2012 Race the Plank - Lake Charles, LA

I'm starting a new blog to document my Mountain Bike stuff this year, since this is the first year I'm actually committing to MTB racing.

I might do a recap in the future covering background training and off season XC marathon racing, but for now, I'll start with the first race of the Lousiana XC Series:

I'm off to a good start.  1st place in my age group and a 2nd place overall (Cat 2)

Preride:
The day prior to the race I got into Lake Charles, got setup in the cabin with a group of other Club Members and headed out to pre-ride the course.  My pre-ride plan was to get a warm up lap, then get a lap doing 5x60 seconds at race pace on critical parts of the course.  When I got to the trail head, I jumped in behind a Cat 1 racer and ended up pushing the pace a little harder than I should have for a warm up lap, but I did get a good idea of what the course would look like at speed.  After that lap I went down to the race start area and practiced according to plan, I focused on going hard on the run up to the singletrack and the road section that was in between laps.

The night before the race, I tried to avoid gorging on the huge pile of sausage on the campfire, sticking to my 6" Subway sandwich and Chocolate milk, lots of water, and getting as much sleep as I could on my cot on the porch.

Race Day:
Cat 2 didn't go off until 11:30am, so I had plenty of time to sleep in.  I ate a banana and a bagel around 9am, had a cup of coffee, and kept the water coming in pretty steady.  The day was looking to be a good bit warmer and more humid than I was conditioned for.  I got on the bike and went out to yell for the Cat 3 racers at the start and as they came through the finish line.

I started my warmup at 11:00 with 15 minutes of easy spinning, then I slowly started building intensity.  I ended the warmup with another pretty hard effort from the start to the singletrack entrance, and I got a chance to scout the best line into the singletrack and run through it a few times.  I got to the start line pretty warm and sweaty, as planned.

Our wave (Cat 2, 30-39) consisted of 20 riders.  When the gun sounded, the leaders took off pretty hard.  I didn't even come close to getting the hole shot, but I managed to find a spot at the back of the lead group, and was in 4th as we left the asphalt.  From there I managed to work my way up to 2nd before we hit the tighter sections of singletrack where passing would be much more work.  The lead rider was pushing pretty hard and I was doing everything I could to hold his wheel.  The two riders behind us were on and off, but were never more than a few seconds behind.  At one point, I felt like the leader was letting up a bit, and I took the chance to pass and take the lead.  Unfortunately, within a quarter mile of making the pass, I clipped a tree with my handlebar and had to get out of the way and jump on the back of the group in 4th position.

Soon after that, the rider in 2nd bobbled a little, and the lead rider put a small gap on the group.  Our group of 3 steadily reeled him in and caught up near the end of lap 1 (of 3).  The transition between laps involved a pretty long section through muddy grass, and then a section of asphalt; as we came out onto the asphalt, I was pretty gassed from the catch, and decided not to attack, but to draft and go with any attacks off of the front.  No one in the group looked to be hurting much and I was pretty concerned that I might be in over my head with this group, but the group blew up with attacks pretty quickly, and somehow I ended up on the wheel of the first place rider as we approached the end of lap 1.  The leader went for a water bottle swap, and I decided to take the opportunity to pour on the gas and make as big a gap as possible that he would really have to work hard to close.  I dug deep for as long as I thought was reasonable, since we still had 2 laps to go.
 

I rode the rest of the race without seeing the chase group, but assuming they were hunting me hard.  I rode with the mantra of attack the hills, recover in the curves, and don't make mistakes.  I started passing single speeders who started in front of us in lap 3, and I tried to keep the pressure on as hard as I could.  I poured everything I had into the last road section and even managed a hard sprint across the finish line.  I felt like I paced it just right. 

It was a great race, based on the quality of the riders out there, the series is going to be quite a battle.  I later found out that the leader of the chase group thought that they had caught and passed me (it must have been a single speeder, there were lots of us out there in the same riding kit) and had let up a bit.  That may have changed the game a bit since I only had something like a minute and half lead.

Unfortunately, I've got no race data to review.  I forgot to turn off the intensity alarm on my Garmin.  It was beeping at me like crazy within 5 minutes, so I shut it down.

Results: 2012 Race the Plank Cat 2 Results

That's one series race down, six to go.  Next up is the Ouachita Challenge... not in the series, but definitely a must-do.