... and we're back...

Mountain bike season is officially here.  Between a lot of days on snow, work, and my general despisement for riding a bike to nowhere in the basement, I didn't exactly spend a lot of time on the bike this winter.  I've been trying to catch up for the past few weeks - I rode a couple of days while in Utah, despite some pretty good leg fatigue from skiing the big terrain.  And last week, the weather was amazing, so I spent more time at higher intensity on the bike than I should've.  So much fun, though.

I had no serious goals this weekend.  A very easy day on Saturday to loosen up, a proper warm up and mostly remembering how to eat for racing Sunday morning.  At Fair Hill, there was an AWESOME women's field!  Nearly 30 sport riders showed up, split into the young'ins and the not-quite-as-youngin... I'm still in the former for another couple of years.  I was racing against some friends from cross as well as a few chicks that I mashed it up with last year in the Beginner classes.

After a mellowish mountain bike race start, I was third into the woods, with the top 5 of us in a little line.  I spent some time encouraging the girls in 2nd and 3rd intermittently to not let whomever was in the front take off - I was there for fun and it's always more fun to race against someone you can see for at least a couple of miles.  Eventually, the winner gapped us, and I was happily trotting along in 3rd without seeing anyone in my category for the next lap and a half - a few of the (faster) not-so-youngin ladies passed us with ease.  Slowly picking off guys that I was using as rabbits, I worked my way up and was surprised to find the 2nd place woman in my sights about two miles from the finish.  We both bobbled a few times on weird little rocks, but I managed to get past her and push the pace - it was hurting to do that, but I wasn't about to let her win the sprint easily. 

When I got to the field where there's a grassy, uphill finish, I was geared up for sprinting.  Stood up... uh oh, not much there in the legs.  At all.  Thankfully, my work in the woods had gapped her, so I held my position to take 2nd. 

Then I nearly fell over in the finish chute.  My heart rate moniter seemed to think my max heart rate was 199.  I almost believe it.

Happy with the result, but my lap times weren't as fast as I was shooting for. 

On a side note - the new timing chip system didn't seem to work perfectly as it took nearly 2 hours for results to be posted.  But, when they finally did the podiums, they (for once!) did the women's podium first, which mean instead of getting to choose from the dregs of a prize table after all the men's categories (many of which went 10 deep for prizes), we got to choose from a whole table of loot - I scored a sweet new pair of Tifosi's for my efforts.