. Definitely a good one to pre-ride before going race-pace.
As the day/night progressed, my throat got more sore, and my nose started getting stuffy. Luckily, Sunday morning, my cold seemed to still be isolated to my nose/throat, and, unlike my previous illness, I wasn’t getting a fever. We checked out of the hotel and went to the race course.
After about half an hour of warming up, I lined up and tried to eyeball the ladies in the group of around 170 people. I didn’t really know anyone except for Laureen Coffelt, who I’ve raced many times in the past. She’s a 24 hour racer, and, historically, a little slower than me, but incredibly steady- always someone to look out for.
Being somewhat early in the year, I knew I couldn’t go balls-out from the start (the course began with a 2 mile, double-roller climb on pavement before turning on to singletrack). So, I paced myself a little more than usual. Once I arrived at singletrack, I wasn’t sure how far behind the next woman was. From there, the course turned downhill for a while. It was a fast, flowy/rocky decent where you could definitely carry enough speed to end yourself if you weren’t on your toes. At the bottom, I backed off of my pace a little at a time in order to find a comfortable yet not-too-slow race speed as I passed through the start/finish area at the end of the start loop and started up a long-ish climb to begin the first of two laps.
I may have been a little too comfortable, because a few miles later, Laureen caught up to me (we were about 16 miles in to 42). She asked in her cheery Canadian-nice voice if she could get by, and I was happy to oblige. She’s so smooth everywhere, I knew that, even if she was riding a little faster than the pace I wanted, that I’d likely be able to stick with it. So, that’s exactly what I did.
For the remainder of the first lap, and up the first climb of the second lap, everything was pretty chill. There was a dude behind us the whole time who seemed to be happy to sit back and spectate (we asked a couple of times if he wanted to get by, and he said no, he liked the pace). It was very comfortable- Laureen would sit up and spin a bit up the hills then let it fly going downhill. I started to formulate a plan… initially, I thought, “I’ll just stay here and sprint the final 2-300 meters.” I paid very close attention to our trip though the start/finish at the transition from lap 1 to lap 2 in order to scope out where to start and what line looked smoothest.
Then, we got to the top of the first climb of the second lap, where there were a bunch of embedded rocks without a clear line through them. She, on her full suspension, started to pick up the pace a bit. I had to fight a little and mmuscle my way through to stay on her wheel. There was a brief respite as we crossed a road and started on the next section of trail. However, soon enough, she began turning the screws again. It was very subtle, because, without looking like she was working any harder, would pedal about one gear harder on all of the flats/false flats, and stay off the brakes a tiny bit more going downhill. The guy who’d been cruising with us was gone within minutes. I held on hard and concentrated on staying off the brakes and getting calories every time I could- I typically keep a very concentrated bottle of Roctane drink on my bike when I race just in case the terrain or competition doesn’t allow for me to get to my gel flask. It definitely came in handy on the 2nd lap.
The attacks left me dangling a few times- enough to make me re-evaluate my race-finish strategy since she could potentially open a gap in the last mile that would make me work so hard, I wouldn’t have a good sprint for the finish. The only place I felt like I was really stronger was on the climbs. So, my new plan was to keep on being a bulldog until the final 1/4 mile-ish section of road before the final 1.5-ish mile section of trail… which included a climb that started as a false flat, crossed a creek, then got steep and turned up a piece of wide doubletrack with one good line. Being in front going in to that climb was ideal, because there was one good line, and anyone wanting to pass would need to take the chunky/loose line on either side of it.
Implementing this strategy wasn’t without risk- it was very close to the finish, and there was a straightforward, yet significant downhill immediately following the climb where I wanted to get away. She’d been killing it on the descents (making me uncomfortable more than a couple of times), so if I didn’t create a large enough gap, it was possible she’d close it back if I didn’t also go all-out down the hill.
When we reached the road, I sat on her wheel a second before going full-roadie-apeshit and sprinting off towards the last section of singletrack. Once I was in, I backed off and caught my breath. She caught up to me during that time, but I wasn’t worried since I was in control of the trail/pace. We made it though the false flat to the creek crossing where the climb really started. The crossing was super sketch, and, if I hadn’t kept cool, I definitely could have screwed up and put a foot down, leaving the door open to get passed back.
I made it, though, and let loose again with the ground & pound- hammering up and over the final climb and down the hill after it. As I exited the trail, I looked back and saw that my strategy had worked. I was alone with only a hammer to the finish ahead of me.
It was a nice change of pace (literally & figuratively) to race head-to-head with Laureen. I don’t think that I’ve ever had to use strategy during a mountain bike race- either I’m ahead and alone or my competition is ahead of me, and I’m alone. It took all of my patience and self control to not pass any of the times she offered to let me by on a climb earlier in the race. With my springtime fitness still in “build mode,” I knew that if I was setting the pace that I may not be able to shake her, or that I’d possibly go too hard in my attacks without the legs to back them up, leaving her with time to catch back. Waiting ’til the end really was my best chance…
