A Tumbling Pace

Today I raced in my first ever mountain bike race (I have raced cyclocross 3 times so far) at the Voodoo Fire Mountain Bike race at Lake Pueblo State Park just outside of Pueblo, CO.  I went down with the Nazman, who is an experienced mountain biker and helped guide me through the weekend a bit.  I would also like to thank Sonya Looney and Collin, my boss for some helpful advice. 

The night before the race we ate at the Bingo Burger in Pueblo.  They mix green chiles into all natural beef and serve them with a heaping plate of fresh cut sweet potato fries.  Along with a Mexican lager from Durango, we enjoyed an authentic southwestern Colorado meal. 

After the meal we returned to our campsite near the race start. The race was the first time the Voodoo Fire had been run and as you can see it was beautiful setting:

Naz and I got up at 6:30 and went down to to the start to prep for the race.  We learned that the start had been pushed back 45 minutes to 8:45 and that the race course had been changed.  The race was now 3 tighter loops, at least for the full marathon, adding up to about 66 miles.  The race had to be changed because of excessive water on one part of the original course.   I took the news in stride realizing that with a long day ahead of me, and my first race, I just needed to be really flexible with whatever happenned.

We had a mass neutral start and headed up the highway for a bit to the start of the single track.  The course was about 90% single track.  I fell back to the back and as I looked at all the riders I felt the excitement of a bike race with all the helmets in view  from riders with cool bikes and lots of energy.  

The start of the single track backed things up for about 10 minutes and I regretted my cautious approach.  But soon enough we were all flying down single track and there were people itching to get around me.  I quickly found out that the biggest limiting factor of the day would not be my fitness but my technical skills on the bike.  I was riding my white Gary Fisher Rig, a 29er singlespeed.  I had a new front tire put on it with a lot more knobby grip and the bike handling felt great.  Nevertheless, with my relative lack of experience on flowy tight single track I had to let a ton of riders past.  I didn’t worry about it but focused on learning how to flow.  

Each 23 miles had 5 or 6 major sections.  There was a windy open plain start.  Then a crazy bumpy sandy section across a field.  Then about 12 miles of flowy very tight single track on a ledge above the resovoir.  Then 9 miles of a really fun mix of things including a rollercoaster like section with very steep short climbs, and creek riding back to the finish/start.  

Here were the chief events of my 7 hour, 20 minute ride (yes it’s slow).  On lap 1 I stopped to offer a guy air who was asking and then refused (jackass) and I got a flat after pulling off myself. I had to put a tube in my rear tire, my first every race tire change, emptying out my No Stan’s tubeless goo.  I was really proud of how fast I did this probably just over 5 minutes.

Event # 2: I bonked near the end of lap 1.  I started to cramp a bit because of all the power single speed moves in the final section.  Leaving for lap 2 I felt pretty bad but a little nutrition later and I was feeling great.  I finished Lap 2 really strong.

Event #3: starting Lap 3, I stopped to adjust my contact which was really blurry and I lost my contact.  I had to ride lap 3 with one contact.  It didn’t really affect much actually until the final section when it was getting a bit more dark and overcast.

Event #4: I crashed minorly on lap 3 gashing my leg.  I got up laughing

I finished and headed home.  I had about 80 to 90% fun.  The fun thing about bike racing is…you are on a bike!  You can have fun even when you are hurting because being on a bike is playing.

I finished and found Naz who had finished in 6 hours!  He is awesome.

I can’t wait to race again.