TDD - Fools Dozen - 7th April 2019

Round three of the 2019 Tour De Dirt series took us to Medicine Park in Southern Oklahoma. The trails there are pretty rocky and technical which lead to some hard and tiring racing for me.

Fiona's race

Fiona had a tough one today, she is currently lacking a little confidence on singletrack and it showed today during her race. She worked super hard though and brought up the back of the field to take 4th place which is most definitely one place better than me.
We are hoping to try and get out to ride more trails over the next few weeks (weather permitting) before her next race. We also got to ride more post race and she definitely gained more confidence which is what it's all about. 

Frustrated Fiona

Post race almost smiling again

Nick's race

The Cat 1/2 loop took us over some rocky and technical trails. Although the course was short in both distance and time (normally we race for 2+ hours today it was more like 1.5hours) I was not alone in being thankful I only had to race 3 laps, It wore me out.

The course started on an uphill double track before descending and crossing onto a paved road. 

Photo from the preride

We climbed for around 0.25miles on the paved road before joining singletrack for the remainder of the lap. From preriding the course I had identified a few sections where I was struggling. Here is one such section which I didn't even attempt during the race, I just walked as it was faster.

After this section the remainder of my lap was pretty smooth sailing. I made almost every section I had failed during the preride apart from a babyhead section which eluded me. I even made the loose climb on all but my last lap. The race finished at the top of the double track rather than the bottom of the singletrack where we started. I'm very glad I didn't have to sprint against anyone on that as I was totally empty by this point.

Lap Times

Lap 1 - 31:00

Lap 2 - 33:54

Lap 3 - 36:40 though I did stop and back track to pick up TDD numberplate from a fellow competitor which was on the floor Strava says this cost me around 25 seconds 

Here I am descending Itchy Scratchy
- Photo Credit Jennifer Black

One of the things I did notice on my final lap was, I would end up riding at a similar speed to riders I was catching up with rather than just blasting past them. This probably helped me though as it meant I didn't blow up. 

Heart rate plot

Yer.... it was a hard race, there was very little area to recover as the course contains almost no flow sections, you work hard on both the climbs and descents at Medicine Park. Fun riding for sure but tough when you are not used to riding that sort of trail. 

Holy Heart Rate!

Results 

I finished a little sun burnt, very tired and not in last place! I managed to get 5th place which I am super stoked about. Sure the field was only 6 people but for this race at least I wasn't DFL. 

Not DFL

We now have a couple of weeks break from the TDD Series, there are still plenty of rides and training to do though. 

Strava file