Back to Riding - Lake Hope MTB Race

I took the last 9 days completely off the bike and decided to get back in the swing of things by going out and doing a mountain bike race. The race was at Lake Hope, just 40 minutes away.

I rolled out of my house around 11am and when I was about 10 minutes from Lake Hope, I remembered that I forgot my helmet! I could have turned around and went home to go pick it up, but that would have left me less than 30 minutes to register, suit up and warm up. So I decided to keep going to the parking lot and see if anyone might have an extra. Luckily the guy I was following to the race had an extra helmet and saved the day.

I had done this race before two years ago and did the expert class. That was not the best race I've had since I got lost warming up and missed the start. This year I didn't stray far from the start. I decided to do sport since I didn't really feel like racing for 3 hours. Cross races are onlty an hour so Sport would offer a similar effort.

At the start I was able to stay up front and actually be the first one into the woods. However I put myself into the red zone and would pay dearly for it later. I was pretty much pegged to the max the first 20-30 minutes and I didn't need a HRM to tell me that. My legs felt awesome but 9 days of no cardio work did some major detraining on the lungs. To make things worse, my contact had shifted and I could barely see out of my right eye. So I pulled off and let the others behind me pass so I can rub my eye and hope I could see again.

I was still pegged to the max eventhough I let off the throttle. I slowely got into a nice rhythm and started passing people that had passed me before. I was cruising until I hit a fallen tree. It was one of those duck down and you can make it fallen trees but my visor blocked it. I heard and felt a big thump, I blacked out for a second and then the pain came on. I pulled off to make sure I was still alive. Luckily I just hit the top of my head and didn't go face first into that tree. After that hit I was a little disoriented. I lost the nice groove I was in and struggled to get going again. But sure enough, I started feeling good again and picked up speed and was big ringing the trail. That was until I hit a lot of traffic.

I was able to get around a huge group and then it was the big super steep climb to the finish. Everyone I saw was pushing their bikes. I motored on and dumped down to the granny (the only time) and spun my way up the climb. The finishing stretch is on road so I motored on. I almost caught the guy in front of me but the finishing chute was about 5 feet wide. No way to pass.

I think I finished up 11th in Sport Senior (19-34)

Miles driven 50

YTD 4849