Monday, May 01, 2006

Mt Hood and the Bear Trap 30 Mile ORBA Race

Great weekend of training:

Saturday: 2:30am Saturday morning RVG and
I were traveling down SR 25 on our way to the Mt Adams trail head that we assumed wasn’t buried under snow. Our assumption was wrong - about 30 miles left we hit 3 feet of snow and downed trees blocking our plan to ski Mt Adams. Quick change of plans. Saturday 7:18am, on 90 minutes of car sleep RVG and I started our skin ascent up Mt Hood in Oregon. 2 ½ hours later we’d climbed 4,300 feet to the hogs back below the summit and we’re lovin life. The sun was out, we had some lunch and then bombed down the open snow fields. The spring conditions were so much fun to ski.

Sunday: To complete our weekend we headed to Bear Trap Springs ORBA 30 mile mountain bike race on Sunday. What a course!! This race was just epic. I don’t care what anyone says you cannot mimic the intensity of a race in your training – period. A typical expert category mtn bike course is only 18 miles or less – so I usually don’t even bother. But this course caught our attention at 30 miles and one big loop of single track. Sounded great and it was.

RVG and I raced expert (you have to be promoted to Pro apparently), however we race the same course and we both beat our share of pros in the end. This was definite “C” race for us both having not slept a whole lot the two days prior and having just skied Mt Hood the day before.

I hate mtn bike race starts, everyone hammering to the front, elbows and unfriendliness abound. Within a 10th of a mile we hit an uphill single track section. First guy to fall off means everyone runs it, and of course that is exactly what happened. I started pretty well got some junk caught in my bike that slowed me down quite a bit, but it fell out on it’s own. About 8 miles into the race my seat came loose. I didn’t want to stop but it was teetering back and forth, and I knew the screws would fall out if I left it, plus it was hard to ride without a stable seat. I stopped and counted 6 racers pass me. My tool couldn’t tighten the front screw because it wasn’t long enough. The seat came loose again, so I stopped around mile 15 to crank the one bolt I could get to down. This meant the nose of my seat was angle up really high… I might not be able to have kids at this point. I ended up in a pack of three riders, and every now and then we’d catch up to the back of the front pack of racers, pros and experts. Then of course one of us would take a wrong turn, we’d switch the order and keep riding, pushing each other to ride faster but no one being able to pull away for probably 30 minutes. On the last climb I got out of the saddle and just hammered up the road leaving them both. Now alone I caught the back of the front pack and passed one of the guys who dropped off it, but couldn’t make up for the mistakes I made. I finished in 2:21 in 8th place expert, RVG in 2:30 in 14th place expert.