Pre race, showing off my sweet new ride:
(Photo credit Mark D)
My pit crew, setting up:
Map:
My goal was to do 5 laps of the 12 mile course before the 6 hour cutoff. Unfortunately, conditions made that impossible for me.
Lap one, 01:09:56 - took a nice half hour for an easy warm up. Then broke free and started passing people. Caught up to and starting riding with David Muse.
Lap two, 01:07:20 - put down a solid place, on track for five laps!
Lap three, 01:14:56 - Got dropped by David, he is a bit faster on the twisty stuff. Was still putting down a good pace though so I listened to my legs and settled in. Half way through the lap, the they sky opened up and the trail became a river. Absolutely literally. It was riding a mountain bike up stream. Near the end of the lap, someone involuntarily dismounted in front of me and I slammed on my rear brake. Moved the sliding dropout slightly and caused my rear brake to rub
Lap four, 01:27:08 - Took five minutes to have Scott Hodge fix my rear brake while I fueled up for the next lap. Then, I put my head down and hit the mud. It was brutal. Was wearing down until I caught up with David again, two thirds of the way into the lap. That apparently gave him new found energy in addition to giving me something tangible to chase. So, we kicked up the pace a bit and finished together.
Total, four laps in 4 hours, 59 minutes. Ended up being 46.27 miles with about 4,000 ft of climbing on the GPS. Avg speed for the first three laps was 10 mph. The fourth lap dropped the total average speed down to 9.3 mph.
GPS - http://connect.garmin.com/activity/4558538
Laps - http://connect.garmin.com/splits/4558538
Post ride recovery beer:
What worked:
Minus my little sliding dropout issue, which I hear I can resolve with some burlier bolts, my new Lynskey frame was excellent. Light, responsive and fantastic handling. The bike just went where I wanted it to. Point and shoot.
Tires. I was really worried about running the Hutchinson Python tires in potentially muddy conditions. I was wrong to worry, they where absolutely fantastic. I seems to have better traction then people around me and they rolled fast, even in the mud.
Nutrition was great. Drank a 24 oz bottle of CytoMax each lap. Ate a protein bar whenever I got hungry. Think I had 3 total.
Only thing that didn't work where my gloves. They don't have any padding and for some reason, I started getting blisters on each of my palms. Them being wet might have had something to do with it. I'm going to try some new gloves with more palm padding next.
More photos here:
Yargo Aftermath
Sunday, I knocked out a nice pleasant 33 mile recovery road ride.
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/4586780
The sky opened up and poured on me for 5 minutes during the ride but I was fine with it. Was warm out and there was no mud to be found on the road!
No comments:
Post a Comment