It took me a long time to recover from the back to back races in the heat at Rhett's and Klaus but after modifying the plan and skipping racing Miner tough, I was starting to sleep better, RHR dropped to normal and I was getting the itch/fire to race again. I was on the fence again about the XCO or XCM but opted for the XCM to get the longer racing miles in. When the call was made the night before to shorten the races to a 2 hr cutoff for the XCM and 3 laps for the XCO, I was glad I made that decision as a 1 hr XC race is not my jam.
Doing the back to back long races jacked up my plan, so I re-arranged to try to race with a positive form number, which would be the first time this season. Super low stress week at work, good nutrition and a lot of rest on Saturday and I was at +6. I got in a few reduced duration intensity sessions and was feeling pretty good but my legs were feeling super loaded up on Sat, which was weird. Can't explain it, possibly the nitrous.
This was going to be a fast race without big time gaps due to the lack of tech and climbing. With the shorter format and brutal road/hill start I got in a good warmup but couldn't shake the feeling in my legs, but retrospectively I'm going to chalk it up to a good thing. I hit my highest 1 minute power on a mountain bike at the start and took off. I had a 10 second or so gap right before the right hander/first climb, clipped my bar and yardsaled, bottles and head unit everywhere. I slammed my shoulder into the dirt and slid on my knee. Fortunately, it was all dirt and I was fine at the time but the shoulders pretty sore today. I got passed by Jamey, Ploch and two other guys. I tried not to overact but also was committed to racing like an XC race and caught back up pretty quickly, and moved to the front of the race. By the end of the lap I had a 15 second gap and could see Jamey in the start finish loop.
From there it was pretty smooth sailing aside from some dropped bottles, which I didn't stop for. Casey and Amelia were there to give me handups, which really helped. I was running 100g bottles but the addition of 20 grams of fructose wasn't good. I don't think 1/2 scoop of the electrolyte mix was helping either. Probably will skip both moving forward.
I finished 3 laps in 1:06:22, which would have been good for 3rd in the XCO race. By lap 4 I was churning 21.5 minute laps, my legs had opened up and there wasn't much lapped traffic. When I was at the top of the climb before the first road crossing I saw Chris and Jamey get swalloled up by the Cat 1 field that had just started at the bottom of the climb and couldn't gauge how much of a gap that was, but it didn't seem like much. I came to the crossing and had to wait for the whole Cat 2 field to get up the (steep) climb. I was chomping at the bit, for sure, and I lost 20-30 seconds but once I got passed was riding hard. My goal was to try to stay in front of the Cat 1 field, which I did, until about a mile from the finish on my last lap when Dan and Isaac caught me. I was able to stay with them until the finish and was pretty stoked seeing Casey and Amelia and celebrated my 4th win of 5 starts this season.
I ended up with my highest 1 hr power since I bought the MTB last June and tying my 90 min power with Klauss. Really pleased with everything. Looking forward to a lot of base training for the Burnin' 6hr and BT Epic!
