Mens 30-39 Sport Race in Danville, VA

Sometime this winter while doing fire road rides at Pocahontas with David Reid, David mentioned that the Danville race would be his first big focus during the 2013 season.  I was riding my mountain bike relatively often in the Fall and early Winter, and thought it would be fun to try this race.   After all, it would be USAC sanctioned, would count toward an Expert upgrade, and would also be the State Championship.  As Winter wore on, I really neglected my mountain bike while focusing on road and cross riding.  So, enthusiasm for this race slowly turned to fear of doing an early season XC race with a big field of sport racers hungry for upgrade credit and a solid placing in a big race.

As race day approached, it became increasingly unsavory to think about waking up in time to arrive in Danville for a 10:30 race – which was really 9:30 if you consider the clock change that occurred the night before.  Also, I figured I would put myself and others in danger if I saw this course for the first time during a race.  So, I traveled down the day before and gave myself time to do a couple laps of the course and a few extra runs up the first mile or so of trail.  By the end of that ride, my confidence was up.  I was really having fun and enjoying the course.  Still, I thought the safest thing would be to get a lead quick and keep away – making sure I could use my motor as much as possible to make up for any technical deficiency.

So, in the half second too long it took to clip-in at the start, I missed my shot at entering the woods early.  Instead, I entered the woods in the middle of my group of 21 riders.  I was pretty frantic to pass guys since I could see the leaders getting further ahead on the switchbacks.  I passed a lot of guys within a couple miles, but knew there still had to be a few more to find.

Shortly before the gravel section at the end of the first lap, I came close to what turned out to be the remaining three guys.  I hauled it through the gravel and got right up to the last of the three.  I could tell he was hurting, so I passed him pretty easily in the first mile of lap two.  He was tired, but gained on me whenever the trail went downward or got twisty.  I kept riding hard and just as he disappeared, the two leaders were in sight.  They were from the same team and taking turns riding in front of each other.  They seemed like good riders, but were getting slower on the climbs.  I got right up on them – and figured I could hang with them and probably sit in for a top-three finish – or I could take a chance, pass them as hard as I could, and ride my butt off for the last three or four miles.  After riding slowly behind them on a generally uphill section for about half a minute, I felt recovered enough to take a solid shot at a pass.  I passed both of these guys at once, and rode away from them as convincingly as I could.  From there, I just had a blast playing keep away.  I was happy to catch Taylor Clarke, who I figured was leading the 20-29 age group that went off shortly before my 30-39 group.  He also seemed to be riding with some level of paranoia.  We knew we weren’t racing against each other, but I think we each helped keep the other moving fast.

I really wasn’t sure I won until the results were posted.  I am way psyched to get that result, and am all the more committed to focusing on improving my technical skill to better match my fitness.  I do think I need one more top five result in a USAC sanctioned race before I qualify for Expert upgrade.  Until the upgrade is final, I will be doing at least one or two rides a week on my mountain bike so I can be somewhat competitive in the Expert group rather than ending up as a log pile on the trail!

Until next time, I'll give many thanks to David Reid and Jeff Plassman for their encouragement and numerous pointers they have provided at various times over the last few months.