Thank You Sponsors! Blue Ridge Cyclery, Stan's NoTubes, Magura USA, Schwalbe Tires
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| 6WC 2012 Podium |
What can be more fun than riding a huge 12.5 mile pump track with monstrous banked turns and berms and flowy singletrack for 6 hours? I will leave that question unanswered. Lets just say, this race was a lot of fun.
I arrived Friday afternoon in time to get my race number plate and lovely t-shirt, and do a lap on the race course to refresh my memory from 2 years ago. The loop was in great condition, and the weather forecast for race day was looking to be perfect, starting cool in the 50s and getting up to 70 or so. After consuming my standard pre-race meal of Mexican food at a fine local establishment, I headed out to find the cabin fellow Blue Ridge Cyclery teammates Scott and Ellen Ramsey had rented for the weekend to lay my well stuffed body down to sleep. There was a big crew of team people at the cabin including Gordon WW Quadsworth, Chris Coleman from the shop and his girlfriend Liz and it was great to hang out and enjoy some team togetherness before I got too tired and had to go embrace the pillow for a few hours.
The next day Scott, Chris, Liz and I got out to Warrior Creek bright and early and we got the pit area all set up for the day. Since BRCC was one of the race sponsors we had a choice pit location right next to the finish line.
Race time was soon upon us, it started fast with me and some duo team guys leading out on the extra road/fire road section at the beginning of the first lap. The first 15 miles went by in just over an hour, we were flying, average speed was close to 14 mph. One of the duo team guys came around me in the first lap. From the second lap on I just went fast and smooth, didn't go crazy sprinting up every climb but just stayed steady and strong without killing myself.
Something clicked with the banked turns, which I've never been good at riding, and suddenly I was railing every turn and hardly using the brakes at all. Basically, you just whip the bike around sideways and extend your arms and legs going in to the turn, then compress and suck the bike back up to you at the end of the berm, keeping your body fairly still and letting the bike move around. It felt great to finally get the hang of this technique!
Over the course of the race, I moved down into third in the 2 man team rankings, then fourth, then on the last lap one more 2 man team guy passed me. Bummer. I did win the solo category by 23 minutes or something, but I wanted to get on the duo podium too! Oh well... No I'm just kidding it was frickin sweet, and I only missed 3rd on the duo podium by 40 seconds or so. And, when you figure in the fact that the duo guys never had to stop and refuel, because they just do that during the rest lap, I was easily in 3rd and probably 2nd if I would have not had to stop and grab a fresh bottle/food/etc etc. Yay.
Preliminary race results are up here and individual lap times will be up soon. My Garmin was running for the whole race, so I posted up the results to Strava and the Garmin site (which has more accurate stats) Happy to see that my 6th lap was only a few minutes shorter than the 2nd! That was good pacing, and great job legs you make me happy.
Coming up this weekend... Camp Hilbert! Should I do 5 hour or XC? Stay tuned!!!
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