First scrap of the year - winter short track race #1

Sunday January 13th got here before I knew it. The holidays flew by and next thing I knew it was race time. January 13th was the first race of the Winter Short Track Series and for me it was my first race since 2011. No, I was not in shape or nearly ready for this race. In my year off I had gained weight and lost lots of fitness. Between injuries, surgeries, and catching colds it just didn't work out for me in 2012. Every time I would get a few good weeks of riding in it seems something would happen and I'd be back off the bike for weeks at a time. Glad to have all that behind me and start charging in 2013. I had a good solid 7 weeks of base training before the first race - enough to hang in there, but I knew that I wasn't going to be at race speed or even close. That's o.k. though - I know from previous years how long race fitness takes to build. Hopefully my body will remember and adapt quickly. My plan this year is to build up, do lots of mountain bike racing through the spring/summer, and hopefully be fast again in the fall for Cyclocross season.

I decided that I'd be racing in the single speed class during the winter short track races. I liked the fact that it is essentially an "open" class with cat 1, 2, and 3 racers. Additionally, I thought it would be good to give my little girl's legs some torture in the hopes I'd get some added strength. I made sure to get a good warm up by taking my son on his race, which was right before mine.

I lined up for the start of the race and decided that the 3rd row (out of 4) was about right. We took off up the hill on the start and as soon as we got to the woods, there was a big bottleneck as 32 guys were trying to get into the singletrack. We all got jammed up and next thing I know some guy goes over the bars and a couple racers around him are falling as well. See the video coverage of this incident here: Short Track Single Speed Pile up. Video compliments of Bart at Queen City Bikes. I had to make a quick move into the woods and around a tree to avoid the accident. If you look close in the video you will see me in my Carolina Bicycle Company jersey about 15 seconds in (# plate 217)on the left side avoiding the pile up. Glad I got around that mess!

We now head down the hill. The short track course is just that, really short with a 2 minute downhill section and a 2 .5 minute uphill section. It is not technical at all - really smooth with berms, rollers, some singletrack, some pavement, and some gravel fireroad. I'm always dragging brakes behind people on the downhill portion, it does get irritating losing all that momentum and having to regain it on the small punchy sections of uphill. There are enough people in front of me that the pace is very manageable heart rate wise and rather slow. We get to the start of the uphill and some guy spins out about 4 riders in front of me. We all have to stop, and somehow I manage to track stand so I don't have to take my feet off the pedals. The guy stumbles 3 or 4 more times and now people are screaming at him to get off the track and out of the way and let us by. Of course he doesn't, but eventually we get moving. I was blowing up every time up the hill. For you non-cyclists out there, blowing up just means that you are redlining your heart rate over and above what you are actually capable of doing lap after lap. It catches up to you later in the race as you burn all your matches. I was seeing 188, 190 heart rate numbers which are really high for me. I had to throttle back some on the climb, which kept me stuck behind some slower riders on the downhill.

There were a couple jumps on the course in the downhill section. They were relatively easy, and even though I was on a hardtail, and totally gassed, I still tried to give folks a show by airing them out best I could (they are really small jumps).

Unfortunately, Saturday night before the race I felt like I was coming down with something. It was confirmed Sunday morning when I woke up before the race. Then when we got our son up he had a big time runny nose. Sure enough, some kinda bug is going through the house - even Amie felt bad and she rarely gets sick. I decided that I would still race. I could tell during my warm up that I was more out of breathe then usual, oh well, I wan't gonna win anyway. I thought about quitting every lap, especially on this slow grassy death crawling section that just took your mojo right outta you. I just kept on fighting though, even as the girls in the class behind me started catching up and passing me! I even drafted a few of them up the hill and got some laughs from other racers (who had raced earlier in another class) that were watching our race. I eventually sucked it up enough to get rid of a couple guys who were keeping things a little to close for my comfort. Finished in 39 minutes and did 8 laps. It was good enough for 21st place out of 32. Not the start I was hoping for, but I had fun and it's only the beginning. I'm still off the bike now as I'm still sick, but I'll be back at it soon with a vengeance! If you have never tried short track racing, you gotta get out there and see what it's like. I had a great time cheering for other racers, watching my 3 year old do the kids race, and suffering some on my own.