Saturday was my racing debut for the season. I usually start racing on the road in March or April. But this year, I have been taking some time away from road racing to hang out with my wife, do some skiing, work on the car, hang out with my wife, do a little mountain biking, and hang out with my wife too. Now its June, and I haven’t been racing at all and it has been a great year so far. Without any real racing goals, I have really been enjoying my time on the bike. Mountain biking is often a little like skiing, or surfing. You don’t have to be competitive to enjoy a day on the trails, Its just plain fun. But, my years of competitive road racing has trained my brain to thinking that I must enter a compest every once in a while. So, Mikey, aka Machmoud the durka durka Dad and I drove out to Winter Park Colorado to see how our legs could stand up against the fittest and most motivated mountain bike racers in the country.

Mike and I walked a nasty technical section of the trail before our race. We were really surprised to see this kind of single track on a cross country course. Somebody was going to crash hard on one of these tree roots or rocks. We were hoping it wasn’t one of us. It was really beautiful up there, and the trails were mostly shaded like what you see here.

So we suited up in our Barney suits and started warming up for a brutal looking uphill start. Like the previously mentioned purple dinosaur, I kinda felt slow and dopey around all these fit looking racer specimens. The race was 16 miles total, and there looked to be about 45-50 guys in my group, the 35-39 “sport” category. I skipped the novice category for my first race. It seemed way to easy, and probably dangerous to race with “beginners”. At the start of the race, I could tell I was a little out of my element here in the dirt. I felt like I had the legs to ride at the front from the starting gun. But I was somewhat timid about being a hinderance to the fast guys on the downhill sections. Mostly I was just having mental newbie confidence issues. So, I started out conservatively and just followed the front group of about 10 guys up the long fire road start, then made a left turn onto some super steep uphill singletrack. We climbed and climbed for the first 30 minutes of the race, the summit was above 10,000′ and the air was thin. I felt pretty good on the climbs, just following whatever tire was in front of me on the single track. I did manage to pass a few guys when then trail widened and I felt like there was some kick in my legs. After a bit of thyis, I was feeling good and in about 5th position, but then I pulled a rookie move that would cost me. I was following the guy in front of me really closely like a good road cyclist would. We had about 3 inches between our tires, and the hammer was down. I was pedaling like mad, with my legs and lungs burning. Along came some obstacles in the trail, and he tried to hop over a big tree root and got stuck. This casued me to smack right into his back tire. I just put my left foot down and stopped. No big deal. But, before I could get back on my bike and pedaling again 15 guys passed me on the climb. There just isn’t room to ride 2 bikes wide on these trails so you can’t just jump out there and start pedaling. That hurt my ego, and my legs weren’t doing so great now either after following those fast guys for that first 30 minutes. So I settled in with some guys mid pack, they were riding a little easier pace on the uphills, so I would usually pass them on the climbs. On the downhills, almost everyone is faster than me, so I just let them go by so I don’t have to listen to them breathing down my neck like a horse. And this is about where I finished up, 22nd place out of the 43 that finished in the sport category. My time was 1hour 34 minutes. Overall I was pretty happy with that for the first mountain bike race of my life. I didn’t even have to race novice, which I assume is for people with zero fitness, wearing tube socks and tennis shoes.
Mike finished strong in the 40-45 group. He was looking tired at the finish, he must have really been pushing out there. Coincidentally he had the same race time as me! 1 hour 34 minutes. I guess we train together too much. He started 3 minutes behind me, and I kinda expected him to catch me on the course, but was happy my legs let me stay away. I am thinking it would have been cool to start in the same wave together. Mike and I are good at pushing eachother along, because we tend to pretty close in fitness at any given time. I bet we could have shaved a minute from our times if we raced side by side.

On the way home, we were delayed for a couple hours becaue there was a really bad accident that closed Interestate 70. We were all out of our cars, chatting with the neighbors, riding bikes on the freeway. It was really strange to be stranded like that. Some people had to pee, some were hungry, some were sleepy, and we couldn’t go anywhere.

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