Wet Matches

Well my venture into elite has been interesting. I will say this, no matter the race, conditions, or distance there will always be someone to race against in elite. This is not always the case with expert. Also the riders that show are always of a much higher calibre. Not to mention you get an exta lap!

::Ruby::

In short, mud fest. It wasn't an epic race that you come out caked in mud. No this was a different kind of mud. Kind of like axel grease. It was slippery enough to make riding parts impossible (for me), and just slick enough to make running them an interesting experience. Think of a CX race but with circus music. The river crossing also added another level of hilarity. Too deep to ride you had to run/walk it hoping you wouldn't roll your ankle on a rock. Not to mention all the river rocks were kind enough to un Velcro my shoes each time I crossed. I am pretty sure that mr Tanguy didn't stop to fasten his shoes up after every crossing. This might explain the time gap he had on me...

Not sure if it's just me but damn that had a fast start. Definitely my first "welcome to the big leagues" experience when that gun went off. Just hanging on was brutal. Overall a good race. Was by no means a test of fitness. You really couldn't red line yourself with all the mud. First time I've ridden the course...something I'm learning is a big mistake in elite.

::Stony TT::

I'll sum this up for you short and sweet. Suckage. Over the last few weeks I have had almost no gas in my legs. Through a slow process of attrition with work, lack of sleep, bike parts breaking, and food poisoning I've been cached. Showing up to Stony TT was a futile act but I looked to it as a training experience. I brought my geared bike and the single speed out for some suffering.

On the first grass straight away I knew it wasn't going to be a good day. The speed was way too low and my legs HURT. This trend continued to get worse as the race went on. This was by no means how good I felt at Yankee TT....and I knew it. Caught a few wheels in technical sections but couldn't stick it. Took my 17th place in stride, got my single speed entry refunded, and promptly located some beer.

I'm in a funk.

Elite v1.0: the anatomy of a bonk

Woke up at 5:00am to my alarm clock. This is when you question "why do i race?". Fixed my normal pre race meal of French toast and Nutella (just don't eat with less than three hours pre race). Got a call from Jim mid way through my meal prep. Turns out that "chance of showers" was a pretty nasty guarantee. Scoped out the radar for myself and sure enough, it looked brutal. Jim was on the ropes, and I won't lie, so was I. My only drive was that i need to get into the elite scene of riding ASAP. No one wants to start their season out being DFL. So why not get used to it now? Besides, everyone needs a good mud filled suffer fest. Figuring it's been almost three years since I had mine, time to sign up for another. Besides I was counting on some sketchy radar math that it would stop raining 1hr before the race. Gave Jim the out, and he took it. So looks like 3hrs in the car solo.

Beautiful morning...the radar implied otherwise, so I packed up my car in preparations for rain:

Empty roads at 6am on a saturday, go figure:

Drive up was uneventful. Almost got a ticket, but the guy in front of me took one for the team. Rolled into Boyne with 1hr to the start. Weather had just lifted and everything was pretty damp. Though more people would have bailed, but the parking lot was pretty full. The registration line confirmed my fears, I got the number 5 plate. Oh well, time to suffer, with the other four guys :)

Rolled up to the starting line of five guys. Robert "the man" Heriman and Greg Kuhn were the only familiar faces. The other two guys I had never seen before. One did rock a fully rigid 29'er with what appeared to be (and later confirmed) a 38t front ring and a matching 21-11 road cassette. This is never a promising sign. Apparently I didn’t get the memo saying to bring my big boy shorts.

Strange thing about elite racing, the start isn't always as fast as you'd think. Then again we were just five. We motored the first flat parts at about 20mph Greg heading up the front. Greg took a wrong turn, the 29er rigid guy biffed in some sand. So I was sitting in 2nd place behind an unknown rider. Nothing I couldn't handle ( I thought). Now once we hit the first climb, it was strange; they just kept going at the same pace. I couldn't match. They launched me off the back like space trash. 29'er man, Robert, and the unknown soldier blasted up the trail. Greg finally caught back up and gave me the words of advice for the day "settle in and push hard". So I did just that.


Being DFL has its benefits. You always look up the trail with hope and hunger looking for a straggler. For some strange reason I kept seeing Robert just up the trail. This didn't make much sense. He had been second wheel when I got dropped. Sure enough after every hill he was out of sight. Got some split times from spectators but my suspicions were confirmed when they ranged from 30seconds to 1minute depending on the hills. So I dug down and kept motoring. Sometime during the second lap I caught Robert. He too gave me some words of advice to "make sure to keep drinking and eat". That’s when I started doing the mental math, which was not promising. This race was going to be longer and much harder than I had anticipated.

When riding solo in longer races you are forced to make do with your own sag. I had put four bottles by the start finish area. Figured that would be enough for the day. Wrong. My estimated five bottle day ended up being an eight bottle day. (a big thank you to the spectator who filled my bottles and handed them to me on the last lap!) To add fuel to the bonk fire was my lack of proper food intake. During my rush to warm up I had forgotten to pack my food. So in a last minute rush I stuffed only three Gu's and two rice crispy treats in my pockets. Not nearly enough for a 3.5-4hr race. These two factors would come together going into the last lap. I kept looking at my computer on the flats. My speed was dropping. My breath was getting hot, and the hills started to look longer. Out of food and just on water and Gatorade I knew I was hosed. Robert finally caught me at 3:10:00 and that’s when the wheels fell off. Trying one last desperate attempt to catch him my matchbook was empty. The next 35minutes were a combination of dizzy spells and stopping to trying not puke. The final nail in my coffin was an expert rider passing me. Up until that point no one had passed me outside of elite men. All ambition gone I coasted the last parts of trail trying not to pass out (thankfully no one else passed me). Finally I hit the finish at 3:45:00, almost 10min ahead of the 1st place expert in my age group. So moving up wasn’t all bad, even if I only got 5th (of 5).

Looking at my data post race you can pretty much see the downward spiral into bonk land:

PROS:
* Knocked 15minutes off last years time with a longer course and against faster rider
* Dodged the rain and got perfect trail conditions
* Learned how to suffer proper like!

CONS:
* Not enough water / food intake. Rookie mistake.
* Didn’t ride my own race like a silly roadie.
* Got passed by an expert rider. Oops.

MA day 7: finding single track

Mission: ride my mountain bike, find single track.


After many hours of skulking around on the Internet I found some promising places to ride near me. The only catch was the torrential down pour over the last day. After riding through one of the state forests earlier I knew anything in it or low lying areas would be a swamp. So that left me with one area close enough to bother with. All the trail reviews agreed that it was one of the best trail systems to hit up around here. Spent a few hours finding some GPS info and ride descriptions and off I went:





Now ever state has its own style of trails. MA is no different. Here there are four main features. Rocks: There are tons of rocks. Big, small, long, tall. The worst kind is the moss covered monolith which can go for thirty feet of trail. Tread lightly or you are going down...you will never be on a level incline when you encounter them. Moss: This wasn't bad but when added to the rocks, it was a bit tricky. Roots: Again like the moss it isn't a problem, but normally you'd get a large root system in the middle of a rocky section. One screw up and you were hiking. Good day sir. Last but not least my favorite Leaves: You'd assume these guys would be slick, obscure the trail, or all in all just annoy you. Except they were mostly off of the trail. For some reason these leaves were just DEEP. If you went off trail at all good luck. Chances of sinking up to six inches into some unseen rock crevice was pretty much a guarantee.


So are all MA trails like this? Nope, just the hiking or double track. If you hunt hard enough (and they are hidden for a reason) you will find single track. Well maintained, easily ride able (most of the time) single track. I'd say of the 15.5 miles today I only did about 5 miles of single track. According to all the maps and chit chat online I missed another 1-2miles. Now this was if I had wanted to hike-a-bike probably double that distance along a questionable ridge trail. Normally I would be all about that... I found out early on in my ride that bike shoes + slick rocks = no good times. So I passed.

Olivia was nice enough to give me a place to park to start my ride. Parking around here was a bit sparse, but since people normally only stop 5-10min to look at the vista you are pretty safe finding a spot:

Olivia's Outlook wasn't bad...but some NY people did whine about "oh I thought there would be much more of a drop off". I thought It best not to tell them to hike their lazy butts up the ridge to the fire tower for the real view:This is a very vague idea of what MA has to offer for trails. Granted this is a hiking trail, but you can see a little bit of everything it has to offer. The single track was in a bit better shape when I happened upon it:Power line corridors offered up some nice views: Hike-a-biked for this shot. Turns out when the trail said it was just a "hiking path" it was right....unless you were some kind of mountain goat with a trials bike and tires made of a super sticky material. At this point I turned around and started my return trip to the car:
Once I found the single track it dumped you out onto some nice overlooks. Messed with my camera's timer a bit and got this nice Alex style self portrait shot. Note to self, smile next time:Every trip I try to finish it off with a staple meal. In this case some whole grain bread and flank steak washed down with a blue moon. yum:
All in all a good trip to MA. Obviously more for the roadies out here. The single track is too hard to find to just make a mountain biking trip out of it. Ended up skipping my gap ride up in VT so I could scope out the mountain biking trails around here. After all I'm still in my mid cycling career crisis of mt bike vs road.

::::ride stats::::
time: 2:40:18
distance: 15.61 miles
climbing: 2786ft

MA day 6: The Guacamole Report

Well in short. No group ride tonight at 6pm. Didn't realize we were going to be swamped by rain till 1pm. I rushed to get to the trail head but didn't saddle up till 3pm, then the rain rolled in about two hours faster than I had expected. Only ended up getting in 30-45min of saddle time around a park. Luckily I didn't venture over the ridge to the next mountain or I'd have been boned. I needed a rest day anyway...legs are crispy.

Trails around here have a lot more rocks, but they are all ride able. I can't really comment on the true conditions since I was in a well groomed park for the start of my ride. Horses and people co existed here so some trail was way too easy, other trails were poo covered and dimpled with horse tracks. I'm sure the locals have some killer routes around the mountains here. Just no time today to get lost with the rain. Bah.

MA day 5: "taking it easy today" -paul borden

Well with the best intentions I mapped and planned for an easy day. Something like 40miles and 1.5-2k climbing. Nothing hard. Stick to the basics and scope out some roads north east of here near the New York state border.

Rolled out around 4-4:15pm for my ride. A bit late, but no biggie for a 2-2.5hr chill ride. Plenty of light to be hard. Hit a snag looking for my first major left hand turn. Did a little back tracking figuring I missed the turn (or rather got the first and not the third street name it's called off Google maps). While back tracking i saw a cyclist, figured I'd ask the local. Said he would show me the street since he was on his warm up for a group ride. Being a fool I asked about then group ride....blah blah about local hoss's and that it was 40-50miles of eye bleeding. So I figured "why not".

In the parking lot we waited a bit and people talked up tales about "last week was so fast". This got me a little scared because it was my day off and I have a mt bike ride tomorrow with a local shop. I lucked out and all the big cat 1/2 guys were off at a stage race about 70miles away. The other locals however did not get so lucky. About 5miles into the group ride it became apparent when I gased it up the first big climb I was the hoss. Weak.

There were a few "entering city/township" signs we did sprints for. The signs were hidden by over hanging trees so I missed the first two. Asked the other riders the proximity to the next few...and then proceeded to show them that sprinting at the last second was not necessary when we could go super fast for a whole mile! Towards the end of the ride they didn't put up much of a fight. Just some local club guys tried to bridge so I waited up and finished out the last bit with them. Wasn't a terribly impressive ride. Definitely went way too hard for my "day off". Tomorrow should be icing on my crispy cake.

Got the low down on the mt bike ride Thursday from one of the riders tonight. Might be a shaky description based on attendance but apparently I'll get about a solid 2-3hrs in on the saddle. No droppage since the group will be large. I'll see what kind of gas they are cooking with if I've got any left in my tank...which isnt much.

here is the real route i took:


:::ride stats:::
ride time: 3:05:20
distance: 59.56

MA Day 4: the flat route

Well today started off with better planning. I hit up a local bike shop to chat them up for maps and rides. Got a nice map of all the MA roads that indicated hill direction, traffic flow, and paved vs dirt. The last part was definitely key after my beartown state forest experience. Chatted up some family for ride suggestions also. Put them all together and came up with this route:

Was looking for a little easier ride today, so I opted for the route with 'less climbing'. Once I got home and processed my data the reality was I had actually gone harder today....oops. Tomorrow will be a chill ride with my cousin who's not exactly a serious biker. Should be a chill few hours for me....for him maybe not soo much.

Today I was climbing the first major mountain and saw this fun little sign. Sure enough there was a euro style 180 in the road:

Didn't click till I saw this sign at the top that I had picked the wrong side to ascend. In retrospect I would have preferred the longer grinder with the nutty ride down. Alas I was stuck with a short steep grinder then a REALLY mellow ride down. bah. Gravity needs to do more work:

The hair pin turn did afford me a panoramic shot, but it doesn't do the view justice with all the humidity in the air:

Let us not forget to eat our rice crispy treats....GC's orders:

Finally after going down the longer side of the mountain i saw my "fun starts here" sign: Had to take a shot of me rep'n the trails-edge gear:

I will give MA a lot of credit here. If you stick to some of the "major" roads they are very well marked and easy to follow. Deviate at your own risk.:

I guess the circus had come to town this week, but they forgot to remind me I had to perform:

Did I bring my mountain bike? oh ya....oops. I'll be hitting up a local group shop ride Thursday. See what these guys are rocking. Apparently most of the trails around here are hidden / boot legged so that ATV's don't mess them up. I guess surrounding states protect state land / forests so they come to MA and shred the trails. They weren't too keen on giving up their hot spots to an outsider, so I'll have to just ride with them Thursday....

:::ride stats:::
ride time: 3:47:53
distance: 72.40 miles
lost dist: 0 miles (down 100%)
time reading directions and scratching head: 5min (down 83%)
time riding on restricted access roads: 0min (to my knowledge down 100%)