After a summer off from mountain biking and well any real biking for me I knew that the remainder of the TDD series was going to be a tough call, four races in four weekends, I really shouldn't have taken the whole summer off. But I did and life goes on.
Kids Cup
As with previous events Fiona is the first in our family to race, her warmup/sighting lap didn't go well. There was a kid in front of her who kept crashing and it pretty much wiped out any confidence she had. Oh well live and learn, next time I will ride that lap with her.
The course consisted of a grass climb, a dirt/rock singletrack section with a tough push up then a little more singletrack before a grass descent to the finish. Her age group did two laps.
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| Top of the first climb |
Although she wasn't wanting to race after the practice, she did line up and race and ended up taking home 6th place. Her second lap was a significant improvement over her first one as she gained confidence on the course, more practice next time I hope.
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| 6th Place and a bag of swag! |
The Course
People think that its flat out west and in most of Oklahoma to be honest however, my legs were destroyed after the race. There wasn't a lot of elevation change on the course however there was a lot of power sapping grass, rocks and a few ups that I couldn't ride up. I even had to walk one small drop as I completely had a mental block on riding it lap one and didn't improve that on lap two.
The first part of the course took us across the dam, then we were into a section called the pits which had all the steep ups and downs. After that is was mostly a double track around the lake with some soft sandy corners. We then crossed a metal bridge after which followed a sandy singletrack section which was my favourite part on the course. We then had around 1.5miles to the finish on some more singletrack with a couple of steep downs.
My race
To reiterate I really hadn't been riding over the summer with travelling and camping so my expectations were low for the race. It was also warmer than I like it to be when racing, however I have at least been riding some evenings in the heat so that I was less worried about. Due to the heat, our race was shortened and I was thankful for this. At the previous race I actually started to feel like my racing was coming together, sure I didn't get close the the podium but at least I was racing with people..
The race on Sunday didn't feel like that at all. Almost as soon as we started I was way off the back. Oh well, I pushed the pace for my solo ride around the lake two times. At the end of the first lap, a Single Speeder caught and passed me, they started 10 min behind me, next one of my teammates Jeremy Black and a guy he was racing caught me along the dam. I pushed on as hard as my legs would take me and set a new Heart Rate Threshold rate according to training peaks, I haven't updated it. :)
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| Errrmmm yey? |
The best thing from the race, finishing my second lap to the cheers of Amanda and Fiona.
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| The last technical section. |
It was a tough one for me and they stuck it out in the heat to cheer me on which I really appreciate.
Where did I finish? 4th place which is my best TDD result ever though there were only four people in my category.
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| Yep it was a tough one for me. |
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| Great racing by Eric, Victor and Chad. |
Due to the four races in four weeks I can foresee a similar couple of races coming up. Oh well pedal on and keep trying.
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