Sawtooth Ridge Challenge Mountain Bike Race October 8, 2011

I can say with all sincerity that I'm glad that I'm done.

Flying down the descent lap 1

I had forgotten how hard it can be to try to do well in a race series that spans most of a season. The last time I tried was way back in 1995 (I think) with the Knobular series. Ah but those were the days of youth when boundless energy shared an inverse relationship with common sense. My folly, otherwise known as the Sierra Cup MTB Series, began back on May 21st with a 4th place at the Pine Nut Cracker in Minden NV, followed by a happy 3rd at Skyline in Napa. This then was the hook, which I swallowed bait and all. At that point I just had to go for it, right?  Well, I drank just enough of the Kool-Aid to make me disregard that 6 of the 7 races were at elevation and had lots of climbing. Lackluster, mid-pack finishes at The Peavine Challenge (Reno) and the Kirkwood XC, and missing round 5 altogether left me apathetic, but, as mentioned before, I got my mojo back when I found that consistency pays off and I was still in 3rd. So on we go to the final round at Northstar Ski Resort for the Sawtooth.

At round 6, the rider 2nd in the standings (Steve) said that 1st -3rd should be pretty unassailable, and I decided to not check the standings going into Sawtooth for fear of psyching myself out. I'd just go up there and race my best. If it worked out, great, if not...well, not great, but what can you do?  But the pressure was too much; four days before the race I cracked and checked the stats. Low and behold, he was right. As long as I showed up and finished, 3rd overall was mine. The great thing about this was it freed me up to go as hard as I wanted without fear of blowing up. More on that later. Morale was high.

Lots of very smart people have said that a cornerstone of good race prep is getting a good night of sleep two days prior to an event. Now I'm never one to turn down good advice, so around bedtime on Friday night I took my beloved, but very sick kitty friend to the vet hospital, got home at 2am, then got up for work at 5am. I can attest that this is a great method of forcing yourself to not really care how well you do in a race. If certain martial arts have their "Drunken Master" forms, I was going for "Sleep Deprived Master". At least I had a place to stay in Tahoe City Saturday night so I'd be closer to the race. Oh, but the hosts were carrying on late with revelries of times gone by and I fell asleep about midnight. A Master must stay true to his Form.

Not much of a breakfast appetite the next morning, which I hoped was due to eating well the night before so I'd have the energy reserves to race. Or maybe it was due to finding a broken spoke in my rear wheel with no way of fixing it before race time. Oh well, time to shove off. I tried nibbling on my breakfast burrito on the way but it just wasn't happening. I decided not to force it for fear of making myself sick. I got a quick 10 minute nap waiting for registration to open.  Once registered, I went out for some warm up and course recce (reconnaissance). I don't quite know what that word means, but all the Euro pros say it, so I figure I'd better or I'll get kicked out of the sport. The course climbed from the getgo on a combo of fire road and nice single track; the laps were more or less half up then half down. I didn't have time to see all the climbing, and none of the descending which Steve (2nd in the standings and a Northstar rider) said was rocky and hairy and loose. Joy. I usually lose time on stuff like that when I haven't seen it before, but I was to be pleasantly surprised on this day.

  Recall how I was free to go like hell and blow up? Well, without my prior approval, Ride Hard and Come What May had been entered into a tag-team celebrity death match against Compromised Rear Wheel and Pain Sucks.  Before the bell, I thought I could just make out the ring girl with a sign for me saying "Take it Easy Bro," so the race start found me in my traditional place of at the tail of the field. The cool thing was that I was on the tail end of the field instead of watching it ride away from me. Still, I was sucking wind for that entire half-lap of climbing, while fretting about the impending nasty descent and hoping my wheel wouldn't explode. Up near Tahoe, off highway 89, is probably my favorite single track descent ever, coursing down Christmas Valley. It's fun, swoopy, rocky, technical; you can really get into a groove and rip down it while the rest of the world ceases to exist.  It turns out that descent was the perfect training for the one I was now faced with, and I turned it on and switched everything else out; carving the loose switchbacks and powering out of every turn. Pure, unadulterated fun. As bad as I felt on the climbing, I got a mental and physical boost from the descent.

I even forgot all about my back wheel until a second spoke broke about a third of the way into the second of three laps. It happened while powering up a technical section of the climb. I think it was in Risky Business that Tom Cruise's character said "Sometimes you just gotta say, what the f*@%". So that's what I said, and I kept on going. You see, I felt stronger up the climb on the second lap and actually started to have fun, not something I traditionally do on a climb on race day. So if my wheel was going to fold up on me then, wtf, so be it. I passed some people on the climb and passed some more on the descent, but there was no way to tell if they were in my category or not. That's the thing with mtb racing; unless you are the first category off, or you start at the front of your field, you just have to keep passing people and hoping. On the second lap descent, I passed people with flats or mechanicals and silently wished them the best as if Karma could hold my wheel together. Near the end of the second lap I got a boost when I passed a racer whom I know is faster than me. 

The last lap is usually great because you can push yourself knowing you are on your way to the finish and it'll all be over soon. about midway up the climbing I caught up to some guy (I think his name was David) and asked him his category. "Sport 30-39", he said; I replied, "we're racing; let's go catch that guy up there". The guy ahead (Brian I think) proved to be hard to catch, but served as a good rabbit to help me pull away from David. I figured I had the measure of Brian on the descent, so if I could just get near enough to him at the end of the climbing I could dispatch him on the way down. His prey instinct wound up helping him on the last part of the climb. I was gaining well but he looked back and from somewhere found the energy to pick it up a notch. He got to the descent about 20 seconds before me. Not to be deterred, I plunged in after him with blood in my eyes. Not really, but it seems to work for Mike Stoner. I was flying, and maybe I could have caught him, but my altruism would prove my undoing. About half way down, having already passed by one more downed soldier, I saw a racer trail side tossing up his wheel with a sigh of disgust. I yelled as I went by, "do you need a tube?" Receiving a clear and frustrated yes for an answer, I made a split second decision that I may not catch Brian anyway, so I may as well help this poor sot out. So I grabbed a heap of brake and was rewarded for my selflessness with a prompt and dusty face plant. "Dude, are you okay?", he said; to which I replied, "Uh, here", and threw him my tube while extracting myself from bike and silt. Good deed punished, I got back on and resumed flying.

Series Final podium

 I never did catch Brian (who turned out to not be in my age group anyway) but, to my surprise, wound up 3rd on the day, and only 1:24 down from Steve in second, who is usually a good bit faster than me. To be sure, I was pretty stoked. So I got to step up to two podiums that day, won my first prize money ever (meager as it was), accomplished my goal of making the series podium, got to forget about the world for a couple hours, and had a blast doing it.

 And on the drive home, I enjoyed the hell out of that breakfast burrito.