White Tanks Full Recap

Saturday was a return to good old cross country racing. We left the house pretty early so we could make it to White Tanks with plenty of time to warm up properly. We even beat the sun to rise.

Unfortunately, time just flew by, so by the time we both got registered, got dressed and got everything ready, I only had about 30 'til race time. So I rode on the road for a few minutes then did a couple of race pace efforts and headed to the start line. By the time I got there, about 20+ Pro/Expert riders were already lined up at the front. My teammates Zack and Eric were in the front row and offered me to move up and join them but with just a couple of minutes to go, I decided to stay in the back and work my way to the front.

Benji for DCB Adventures blew the air horn and we were on our way. I tried moving through traffic but got by only 5 or 6 guys. I could see Zack and Eric at the front and they quickly strung out the field. Once we were all single filed, I did two big efforts to get to the front. On the first one, I made it to the top ten, recovered for a few seconds then went all out again just before the first wash and made it to 4th. By now Zack was on the lead with a Tazer guy, while another guy and I dangled off about 10 seconds back. By the time we made it to the first tech section, Zack had gapped the Tazer guy so I just marked their wheels and let Zack build his lead. Eventually we caught the Tazer guy and another guy joined us before the end of the lap. This train of 4 stayed together until the first tech section when the Tazer guy attacked. I went with him and stayed on his wheel until almost the end of the second lap. At that point I figured Zack had a good gap, so I was going to secure second but I didn't want to bring the Tazer guy with me, so I put another huge effort to gap him then put in cruise control for the remaining two laps. I saw Zack on my third lap and he had a 2-3 minute lead and I couldn't see anyone else behind me, so I kept it steady for the rest of the lap, then half way through our last lap I found Zack on the side of the trail with a broken crankset. One of the bolts on his big ring had fallen off and the rest broke from his torque. He also bent his middle ring, so that left him with a granny gear. I stopped and tried to help him for a couple of minutes and even rode with him but his chain wouldn't stay on his granny ring while the other two were missing. Suddenly we saw the Tazer guy coming, and we decided to at least have one of us in the lead, so I took off and kept it together for the win. Zack walked his bike for the remaining of the course finishing almost 30 minutes later but didn't DNF. Way to go man! You really were the strongest rider out there!Norma also got to stand on the top spot. She finished third overall in her group and beat over a dozen beginner guys. Way to go!!!

On Sunday I experienced the results of the previous day effort. I went for a ride and could barely bring my heart rate to Zone 1. Eventually I felt like I was going all out just to be above 131, so after an hour of this I decided to call it a day and crawled home.

Up next is Cyclocross racing. I am planning to dab into this, until now for me unexplored version of cycling. I will be riding Norma's hardtail Giant with some skinny tires, however the purpose of racing is mostly to have fun, get some experience and of course get those 55 minutes of intensive riding. We'll see how it goes. So far the biggest concern is the dismounts and the remounts. I seem to keep doing the little hops before commiting to jumping back on the saddle. I am sure this will be very time costly during the race. As for the dismounts, I can do them, just not sure how I will do in traffic and at race pace. We'll find out on Sunday.

Until then...Pura Vida!