The first mountain bike race is in the book (Syllamo's does not count) and it was a great one! I highly recommend peeps put this as a must do race next year. Columbia is a short drive for KC area, St Louis and even the Iowa folks showed some color today.
Rain lightly hit the trails early in the morning so the first racers got a little muddy and the trails were slick. I did a test lap and found most of the trail was fairly dry, but the parts that weren't were brutally slick. The start was very fast, down hill and into a muddy corner. Most of the expert field seemed to navigate it fairly well, but i heard some other fields bit the dust or mud we will say.
I got an average start, the expert field was fast off the line. One clown jumped the start and got the hole shot, but missed a turn. His yin and yang were not in balance! The field strung out fairly quickly and I was about 7th out of 15ish when we finally found our grove. Unfortunately, my grove was much slower then the rest and i pushed myself into anaerobic. Luckily i soon wrecked and found myself in my own pace, but feeling like poop.
The next 10-30 minutes i was trying to recover and never really did. After that I showed some signs of life and road like I could compete with these guys. the other times I was just a guy on a bike trying to finish with some sort of dignity.
The course is great, nice combination of SM Parks speed and flow with a little bit of open road/field for recovery or passing. The tempo would have been nice with a little more experience there. After the first two laps I was familiar enough with the climbs, descents and traverses that I could hammer it up or through the turns.
At the end I finished 3 laps in 88 minutes, enough time to do another lap had i not been a sissy. Just did not feel like it. Glad i did not, 6 hours later I still feel like poop. A short soak in the hot tub to stretch the muscles, some really bad food, one Guinness (yep one) and i am pert near ready for bed!
Joe
Ps Syllamos did not count as a race due to the poor production and condition of the course. One hour in to the ride I knew I was there to survive. Did finish 67th out of 260ish?
The crash
