Last Miner format- be the rider to ride the most laps without crying uncle. You had to finish each lap in under an hour, wait for the hour and go again. I had no intention of riding all day, but wanted to get some race intensity in, especially at St. Joe as this is my A priority XC race for 2025. My goal was to do 3, maybe 4 laps, at race pace, check out the new fit, new nutrition program and see if my fitness was as good as I was feeling like it was.
There were almost 70 people registered so I was expecting more people to be doing something similar to my plan, but with the rain in the forecast and tornadoes in St Louis the night before, a lot of people didn't show. The faster guys were committed to doing the event format, so I was basically time trialing.
I did a minimal warm up and we lined up and took off. No one responded so I had a gap almost immediately and went balls out. Legs were a little locked up but I was pushing hard. Trail was grippy and tight with minimal wet spots, although the washed out sections were a little chunkier. I was riding pretty well considering I didn't remember the course or lines well and came through at 37:32, which I knew was pretty fast because the KOM was 42-ish. I had 20 minutes to spin out the legs, stretch a little and change out my bottles. I was doing 100g carbs in the bottles and supplementing with gels/Red Bull.
Lap two was laser focus and I was seeing the trail in slow motion and looking ahead multiple segments. It was Jedi shit. The legs were heavy, but responsive and I came through for my fastest of the 4 laps at 36:54. My normalized had faded from 269 to 261, but my speed was up due to the efficiency.
Pretty much the same recovery drill but I sucked down another Red Bull and lined up for lap 3. I was definitely expecting a lot of fade on this lap due to my lack of racing intensity and early season fitness but was a little astonished at the numbers I was seeing for the first few laps and was committed to keep pushing. The nutrition mix and Red Bull proved to be a bit too high and my stomach started to turn a bit and I was burping a lot. I stayed on the nutrition bottle but it was too much and I switched to the water about half way through to try to settle my stomach. I'm thinkin 75g bottles in the summer with less fructose and a little less Gatorade mix will be about right. I was shocked to finish at 37:14, again power had faded @ 256 np, but speed was still faster than first lap.
I decided to go for one more assuming I would detonate but ok to just ride it out. I had a Enervit Gel to make up for getting off the nutrition bottle, which are easy on my stomach, and watered down a nutrition bottle with water to about 50 grams. I didn't bring a plain water bottle this time. My legs were definitely heavy and my heart rate wasn't responsive. I wasn't making mistakes too much but I wasn't able to keep the cadence up to really rail turns and gain momentum into the areas I needed to. I was pretty surprised that even though it was my slowest lap at 37:37, it wasn't that far off the pace, especially 4 hours in. My np faded to 250 and my heart rate dropped, but all in all, it wasn't terrible.
I've looked back through all the Dirt Crits and XC races from last year and it's certain my fitness is on another level, I think the fit has unleased 15-20 watts on it's own. This was definitely a climbing course but even compared to the first lap of XC races last year I was nowhere near the np of the first 3 laps. Same with the dirt crits, but I've never been strong at producing power on flatter courses. Regardless, while I missed ski racing this winter not taking a big break is definitely paying off.
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