So another one in the books. Woke up this morning at 5:20 with a headache. Got on the scale as I do every morning and saw 188. WTF? That's +3 pounds in 1 day?!?! Not good. Bloating usually means I've actually not been drinking enough water. Apparently when you don't drink enough your body retains what it can get. Blah. The drive up I never felt like I woke up. But some days you play much better than you feel, as they say. So I didn't think about it too much.
Warmed up for a half hour, some on the course and some in the field. Again, I never really got going and the zip I had yesterday was gone today. It happens. I still have my race strategy and I'm stinking to it. I pulled into the start area at about 9:57, fairly warm. And they proceded to make us wait about 15 minutes so we could all be nice and uniformly cold. The guys who run these events need to realize many of us don't pull up at 9:45 for a 10:00 race. None of the 4 H2H races I have done has gotten everything right (though JH last weekend came pretty close).
I gunned off the line and was immediately out front with "fast Eddie". After 30 seconds I knew it wasn't going to last. I had hoped I would kick into gear at some point but I just had to take what I had, which wasn't a whole lot. The first 3 miles of the course was tight, twisty singletrack very reminiscent of the Chain Stretcher race but possibly a hair tighter. I went into the woods in 5th and was passed by a handful of people fast enough. After 10 minutes I was probably barely hanging on to 10th, maybe not even.
After the 3 mile start, the course went across some fields and then it started going up. And up. And up. According to Ryan (xc68701) there were something like 8 countable climbs. I think he may have missed 8 or so?
I knew this was going to be a pretty vertical course and it would expose my biggest weakness, which is climbing. But I wanted to see this course so there ya go.
Almost all of the way up the climbs we come down a little swoop and then pitch into a small climb. I had it in a pretty aggressive gear for the down and just tried to stay there which didn't work out so well when I heard a pop-pop-bang! The chain fell off. Oh wait, crap, no. The chain broke. And of course I have no chain tool. Game over. All your base are belong to us. Damn.
Maybe 10 seconds later one of the guys in the 19-29 group pulls up and asks if I have a chain tool. Nope. Here take mine, he says. And he's off. I get his number, 215, and get to work. Luckily it was 2 (or 3?) links from the quick-link so I just took 2 out and put it back together with the quick-link and tried to avoid the middle-big as much as possible. I probably dropped 5-6 minutes there and it seemed like the Bell Curve of the pack passed me while I was there. At this point I figured top 20 was out of the question because I had been passed a few times on the climb and then the convoys went by while I was working on the chain.
From there things went fine for the remainder of the first lap and I knocked off maybe 5 guys on the way to complete the first lap but who knows what class they were in. I grabbed a bottle I had stashed and started the second lap. This time I was much more fluid in the first 3 miles, and I picked off maybe 4-5 guys in this section. But then the climbing began and the vertical pain started yet again.
The second round on the harder part of the course didn't seem quite as long, but it was still long. Maybe halfway through I was trying to catch a guy in a blue Giant kit who I recognized from the week before. I kept reeling him in, then he would get away. As we got closer and closer to the end he was opening up a gap and I laid it out there to try and catch him but eventually he gapped me too much and I lost sight of him. I did manage to pass another 4 guys in the last bit before the course spilled out onto the field for the final run.
When I got into the grass I saw a guy look back at me and put his head down. It wasn't the guy I had been chasing but whatever, it was someone to chase. I locked out the fork and just kept it strong as I slowly closed the gap on him. We crossed the road for the last time and there was a short, maybe 100 foot climb up the last little field hill. This is where I just said screw it and left it all out there. I dropped 2 gears, stood, took the left line, and just left it on the course because there was no use saving it up to drive home with.
One of the expert guys who was warming up watched, and shouted out, "Nice pass!!!" That felt pretty damn good, even though I suspected I was passing him for sole possession of 25th at the time. It felt good to not be that guy at the end who has nothing left and is being passed. There was one last tiny bit of singletrack left, and I just kept on the gas to make sure there was no sprint. When I came out to the end of the course, the guy had mailed it in and I was alone. So I just cruised over the finish line.
Amazingly, and unlike any other race I've ever seen before, they had the results being tabulated, now get this...as the race was going on! So I talked to Maurice for 2 minutes then Sean for a few and went to the scorers table and asked how I did. She looked at my number, looked at the sheet, and said, "Looks like 16th." Sweet!
So a little bit of a coming back to Earth this week. Given that I felt like shit, was riding a course that exposed my weaknesses, and blew my chain, I'm pretty content with it. I don't know what the times of the 10th-15th guys are but I don't really think the chain cost me much. Maybe I would have laid a little more out there had I kept up with the pack, but I'm not so sure.
Anyway, another one in the books. It was a good experience and it was good to meet Sharose, Bill aka Scalpel6, PlayAllDay, as well as seeing Ryan, Tonybuckets, Sean, Maurice, and PixyEllen. I feel like I met someone else for the first time today but my brain is drawing a complete blank.
I'm still on the wagon but after the race I went to Halftime Liquors, and holy crap what an absolutely amazing selection of beers. Seriously I was overwhelmed by the selection there.