Race Report: State XC Championship

I was unsure how this race would go. I hadn't been feeling too good on the bike the past few weeks, unable to put out consistent power, and I haven't mountain biked much at all this year. I think the race was actually only the 6th time I've ridden my mountain bike all year. My roots are in mountain biking, but I haven't watered those roots since my devastating mechanicals in the ITU Cross Tri World Championships last May. Nevertheless, I pressed on and decided to do the race since it was in my backyard. The race would cap off my 6 week stay in Memphis this summer for an acute care rehab rotation for PT school.

I decided to not make the same mistakes I made in the first race of the season at the Pick Your Poison XC here in Chattanooga. The guy that beat me at that race would also be on the start line in Memphis, along with good friend and former co-worker Matt McCulley and one more racer.

We started hard from the gun, but I made sure not to be the first one to hit the trail, I did not want to lead everyone. I fell in behind Matt for second wheel. Taking an alternate route on a steep downhill section, I fell back one place and was now sitting 3rd wheel. A few miles later, I heard the guy riding in 4th crash. After a few miles of him not catching back on, I figured we had dropped him and he would no longer be in contention for the race. The 3 of us rode through the start/finish to start lap two. Matt attacked hard through the technical section of trail and stayed away for a few minutes. We caught back on after the steep section and continued to pedal on in our 3 man formation. The two lead riders gap'ed me a few times and Matt was even out of sight once or twice. I keep pushing on calmly and usually made up the ground when the trail went up.

In tight 3 man configuration.

About mile 6 into lap two, the rider in 2nd wheel attacked in an open section. Matt, who had been leading the entire race, sat up. He asked me if I was going to chase it down. I then realized Matt had no intention of chasing the rider breaking away. I had to jump. I closed the gap down pretty quickly and was on the lead rider's wheel by the time we dropped back into the tougher trail section. The pace had picked up. The trail was more fun and dangerous now. The two of us rode together through the start/finish again and started lap 3 together.

Railing a corner.

I had noticed this rider wasn't racing with a camelbak, but using one water bottle. I also noticed he hadn't been drinking much and he actually dropped his bottle at about mile 10 of lap two. I was expecting him to fad before the end of the third lap, especially if we kept up the pace we were setting. And this is exactly what happened. This is where I must credit and thank the people at BRL Sports for their awesome drink ENDURAFUEL. It kept me moving, hydrated, and fueled with amino acids and complex carbs in the hot and muggy woods of Nesbit Park. There was no fading or cramping for me. Anyway, riding through the steep section at the beginning of the 3rd lap, this rider went off course a bit and barely caught himself before crashing. I slowed up a bit and waited for him to get his feet back in the pedals and moving on the trail. Instead, he told me to go on, that his "leg had locked up." So I took off. I shifted up and darted down the trail trying to get as far out of sight as possible in case he was only sidelined for a few seconds. I rode the rest of that lap solo, getting to push myself as hard as I wanted and really enjoy the whole trail. I took a few more risks, and then would back off a bit. My riding was getting a little sloppy and I knew the most important thing was not crashing, not having a mechanical, and most importantly not flatting. I railed corners and hopped over roots praying not to hear that hissing sound that can and has deflated my heart in the past.

Up and Over.

Closing in on the finish, I finally felt comfortable about my position around mile 9.5. I settled in and railed the last downhill section and cruised across the bridge into the finish for the solo victory. It felt great to come away with the mountain bike state championship, something I wanted to achieve but hadn't fully committed to. Goal #5 check. And it also puts me in the lead for goal #1. A good showing in Memphis for the Chattanooga based road and cyclocross HUB Endurance Cycling Team. BTW, Matt came back to catch the 2nd place rider 50 meters from the finish and beat him for 2nd place in an awesome sprint finish with a bike throw. Awesome job and congratulations to Matt McCulley. Oh, and unfortunately I think somewhere along the race course I might have cracked my Niner Air 9 Carbon frame around the seatpost. Haven't heard anything back from them yet, but hopefully they work with me on this.

The next big challenge will be the State Road Race Championship. Thankfully my performance has been coming back over the past week and a half with some good power numbers for the times I think it will take to complete the climbs on the course. With 5 mid race climbs, it will still be a hard and challenging race. May the best rider win. I must admit that my real focus has already moved away from the road and is centered on the track. I've been enjoying my time in Atlanta and have a few big races and a training camp lined up for the rest of the season. I'll say bye to long endurance rides and pick up on all intervals of 5 minutes and less.

Race Reports: Rockabilly Gran Prix Omnium

Road Race:

Starting the race under omnious skies. 

The course was mostly flat, so I was feeling good about my chances and was looking to put on a show for my parents that got to come to this race. My Dad has never seen me do a bike race in person before and my Mom hasn't seen one since my crit win at River Gorge in 2011. We hit some patches of rain on the drive to the race that morning, so I was expecting some showers during the race. I wasn't expecting for it to get as bad as it did though. The rain really started during lap 2 of the 4 lap race. At the beginning of lap 2 I had made my way to the front so I could ride around all the pot holes and rough spots in the first half mile of the course; maybe the best decision of the weekend. Maybe a minute into lap two, I heard lots of loud clanging and crashing, carbon smacking the ground. I looked over one shoulder and saw some guys were/had gone down. I looked again over the other shoulder and realized it was a huge portion of the field that was crashing or behind the crash. I turned back around and punched it. I was moving away and only one guy was reacting and trying to come after me. I let him catch on and he immediately sat up and did no work once he pulled around me. We made the first corner and I slowly made my way up the first hill as I waited for the other 8-10 people that made it safely through the crash. We formed a decent paceline and started working to pull away. One "difficult to race with rider" jumped out of the saddle for an attack once it came around to his turn to pull in the paceline. That screwed things up for a while as no one wanted to pull hard after that. We eventually got back going, only for that same rider to attack again in the same fashion before dropping out of the back of the paceline to rest for a bit before trying the same attack as it came his turn to pull. This type of racing will make you a bunch of enemies pretty quick in the group.

We all stayed together though and came through to start lap 3 with more and more rain coming down. I actually slid my rear tire out about 6 inches in a hard right turn during lap two. I saved it but my bike felt weird for a little bit after that. It felt like I had flatted. I got a very sick feeling and worried there for bit thinking I had just blown this opportunity; it all worked out though. As our breakaway group moved through lap 3, the storm really started pouring down on us. It got hard to see due to such heavy rain and every turn had to be taken with extreme caution. About 6 miles from the finish, the race lead car pulled alongside us. They told us this would be our last lap. We would finish on 3 instead of 4. Once they pulled away, the attacks started and they didn't stop until we went under the 1K to go mark. Racing got very hard in those last 6 miles, chasing attacks, making breaks, all to get pulled back together. I had no perception of where we were on the course. I wouldn't have been worried or responded as quickly as I did to some of the attacks if I had.

As we closed in on the 1K to go mark, I was sitting second wheel feeling really good about my position and the run in to the finish. Around 500 meters to go, the race lead car had pulled alongside us again. All I could make out from him was that we were not supposed to sprint. I figured it was a safety thing and they didn't want our group standing up and throwing our bikes in a sprint that would likely cause a mass crash like before. What the lead car didn't see was the approaching truck in the same lane as the lead car. Our lead car sped up and quickly pulled back in front of our group, but not in time. The cars clipped each other as I heard clanging metal and plastic for the second time in that race. Adrenaline surged as I could imagine the cars hitting and coming to halt with me plowing into the back of the race car. A very frightening moment.

After that, I surged in the saddle as we came up to the start finish because I wasn't sure if we were still finishing or not. I came across first, but knew we were done at that point. There were no officials anywhere in sight at the line. The road race would not be scored and ended up just getting cancelled altogether. Apparently, there were tornado warnings in the area and the sheriff made the race director pull all riders off the course. Why did they let us race the last 6 miles and then cancel our race 500 meters from the line? I'm not sure, but it sure was a lot of work and effort to race for no outcome.


Time Trial:
The weather started behaving shortly after the road race course was evacuated and all riders departed the area. The time trial was set to go off as planned. Due to some unforeseen complications, I didn't make it back to the race area in time for a warm-up. I started out setting up my bike as if I would, but had to bail as I knew it was getting too close to time and it was more important to show up on time to my start than to ensure a thorough warm-up. I got in just over 3 minutes of warm-up for the 5 mile TT.

I was the last Cat 4 to go so I should have had lots of guys out in front of me to try chasing down; however, a lot of the guys were missing due to the storms and a few were even in the hospital from that morning's crash in the road race.

I started out of the gate hard, standing and putting full force into the pedals to get moving. I was going to pay for that effort about 3 minutes down the road when I was fighting with myself to back off the pace. I tried to keep pushing on, staying as aero as possible. I periodically took peeks at my computer to see where my watts were. I was putting out a stellar average so far and not sure if I would really be able to keep it up. Ideally, I thought I could average 400w if I were feeling good. Well I dug in and pushed hard through the line once I could see the finish. I clocked 11 minutes at 411 average watts on my computer: a great showing, better than I could have anticipated. I cooled down on the ride back to the start/registration area to later find out I won the TT with an official time of 10:55 with second place coming in at 11:02. I would have placed 4th in the Cat 3's. Happy to get this win as now the omnium would be decided by only the TT and Crit placing with the money from the RR being split between the TT and Crit payouts already scheduled.


Crit:
Then came the crit. We drove back to Jackson for the second day of racing with both my parents and my grandmother so all could enjoy the race. My grandmother has never seen a bike race before. Now I needed to impress with my family at the race for the first time in 2 years.

The crit started with an attack from one rider. I didn't want to jump that hard early on, but I was the one to bring him back after a few corners. We stayed together for a lap or two and then another big attack came with an unsuspecting rider taking a little gap on the field for a bit. He got brought back in shortly there after. There were a few more attacks, but nothing big until the rider that attacked off the start line threw another big attack and created a decent gap on the field that took over 2 laps to bring back in. This would have been the time to attack now, but I wasn't feeling that fresh and not sure if I could hold it. We stayed together and a prime was announced for the next lap. The field stretched out a bit, but as we approached the line I found myself sitting 3 abreast and only two wheels back from the lead. Being this close, I just couldn't let the prime go. So, I pulled off to the right and laid down some watts to surge past the leaders and take the prime. Like I said, I wasn't committed to attacking at first and still unsure of myself. I looked at my computer before I moved though and we were about 20 minutes into the 40 minute race which was exactly my plan pre-race. I kept my head down and continued to push over the flat and through corner one. Out of corner one, I was able to look back at the field and realized I had already created a sizable gap. It was now or never. Time to go! I tucked and buried it trying to get away from the field. It hurt. I was suffering out there for the next 4-5 laps second guessing myself and backing off now and then to make sure that if they caught me, I wouldn't fall off the back of the group. I tried getting a time split from the finish line officials, but instead got the 5 laps to go sign. It was the encouragement I needed. I was able to start counting down and out of corner 5 and corner 1 I could still glance back and see no one coming for me. The breakaway win was becoming more and more real with each passing lap. If I was caught now, it was over. I had to give it all I had. I pushed more. I made it to two laps to go and finally felt comfortable, but still never let up.

Crit Finish

Before the race even started, we had heard about how difficult the last corner could be with many of the earlier races having crashes there on the last lap, usually taking out the leaders. So I knew this would be a tricky point in the race every time we came through, especially as we closed in on those finals laps. How do you avoid the possibility of a crash and eliminate the need to chase down attacks throughout the race? You attack solo off the front and only have to worry about yourself. It was definitely a much harder way to win a race though. Waiting, covering, and out-sprinting everyone else at the end is much easier, but more stressful.

Crit Podium

So my family didn't get to see an exciting sprint finish all weekend, but I think they got some solid viewing time of me on and off the front. With the crit and time trial win, I secured the overall omnium and collected my biggest payout to date and earned a new champions jersey. Great rewards for solid, tough racing. 

Overall Podium