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Keep on keepin on |
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Written by Dave Barr
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Monday, 19 May 2008 |
Gloucester Grind
Gloucester, RI
5/18/2008
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Well after last week’s mistake ridden race preparation (see “Eat Your Wheaties”) I decided two things would be different no matter what this week. I’d eat WAY more and hydrate right (use the camelback). With a lot of road racing the last couple years, I kind of got away from using the camelback. But, after my dehydration disaster at Brialee, I decided to give it a try again. As for eating, I decided to totally pig-out 3½ hrs before the race. Three eggs scrambled with cheese, bacon bits, a giant whole grain bagel and of course…a bowl of Wheaties. Wow - how I struggled to get that all down at 7:30 in the morning. Remember the “thin mint” scene from Monty Python’s - Meaning of Life? Well, I was almost there.
The food digested in time and seemed to work, as I really felt great (physically) throughout the race. The Glocester Grind course was also really technical with tons of mud and these really challenging boulder gardens (yes… not rock gardens…boulder gardens). These things were huge! (and frequent). Sometimes you ride em’ sometimes you run em’. Using the camelback was definitely the way to go.
It was going pretty well when ½ way through 1st lap...pssssss! Flatted. I kept my cool and fixed it. Got going and seemed to be catching riders again when a guy I know from previous races passed me. Knowing that he is a really smooth technical rider, I decided to follow his lines. It worked out really well. I noticed that although I was putting out less physical effort, I was riding much faster (overall) by following his judicious choice of lines through the gardens. Little did I know he was actually en route to winning his age category race for the day.
So, I was happily following “Mr. Smooth” through the course when just toward the end of 2nd lap….psssssss (argh…) flatted again! This time I rode it to the start/finish area, pulled another CO2 from my camelback(now I’ll always carry two), fixed it and got back into the mix. I still managed to pass riders throughout the last lap, but with ~10 minutes left in the race, my drive train started skipping all over the place. It turns out some sort of weird netting got all tangled up in my derailleur and cassette. From this I ended up having to run a bunch of the sections at the end of the lap. But all said – I was pretty pleased with my time and was only 2-3 minutes behind my rivals. Lesson learned this week: follow people that ride smooth lines and even when you’re having a rough time with mechanicals - always got to KEEP ON KEEPIN’ ON.
Dave
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; "click to enlarge")
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