My first WORS

5:50 AM - BEEEEEEEEEP

I was up and running, pretty quickly. I did not have to mess around too much. Threw on the clothes that I had left piled on the floor the night before, ate two bowls of cereal and a cold pancake from the night before. I pulled the sandwiches and gels out of the fridge along with the frozen bottles of water from the freezer and shoved them in a cooler. I filled my camelpak with water and ice, and as I was putting on my backpack Chris called to say he was in the neighborhood. I came out the back door (did not use the freight elevator), and we loaded up and were gone.

The drive went quickly. We stopped once for ice and water for Chris at an Oasis. We continued onto the destination south west of Milwaukee. Conversation was light and pretty good on the way up. No awkward silences, and I did not have time to even pull out my phone and write an emails or blog posts.

We arrived at the venue well before any racing started, which left us plenty of time to prepare. I was cognizant of the fact that I did not pace my preparations well for my last race, and even though my starting time was not until 11:30AM I mentally set my preparation schedule to be ready at 11AM. We picked up our registration materials, and set about puttering and getting ready. Chris had never ridden his bike before (having just finished building it the week before), and had some tuning up to do. I was worried about my seat shifting on me again, so I made certain to tighten the seat bolt down as tight as humanly possible. I changed into my pre-ride kit (Old JS kit) and went down to pre-ride the course. As I got to the start of the course, the junior race had just begun, so I hopped on the end of that pack and followed the sweepers around the course. Very early on, one of the kids went down hard, and took a seat post or a handlebar to his abdomen. Two course marshals and I stayed with him for a while, and when he was good enough to walk, one of the sweepers walked him back to the starting line. I went ahead with the second sweeper. We were following along with a fairly young racer, all of eight years old for the next 45 minutes to an hour. There were actually two of them for the most part. The younger one in the tail end who kept complaining that every time he caught up to the rider in front of him, he would stop, and then he would have to stop. We tried to gently explain to him as it was a race, it was okay for him to try and pass the other kid, and not simply complain about being stopped by him. It was kind of an adorable discourse of the "kids say the darn-dest things" variety.

So my pre-ride took a lot longer than I anticipated, but at the same time the fact that I was going as slow as the slowest junior meant 1. I got to see the course at a pace that I could remember, and 2. I did not burn myself out riding too hard or two fast on the pre-ride. By the time I had gotten back to the start the citizens class race had started. Becky (formerly of team sprocket) was racing so I interrupted my preparations to try and take some pictures of her. I found a convenient (not good) location to take pictures, and when she came by I tried to snap some of her. Except she didn't cooperate. she decided to pass some dude who was in her way on the other side. So instead of a good photo of Becky I got a good photo of some dude who was not as fast as she was.

After that I put my camera down and went to work. I switched kits, put on my race number, did some final system-checks, ate a sandwich (an hour before the start of my race), and generally was amazed at how quickly a morning can disappear when there is a start-line in your future, and bicycles to be raced. The time whipped away as I decided to lug the extra weight and convenience of a camelpak, pinned and twisted my numbers on, and finally, at 11:15AM made my way down to the starting line. They were already starting to line up. However, what I didn't realize is that racing as a clydesdale I would be starting at the back of the pack with the 50+ men. So my 11:30AM start time was actually about 11:40AM. At 11:20 AM I sensed something off to my right and looked up. There were my parents, looking a little shell-shocked and out of place. They were excited to actually have found me (I had warned Chris that my Mom might come up to him and ask him if he knew me, not because he did know me, but because my mom was probably going to be asking everyone). So I went over, gave them a hug, thanked them for coming and headed back to the starting line. I started to get nervous. When the first wave took off, I was really nervous. I had to laugh and let those jitters go.

For some strange reason the starting line was half-way up a hill, so the staging area was almost at 75% of the way down, so the first part of the race was a extended climb up a pretty steep grade. I made it to the top of the hill in about 4th place in my wave, and I was pretty happy with that. I was able to keep up with the top three around the upper edge, but as we dropped down some gravelly switch backs I started to fade a bit. I closed the gap tight again before entering some single track, but then the worst happened. I clipped a tree and went down hard. I was up and back on my bike in a flash, without even losing a spot, but my handlebars were crooked by about 45 degrees. I rode like that for a few more turns the pulled off to straighten them. Before I could get back on six or seven guys whizzed past me and I almost got hit trying to hop back on. My bars were still not straight, but they were close enough, and I started to try to catch back up some of the time that I had lost. I rode hard the first lap, keeping my heart rate between 160 and 170. I pushed myself up the big hill (Fatman's Misery) and made up some spots there, and would have rode it clean had one of the men who had passed me when I was fixing my mechanical not stalled out at the very top. The hill was a steep grade (maybe 20-30% that then had a small vertical lip at the very top. A little "forget you" from the trail designers if you will. Once we got clean of that, I was quicker than some to recover and was able to make up more spots as we zoomed up top back by the ski-lodge before looping back away to some more single track. During my first lap I had a second mechanical problem that cost me precious seconds as my garmin sensor was sucked into my rear wheel and began banging on spokes. I had to stop to pull that out. I could have kicked myself for not taping it down when my bike was clean. But I got back on, and just kept pedaling.

The second lap was hot, and there wasn't much drama. I felt like I continued to pass people in front of me, making up spots that I had lost on the first lap, but it was impossible to tell where I was in my wave as during the second lap, we started to pass the tail end of other waves. The dominant though of my second lap was to try and keep my heart rate below 160 so I did not blow up, and also the fact that my seat post was betraying me. My seat was slowly going "nose-up" forcing me to perch more and more on the nose of my saddle. This was very ironic given that I had just bought a nose-less saddle for my cross-bike to try and reduce pressure to the perineum. My second lap was where I found it was not my legs that were the weakest link in the body chain but my lower back (from having to stand-hunch for most of the lap) and my wrist, fingers, and arms, from not having the requisite condition of riding a MTB for an extended period of time. Miles and trial on the road were great for my legs, but mountain biking is a total body workout. Remember that younglings.

The final FU from the course designers was the fact that the finish line was at the top of the starting hill which means we had to climb the same hill three times on two laps of the course. My final time up the hill my willpower faltered. I had to dismount and push my bike for a bit, before remounting to ride across the finish line. It was not the most honorable finish, but I finished and I did not puke. I had consumed my entire 100oz camelpak, one salt pill, and two whole energy gels. I had finished the race and went to find my parents. I stood around with them talking about the race, waiting for oxygen to soak back into my system. I tried to use my multi-tool to adjust my seat back down so I could cool down a bit, and ended up handing the task to my father as I had lost fine motor control in my wrists and fingers. He struggled until that time as he figured out I had handed him the tool with the wrong wrench pointed upward. Chris told me he put my camera back in the car under my shorts, and gave me the quote of the day.

Quote of the day: "I took a bunch of pictures of some guy who had a kit that kind of looked like yours and....maybe....one or two pictures of you."

I went and tooled around the parking lot for a few minutes, to work my legs out, and by the time I made it back they had posted results for my race. My dad gave me a big grin and a handshake, my Mom said Congratulations! I finished second in my class in 1:08 minutes. Overall in all of Cat2 sport that was good enough for 97th place out of 170 some entered riders. Not bad for it being my second race ever, my fourth day mountain biking in the last four years. Shaving off 2 minutes would have improved my finish by 30 or so places in the overall, and I was only 8 minutes behind the leader.

I went back to the car, used my portable spray bottle with clean water to give myself a quick portable shower, and changed into street clothes. I stayed with my parents talking about the race, and they watched Jenson's race start. I was tasked with being Jenson's water boy, so I was planted near the start of the race at the beginning and during the first lap. I took pictures from the start, but it was hardly the most interesting place on the course. After he passed the first time and I swapped out his first water bottle, my parents decided to take off and head home, and I went up to the top of the ski lodge to take more pictures. I definitely need to get a new camera. I am not happy with the quality of most of my shots. My vision and my ability is surpassing my equipment. The sensor is not sensitive enough, and I am getting lots of grainy blurry photos. I entered some into the race sponsor's photo contest, but most of them are not good quality. Looks like it's time to spend some of that End of year bonus. I stayed up top taking pictures until Chris passed by on his first climb up the hill. I immediately went down to the car, grabbed his water bottle, and headed to the starting line. I waited what seemed like an eternity and he did not show up again. I did not think I could have taken too long because I saw some riders ahead of Chris climb the hill, so I must have been standing there and simply missed him. Maybe I turned around when he was climbing or was so wrapped up in photography that I did not notice.

Regardless, Chris finally finished (he was racing single speed, on a bike he built this week, and was probably racing a category too high given his training and gearing, but he finished on his bike. Except that he took a staged dive (think World Cup soccer dive) and fell off his bike on the finish line.

Chris got cleaned up and we started packing up our stuff. I remembered to take a picture of my medal with my good camera and with my camera phone to text to HW, and I made a mental note that I needed to write an email on the way home and send the picture to Tim, Abbas, and Bear. A minute later the phone rang. Bear called because she knew I had something to share with her. I told her that I was going to send her a picture, and I needed to concentrate on packing, but it definitely put a smile on my face that she heard me and reached out. We ended up sticking around to have a beer and see some guys we know from Half Acre (Chris knows them) get their medals and their pictures taken, and I went over to the awards stand to pick up my medal. We stopped at the brand new Mars Cheese Castle where we had an extremely good grilled roast beef sandwich that was on special (ironically my fourth roast beef sandwich of the day), and Chris picked up some curds for Ellie. We hopped in the car and headed south. I joked with Chris about stopping at the Bristol Renaissance festival and kiting up and riding through, remembering my one trip there with Kelly in my youth.

We got to my house, and we happened to run into Forest. He was leaving work to walk home, and he recognized Jenson's car as he was walking by. We talked for a bit. I came in the house and started the process of getting stuff put away in my apartment and getting ready for a new day.