Today was Fair Hill XC, the first stop on the MASS XC series. I got the ‘its on’ email while sitting in my parents hot-tub, trying to coax my legs to relax and recover a bit more. Ok, that tells me to get to work tuning up my bike and packing the car. Good thing I did too, because my rear wheel needed some truing up. With bike cleaned and tuned, and the car all packed up, I sipped on a scotch and water to help me relax and get to bed early. I wanted to have at least 8 hours before race day.

  I woke up at 6am, a little slowly, but with a full 8 hours in. Good, that’s a start. Some breakfast of granola with blueberries and yogurt, and it was time to back the car out, get the final gear packed, bike loaded, and wait for Scott and Liz. Green tea in hand, we saddled up and headed down to Fair Hill. We only got a little lost.

  Registration was insane- with the pre-reg line easily 5 times longer than the day of line. Gee, Im glad I ‘saved time’ by pre-registering. Oh well, what can you do. Bill showed up, and we found Matt and Austin and finally got our numbers. A quick warm up on the trainer, and it was time to line up.

  Having completely lost any expectations last week at the relay, I really wasn’t nervous at all since all I could do was ride hard and see what happens. I knew this for sure though, there would be carnage at the start since they took us up a grass hill and hung a hard left onto a very loose gravel road. The starting ‘beep’ sounded, and I made a good start. I wasn’t first, but I could see daylight ahead of me- good thing too because just as I predicted I heard the familiar sound of metal and skin hitting rock, along with some choice expletives. Good thing for cross- its definitely taught me to get on my bike quickly and start pedaling.

  We ride up the road, down the high-speed jeep road section (27.5mph!) blast the creek (sorry for the bath Matt, just trying to keep momentum) and into the singletrack. This course was pretty much a drag strip- very smooth with just a few roots, short steep climbs and plenty of twisty singletrack. Somewhere in there was a nice ramped log-over where I managed to catch a good amount of air, only to land right on my nuts making me pretty nauseous for a little. Ouch. No time to think about it though as I struggle to  hang onto the front group for most of the first lap, right up until the start/finish area where I hit a wall. Ugh. 6 guys blew by me, and I was left trying to salvage some kind of recovery. I get to the top of the jeep road again, click into a high gear, drop my cadence and let gravity take me for a ride hoping to recover. It works- I get a second wind by the time I hit the singletrack again, and I see the group has split into a few smaller groups of riders so I gap and latch on.

  The second lap feels much smoother- Im conserving energy better and don’t feel like my legs are going to explode on the climbs. I flow the twisty bits well enough to hang on this group pretty easily, until I make a sloppy mistake only about a mile and a half from the finish. I go down on a slick root- crap. 5 more guys go by, and now all I can do is hang onto the next slower group. Crap. Oh well, that’s racing.

I hit the finish at just over 1:19, making my goal of a sub 1:30 time easily. It ends up only 10:21 separates me from the leader- not bad, but still not great. Im in at 24/31 doing 10.5mph average, and 171bpm average. Since my threshold is 172, I can at least say I gave what I had today, had some fun on the course, and didn’t get completely smeared. My head is in a better place now, so now I am ready to just ride as well as I can, have some fun, and do what I told myself I would use MTB season for- to lose weight and prep for cross. Welcome to the season.