So I hit my first race last weekend. My first ever bike race. I have done some runs (mostly 5k's with a half marathon and a couple 10k's sprinkled in), so I knew what a race atmosphere was like, but I have never ridden bike around other people competitively. Heck, I had hardly ridden my bike around other people. My wife and I get out and ride some, I rode with my parents once, and I went for a casual ride with a few church friends. Nothing close to a mass sprinting start with 66 other dudes on a slightly uphill gravel road with rain drizzling and no familiar faces around, save my wife on the sideline. I had also only ridden in wet conditions once or twice. I had also only ridden off-road twice on my Walmart mountain bike. I had also only practiced remounting and dismounting my bike once two days prior, and never practiced barriers. I had also basically only ridden my bike on my work commute, save a few odd joyrides here and there. I had also only really been riding bike for 6 months.
But I was pumped. I think I started out 4 rows back, so the start wasn't too much of a quick sprint, but we ended up getting there. I learned what it is like to be bumped and rubbed and do some bumping and rubbing and trying to predict what the rider in front of you is going to do. The first turn was a wide right hand with a weird-o hump in the middle, and I panicked thinking that I was going to slide out and get run over by the 20 guys behind me, so I took it wide and safe. The next turn I had practiced keeping my speed up in the pre-ride, so I rode it harder and passed a few guys.
The coolest feature of the course IMO was a cool S-turn up on some hills, but it was so close to the start that we just sort of walked it because of the bottleneck. There was a sharp 180 then a straight before the S and somehow I nailed the inside of that 180 and rode past about 4 guys that were struggling to stay on their bikes. I jumped off for the S (because ain't no way I can ride that) and exerted a little extra energy, climbed a little higher, and was able to keep some momentum going and pass the guy inside of me. Then everyone else started jumping on their bikes and I remembered it is sometimes good to keep running, so I set my bike down and took off, leaning on the bike to give me some more support around the corner, and passed every guy who was trying to mount back up. Victory.
From there to the barriers we stayed pretty steady and a tiny bit strung out, and then the barriers came and I went at them as hard as I could, and ended up passing the two guys ahead of me! Who knew that the barriers would be the strongest part of my racing skills? Anyway, I botched the remount (missed the seat and landed on the top-tube) but still managed to pull away a bit. From there on the rest of the race stayed pretty steady, I maybe passed two guys and got passed a few times. We got pretty strung out. My main goal of the race was just to finish and not run out of energy, so I sat up quite a lot. My best (read: worst) moment was on a very tight and muddy left-hand 180. I had been hopping off and running it since I don't know how to turn very well, let alone in mud, but my left cleat got stuck. I had been going pretty hard into it because I wanted to pass the guy in front of me, so I had some speed. Then my finger slipped off the brake and I stopped losing speed, and tried to choose my best demise. I could go straight and T-bone my competitor at 10 mph, cut left, break through the tape and go down the back side of the hill and try to stay close to the course, or go right, fly down the very steep embankment, and probably die (jk, I would just have to climb back up). I chose left. As it happens, race tape is much stronger than I thought and it seemed to slow me down quite a bit. The guy in front made it around the turn quicker than I imagined, and instead of going in front of him I just rammed his back wheel pretty good. He didn't like that, so I yelled "Frick" and apologized. I passed him soon after, and I honestly don't think he finished. Oops, hope it wasn't my fault. The guy behind me said I had a nice recovery, though, so that was cool. But I didn't hang with him, I just dropped back a bit.
That gravel section where the start was really killed me. The gravel just sucked my tires in and it just felt ridiculous. I found a reasonably packed line on the edge of the road, but I still didn't appreciate it. It was about golf-ball sized gravel, probably a little smaller, but deep.
At the end of the race I still had a lot of gas in the engine, so I could have definitely gone quite a bit harder. My arms were killing me, though, I guess I need to do push ups or something. I'm excited for my next race (Rocktown CX here in Hburg). This time I am going to see how good of a position I can get, instead of just finishing, and try and use up all the gas in my engine (i.e. energy). I think I need to think about what I eat, though, because I felt like I was going to throw up after every run and hill, but maybe that is just part of CX. And I need to practice some technical turns and all that.
Oh, and I got 34/66, almost halfway through the field!
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