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.