and that's a wrap

Sunday was my last mountain bike race of the season - Cranky Monkey at Fountainhead.  I've raced there before.  I've won there before.  The course was a given. The weather was not - after late night and early morning deliberating, they ran the race.  No significant rain, even with the 70% chance of morning thunderstorms.  Awesome.

Last year, I raced the same course with about the same lap traffic on the same bike with the same wheels in similar weather with a similarly dry and sandy course.  So the goal was simple.  Beat last year's time.  Hopefully by a lot. 

Off the gun with the clydesdales, we rolled along about a mile of road before dropping into singletrack.  5 of them were off the front, I was in no man's land, and some other guys and the rest of the gals were somewhere behind me.  I tried to hit my pushing-it-but-not-blowing up pace.  I've raced a bunch of the long races, which is great - gave me the confidence to know that even if I blew up completely, I'd have legs to finish the race. 

Photo thanks to Andrew Burnette

Fountainhead has sandy corners and loads of roots, some a bit washed out.  What I'd forgotten, though, was how many little climbs are thrown in there.  The first 2 and last 2 miles of each lap are up-down-up-down-up-down.  I was riding well technically, but not fantastic, and felt like I was at my speed limit on some of the tighter downhills and turns.  After a summer of really hot long races, I have to say I barely have to think about the nutrition part anymore.  Drink heed.  Drink Perpetuem.  Eat something with salt and caffeine in it.  Take electrolytes. 

I didn't see another woman after the start.  And there were few rabbits in the woods.  I passed some guys from earlier waves but didn't ride with anyone for any length of time.  After the Big Bear race where I had a buddy for like 30 miles, it was a bit odd.  But nice to flow through the sections in my own head, choosing lines, changing gears, making my own mistakes.  I wound up 44th out of 77 starters for the 9:45 sport race.  Cool.  I'm getting faster than some of the guys...

Yes, I won.  It's funny how different race series have different speeds - the Cranky series is definitely slower, than, for instance, the Sport 35+ MASS women who fly by me at every race.  But it wasn't about who I was racing.  It was about the time.  Am I faster than last year's 1:56:59?  Yeah.  Finished in 1:49:43, more than 7 minutes faster.  That works out to 6.2% faster.  I probably have to improve that much again to be competitive in the expert fields, slow fields or not. 

Mmm... cold coke.  The best finish line drink, ever.

DNF or DFL... I chose DNF.

About 5 miles into the Quantico Cranky Monkey race today, I was presented with a situation - to DNF (did not finish) or work my bum off from DFL (dead frickin' last) to whereever I could get to. On a converted singlespeed. I chose DNF. It was my first DNF, actually, and I was pretty bummed, but there wasn't a good way around it.

Apparently when we put my chain back together this week, something was amiss, and this mean phantom shifting and chain dropping for the first few miles. After all the women had passed me while I was fixing said dropped chain (about 6 times - this should have been a clue), I thought I had the derailleur cables adjusted and went for it. Stood up a climb and boom - shattering noises from the back of the bike... uh oh. The inevitable chain break was here. Oh, except it took with it my Sram XO derailleur, which got pulled into the rear wheel. As they say, when carbon fails, it fails catastrophically.


I successfully had my bike part way apart to convert it to single speed by the time the sweeps came through. With no quick link, it wasn't going to be fast to do this, and I was already far back from where I needed to be. Having won the previous two races in the series, I needed 3rd today to take the series and had little chance of dropping below 2nd in the series regardless of what I did. 15 miles of hilly-ness with a converted single speed (yeah, I've never done that before and it was an okay conversion, but not perfect - chain tension was a little loose). So I DNF'd - telling the sweeps with the radios to be sure that they knew it was a mechanical not an injury time out. Shea was sure to be confused and worried when I didn't come through on the first lap.

I finished the chain break/repair and went backwards on the course to get to the nearest fireroad outta there. Got a good clue who was doing well and saw the woman's leader (Simona) who would take the series with a strong finish. She was surprised and seemed genuinely disappointed about my bad luck.

Back to the car and no Shea to be found. I texted him - "At the car. Mechanical dnf" - not one I want to have to send often. Chatted with a few teammates on the way in, finding out that the only other LSVer in the sport race had crashed out with a bent front wheel (I had seen him fixing the flat).

It's too bad that I had to learn this one the hard way... when your bike isn't shifting right, it could be the derailleurs (checked those, a lot) or the chain (yeah, waited till it broke all the expensive parts to figure that one out). Weird to be at the race without having really raced - had my body and brain all set up for the pain and I'm still feeling a bit antsy. I'm also tired from yesterday's cyclocross clinic (watch for my thoughts on that this week), so recovering with beer and couch time instead of a good cyclocross-specific run sprints work out or something productive like that.

As for the series, Shea won today, taking the beginner under 34 series. I wound up 2nd overall and scored a nice gift certificate, then a consolation prize of winning an iPod in a raffle. Doesn't quite make up for the pricey bike parts...

Collecting pint glasses...

I love it when races give prizes that are useful - i.e. pint glasses instead of medals. Medals just do nothing for me - perhaps when I was 12 I would have felt differently. But our pint glass collection is getting a bit overgrown. Nevermind that we already had plenty before bike racing came into my life - we gave pint glasses as favors at our wedding 5 years ago and had more than a few extras. Despite my best attempts to break a few, we still haven't taken them all out of the box!

Yesterday was the Cranky Monkey Fountainhead race. I raced Sport class again, seeing as I'm not about to downgrade! But it was hot and the laps have a lot of rooty climbing on them. By hot, I mean 70% humid and above 90 by 10am race start. Shea took second after crashing in his race right at the end, and I knew a lot of people came in with dirt on them, so planned to get a good start and ride my own race from there.

Again, they started us with the clydesdales. This really worked pretty well for me - the start was about a mile and a half on the road. I stayed with the front group in the draft, so energy output was pretty manageable and attacked a few hundred yards before the singletrack, hitting the dirt 3rd wheel. Of course, many of them passed me in the next few miles, but I was thrilled - this is the first time in a long time I didn't have a single guy crash in front of me during the first half of my first lap!

I started a bit too hard - my excitement level was up and I was riding too fast for the first 20 minutes or so before I finally settled down and got to relaxing. I knew I was leading, I suspected that I knew who the chaser was and about where she was, so there was no letting off. That meant I rode everything technical except 2 super steep hills and nearly crashed at least 6 times - but managed not to lay my bike down on any of them.

The Fountainhead loop has a lot of roots, some significantly steep climbs, a few sustained climbs, and is generally medium-technical - nothing that you have to pay too much attention to, but lots of sections where a little extra power means it doesn't matter when the line wasn't perfect. My favorite part though is the spectators spot - 'Shock a billy' hill - a steep but short downhill with a few drops, some rubber waterbars that look intimidating, and lots of people watching for crashes. For this, I was way off the back of the bike with the saddle pretty much in my belly. Both laps I cleared it just fine only to find myself in the wrong gear at the bottom and have an awkward clip-out/waddle moment.

While I never saw another woman, a few times I passed men who then paced me for a while. John (whose name I know only because he talked to himself when he had trouble with one particular hill) claimed he was happy to be following me - he liked the lines I chose and pace I was riding. I enjoyed the company.

I finished first again! Another pint glass for the collection. My chaser was about a minute off - she rode a great race too. Now if we could just get some more ladies to ride for the competition... Only 4 sport female finishers yesterday.