Prologue

I’m still learning about gracefully trying to keep up racing bikes and being that awesome Dad/Husband, sometimes I have to learn the hard way that I shouldn’t count on best case scenarios to happen. Now you’d think I’d know this by now, I so commonly consider best case scenario when I think about how long a certain ride is going to take, or when I’m going to be home from a ride, and I’m so often wrong. However I have been working on this a lot lately and really felt like I’d made some good strides in the past few months. On a number of occasions I’ve been back before I said I would and most of the time I’m back and up with the family by at least the time I said I would be. I say those things and realize that I took a step back on Saturday.

The mutt has had an odd issue over the past few days related to his back/tail and late Friday we realized that he hadn’t been peeing really at all. So I spent Friday night at the emergency vet and really didn’t get any answers. One of the other “symptoms” was that he’s been wanting to go out a lot, he whines a good bit, and is kind of restless all of which can be a little stress inducing. When we discussed me going to Icycle this was not an issue and Chris, the 5 month old, was sleeping pretty well, which was not the case the nights leading up to the race day.

That morning I had some internal struggles on whether or not to go, I talked to Katie, she seemed to have similar struggles. For me though, I had been trying for a few weeks now to get together and ride hard with others in an outdoor setting and well life was always going to have something to say about it. After much struggle I decided at the last minute to go and carpool with Wes, thinking that the mutt would settle and the kids would behave. When what I should have done was stay close to home and try to get a decent ride in that didn’t require a few hours of driving, warming up, waiting…all the things that come with racing.

Less than 30 minutes after leaving I got word that the perfect scenario that I hoped would happen wasn’t happening. I realized my mistake pretty much right there, but I was committed, which in the long game might have been good because I think I learned a good lesson. When in doubt talk through it and make sure everyone is totally comfortable and have a backup plan to be able to bail and get back to the family if needed.

The Race

Anyhow, I went, we got out to Fontana Damn Resort, a place I’ve never ridden but heard fun things about. After a few minutes we found the registration area  and on the way there noticed Thomas Turner’s car with a SS on the back of it…after unsuccessfully trying to talk him out of registering for the SS class we got signed in. It was cold so there was a lot of standing around kind of procrastinating about getting ready. Finally everyone started to get dressed and we rode a little bit of the course. Where I quickly learned this was not going to be easy, there were some really steep and punchy climbs that were thawing/wet enough where traction was going to be an issue with the SS. I should also mention that I’m in no way in race shape. Anyhow, its finally time to line up, the start is in a big field in the sun, so it was actually pretty warm waiting to go.

Eric (race director) announced that we’ll have a lemans start, which means we put our bikes across the field, run to them, and then pick them up and start riding. Interestingly enough this will be the first time I’ve done this. As it turns out it is mildly important to get to your bike first/quickly, particularly when there is a tight uphill into the woods less than 200 yards from the start. As I didn’t hustle as much as I probably should have, I got mired in some traffic. At the first punchy uphill folks in front of me start to stall, jump off, try and push around, this would be the same situation for the first mile or so until we got onto the Llewelyn Loop. I managed to make a few passes, I picked up one of the singlespeeders pretty early on and then started the Llewelyn loop on the wheel of another single speed. The first half of the course actually suited me pretty well, so I stayed on the gas and soon found myself riding with two other geared riders.

The course was pretty sweet, it had a few more punchy climbs but for the most part it was good old fashioned mountain biking. Some doubletrack transitioning into a pretty rip roaring descent with a few switchbacks, but never excessively steep you couldn’t stay aggressive, into some tighter singletrack, there were a few spots that were seemingly unnecessarily narrow and off camber which the slick conditions made almost impossible. Then a little hike into what should be a pretty sweet downhill, however that part was pretty slick/muddy/nasty. On the second lap I hit the deck in a straight section of this because I blinked I think. There was also one switchback in this downhill that I could not seem to figure out on any of the 3 laps and of course it was the one that had a person at it, watching, mocking…

For most of the first and second laps I found myself riding pretty closely with who I would find out later was the masters winner. I’d catch up on the climbs and he’d get out in front of me some on the downs, a dynamic I’m not unfamiliar with when I’m riding the single speed. It was nice to have someone right in front of me to keep me chasing.  However we started the 3rd lap and I never saw him again, it had me thinking he dropped me, which made me push a little harder. As it would turn out he raced masters and only did two laps so I was chasing a ghost.

The third lap I was starting to cramp up some but I had gone out really hard in lap 1 so this wasn’t really a surprise. I tried to keep the pace steady and just get it home. I managed to come in a pretty uneventful 2nd SS. All and all I was pretty happy with how I felt and how I rode for January and glad I finally got to give the Icycle a go.