Booker T Race

Yesterday was the first race of the TBRA race series and it was held at Booker T Park in Chattanooga.  This would be my first Cat 1 race in the 30-39 class, and I was expecting to have more people racing in my class than the Cat 1 19-29 class had last year.  This race is always tough because it's on the weekend of the time change, so not only do you lose an hour going from Central to Eastern time, you also lose an hour due to the DST change.

I was really excited going into this race because my training has been going well and I had a strong showing at Snake Creek Gap TT, so I was interested to see how I stacked up against the other guys in the state.  The morning started out fine except for when I was loading the bikes I tweaked a muscle in my back...I guess that's a sign I'm getting old.  It was sore all morning but I ended up not noticing it at all during the race.

There were four other people in my class.  Two of them I knew and the other two I hadn't seen before.  My plan was to go into the woods second or third but that plan went out the window when I had trouble clipping in.  I quickly found myself last with a three or four bike length gap to the next person.  I dug deep through the field section and the first part of the woods and caught the fourth place guy.  I rode behind him for a few minutes and was glad to be able to keep up.  He was much faster than me last year so it showed me that I had improved.  I could still see the leaders so I got passed him and set my sights on catching third place.  After I caught him (another guy that was much faster than me last year) I rode behind him for a few minutes before getting by when I got a chance and set my sights on catching 2nd place.  Towards the end of the first lap I still couldn't see the other two guys in front of me and fourth place was catching me.  I don't know if I was slowing down or if he was speeding up.  He caught me as we got close to the start/finish line and I decided at that point my strategy was going to be to ride behind him for the second lap and then see what happened on the third lap.  I went into the woods behind him and stayed close.  He opened a 10 to 15 foot gap on me though a fast tight section but I thought I could catch him in the next section where I felt really comfortable.  Before that section was a jeep road descent that had a few rocks in it.

I was feeling good on the descent then I heard a weird noise coming from my bike.  I quickly realized the sound was air coming out of my tire and I was hoping the Stan's sealant would fix it and I could keep going.  I thought it had worked but could tell my tire was really low.  I made a decision to stop and check it and it looked like it had sealed so I kept riding only to have to stop a few feet later because it was so low.  I decided that it would save time to put some air in it using my pump rather than take the time to put a tube in it.  I quickly pumped some air in it and took off only to hear the air start coming out again.  I knew I had to put a tube in and I was losing time to the others in my class.  As I started pulling my spare tube out the fourth guy place passed me so I knew I had to hurry.  I went to unscrew the nut on the valve stem only to realize it was too tight.  I then remembered that the day before I had some air leaking around the valve stem so I used some pliers to tighten it up (big mistake).  I didn't have any pliers with me so I had to use the flat-head screwdriver on the multi-tool I carry to loosen it.  Of course this took several minutes and at that time I decided there was no need to be in a big hurry.  I took my time to change the flat and told myself I was going to finish by going as hard as I could and to see how many people I could pass.  Most of the Cat 1 40 field along with the women had rode by while I was working on my bike.

I took off and felt strong for the next two laps and could tell I was going to reach my goal of a sub-2 hour race (at least ride time).  When I finished I had a ride time of 1:53 but total time of 2:10 (man I was slow changing the tire).  I still passed some of the people that had passed me while I was stopped.  More importably I had some respectable first and third lap times.  Of the 20 Cat 1s that were there (including the ones that raced the Pro/Open class), I had the 6th fastest first lap and 6th fastest third lap. At least I know now that I can hang with the Cat 1s - now I just have to not have mechanical problems in a race (and get better starts).  This definitely energizes me to continue training hard and see where I can get by the end of the season.

Catching Up

So it's been a while since I've posted but I'm going to make an effort to keep this much more up to date.  It's funny reading through my last post where I talk about the hardtail Stumpjumper and how I would take the trade off from weight and climbing ability with the roughness of decents.  Boy was I wrong.  Last September I build an Sworks Epic with an XT group and that bike is awesome.  It's so much better on decents and rough stuff.  I feel like I haven't lost anything climbing either.

I spent the entire winter training on it and the Snake Creek Gap Time Trial races were the first chance to test it.  My best time last year was a 4:15 on my SS, so my first goal this year was to break 4 hours.  I started off feeling good and really felt good the entire day.  There were several times when I would get behind someone on the single track and not pass them as quickly as I should have which probably cost me some time, but I was using this as a pacing test.  I was able to ride more of the rocks in the last section than I had before (all the rock practice at Oak Mountain really paid off) and I rolled across the finish line with a 3:45.

For February, I wanted to take at least 5 minutes off this time.  I even went so far as to print out checkpoint times on what I would need to do to get a 3:30 (which I thought would probably be impossible).  February started off very cold (my car said 17 degrees) and then is started snowing.  I was still on pace at mile 19 or 20 to do a 3:38 but could tell I was getting tired.  I then got a flat and knew any hope of beating the time was gone.  With all the snow everywhere I just cruised into the finish.

I knew March would be my last chance to better the time and try to reach my goal of a top ten finish.  Based on the January and February results I knew I had to get around 3:30 to do that.  I started off strong and when I got to halfway I knew I was about 8 minutes ahead of my January time.  At the last aid station I was 10 minutes up and knew as long as I didn't have any problems I was golden.  I ended up taking a few more minutes off in the last section and finished with a 3:32 and 9th in my class (which had 96 people).  I was beyond excited and can't wait to see how this race season goes.  And about the bike, I can see the Epic definitely made me much more comfortable on the decents and overall on the trail and helped me get this time.