2008 Camp Hilbert MTB Series #1 race report

Camp Hilbert Mountain Bike Race #1
March 9, 2008
SingleSpeed

It's apparent I have not learned my lesson.

I have often gone out in mountain bike races, had a good position early, and tried to keep it for too long, only to blow up horribly and make the subsequent distance left absolutely miserable. In some cases this distance has been the last 4-5 miles of 20, and in some cases it's been the last 20 miles of 27.

Having won this race in the fall of last year, I had higher-than-normal expectations of winning again. And maybe I could have. But when the horn sounded and I had a chance to lead going into the woods, I took it. I thought I could shed riders early and then maintain my pace with maybe 1 or 2 guys. Instead, a group of 4 followed my lead. One blew up pretty early, so it became a group of 4. And I led that group of 4 for about 9 miles.

Then, everything went south.

My back started to ache, and my power was obviously fading. My climbing was suffering horribly, and I knew it was only a matter of time before I had nothing left in the tank. And within about a quarter of a mile, I went from 1st to 4th. 3 guys passed me within a short span, and I couldn't respond at all. I didn't have the legs, nor the willpower to make them go any faster. I am pretty certain that the psychological effect of being passed by 3 people on one climb was all it took to crush my enthusiasm.

I continued through the finish of the second of 3 laps, now in 4th and having no idea how far ahead the 3 were, or how far behind 5th place was. But I knew I had to at least finish the race at whatever cost.

I had forgotten why mountain biking is so miserable when you're hurting: first of all, there's no escaping the fact that you're in the woods and you can't just quit and go home. You still have to ride at least some part of the course to get back to the car. Sometimes this is a mile, and sometimes it's a very long way. My situation was exacerbated by being on a bike with one gear (and not exactly an easy one.) Not only can you not go fast, you can't make any hill easier on yourself by a simple downshift. Second, when one part of your body hurts, EVERY other part of your body compensates. In my case, my back had started to hurt, and my brain decided to make my arms, stomach, and shoulders do the work of pedaling a bike (note: this is not efficient.) And since it's all connected, my legs were being dictated to keep pedaling by those arms, stomach, and shoulders. The unwelcome stress was being resisted by the back of my left knee, where ligaments were pulling and synapses were firing telling me to stop. But I couldn't. The rest of my body compensated for the knee by putting unwelcome stress on any muscle that was not yet screaming in pain.

So... for about 8 miles I tried to balance the multitude of pains in my body while still propelling the bike forward as fast as possible. I propelled myself those 8 miles forward all the way to the finish line without being passed by another rider in my class to hold onto that 4th place. My time was 18 minutes slower than last year (albeit in slightly muddy conditions, and riding the course in the opposite direction), but also about 9 minutes slower than the winning time.

I'm not disappointed, really. I went out too hard and paid for it. I just hope I can learn from my mistakes and remember where I went wrong this time, to prevent it from happening next time.

But I'm not counting on it.