Saturday morning, me and Alex went on a road ride before heading up to Mt Hood. I wanted to get a few hours in at a decent pace; we ended up going up hwy 30 to St John’s and around the Bybee-Smith area in NoPo. I’d never been there before, so we got a bit lost and didn’t have time to go through the park at all, but the sun was getting hot and we needed to get up to Hood. So we logged about 40 miles in 2.5 hours, home by 9:30am.
We headed up to Hood around 11am, and on our way up, a bit past Timberline, we pulled over and watch the pro women’s pelaton go by as part of the Mt Hood Cycling Classic. It was pretty awesome…they were nearing the end of an absolutely killer climb, and I can’t say I was jealous.
We got to the race registration around 1pm, only to be told the Short track race was delayed until 5pm. We tried to go to the campground that the promoter said a bunch of people would be at, but we ended up running into what looked like some pretty deep snow, so we turned around and set up our tent in a little spot by a creek off the forest road. We road back to preride the short track route a few times, and we ran into fellow PVer Javad. He said the snow was passable, so after a few laps we went back, gathered our things, and went to the other campground. Mind you, we had already set up our huge ass tent and didn’t feel like taking it down. So instead we managed to wedge it into the back of Javad’s truck bed, completely assembled. It was awesome, it made his Toyota look like a covered wagon.
The campground was actually part of the course, so we walked down to a wooden bridge to check out the course. It was right where the beginner/sport/pro’s split up; it appeared as though the sport route went under water–there was once a trail, but the river was running so high because the snow melt that the about 15 feet or so of the trail was in the creek, about 2-3 feet of water. I was suddenly very glad I decided to sign up for the beginner’s course.
We headed over around 4pm for the short track, it turned out that only about 14 people were signed up and ready to go. So they decided there would be 3 scoring categories (open women, open men, and pro/expert men). There were 10 pro/experts, 3 open men, and me–oh, and they decided to run us all as one big group together.
The course was basically up a fireroad and down single track, 25 minutes of all out effort. The single track was pretty rocky, although banked because it was also a motorcycle track, so it was very fast. I prerode pretty slow, in my usual scaredy-cat fashion.
And then to the race.
I’m not sure what it is about racing. It’s like all that fear about falling and all that self-preservation stuff just flies out the window and I just BOMB down anything. It was awesome! My main goal was to not have Alex and Javad lap me, and somehow only 3 of the pro/experts did. I felt really good about that race and was totally pumped up for the XC course.
That night we heard the race organizers out with chainsaws putting down tree stumps in the creek, so that the racers could walk over the creek. Those guys worked their asses off for this race, and it really showed.
The next day there were about 100 people registered for the race (no surprise there, the weather was SO WONDERFUL) . Most of them were experts, there were a lot of sports though too; only a measly 3 women beginners (including myself) and maybe 10-15 beginner men (senior and masters). We slowly watched everyone get called up until it was just the beginners; our course was 8.5 miles, mostly single track.
The whistle was blown, and I sprinted for it. We immediately had to run up a hill (cross anyone?) and from there I slowly started passing everyone…I knew there were a few people ahead of me (Alex), but I passed everyone who hadn’t sprinted out of the gate, or those who were just a little slow on the single track. I decided to treat it like short track and just go balls out. My breath was SO LOUD the entire time. I was flying over rocks and things i never thought I would be able to do, i was flying through muddy snow puddles and all sorts of things. I felt awesome.
I kept thinking I heard tires coming up behind me, so I kept my pace up, paranoid someone would catch me. At the end of the upper section (~ 4 miles) I almost passed 2 sport women (we started 10 minutes after them…wow…), but then our routes split and I went down the road to the lower section. It was SO FUN, I was just having a blast. The trail was basically built by the race organizers, there were SO MANY down trees they had to cut through it was insane. I walked across stumps on a creek area, I went through snow, I waded through another creek, it was a blast.
One hour, 14 minutes 51 minutes later I crossed the finish line–1st in beginner women, 4th overall on that course. Hell ya.
We stuck around and watch the 3 other PVers out racing and stayed for the raffle…it was good times had by all.
Now I’m psyched to do another Mountain bike race, but likely short track on Mondays and PIR will be it, unfortunately (unless I skip out on Silverton RR). There is a new off road Triathlon in August called xterra Black Diamond I’m starting to consider, however. The run is only 4.5 miles, and that would give me a real goal for running (still haven’t started…). Although this would mean I would have to swim. I haven’t done any swimming the past few months, although I was going pretty good before that. I think I would likely start doing it maybe once a week, maybe ramping it up in July during my road racing break, just good enough so that I could finish the swim mid-pack. It’s only 1000 meters, which I was cruising on easily before I stopped swimming.
So there’s a good goal, which would get me ready for cross season as well. Score.
