Heather at the finish
Home stretch
Bruce coming out of T2
We had another great weekend of racing in Charlottesville, VA this weekend. After driving 5 1/2 hours though torrential rain on Saturday I headed over to the race venue to pre-ride the slop while Ali spent the next 3+ hours in a stinky Holiday Inn with our two dogs. This was actually the first Xterra I ever did back in 2007, so I was pretty excited to be back. The bike course is great. Lots of really technical riding with roots and rocks everywhere. Not a lot in the way of climbing, but constant short ups and downs and off camber roots on tight turns which made momentum and balance really important. The rain finally let up so we headed into the pedestrian mall in Charlottesville for some people watching and dinner. It is a really cool place actually; lots of open air restaurants and book stores. A very good vibe.
When we got back to the hotel we found out that there was a family reunion at the hotel, a really big family reunion. There were people all over the place, drinking and having fun. Pretty cool for a while, then about midnight I called down to ask the manager to see if he could put a stop to the foot races in our hallway at least. That went away, but the party did not. About 2 am I finally couldn’t take it anymore so I barged out of the room to confront what turned out to be about 15 really large women scattered all the way down the hallway just hanging out like they were at a neighborhood block party. I yelled that they had better cut it out….then I got about 20 seconds of silence followed by several minutes of strong laughter. Yeah, that went well. They actually did quiet down and we managed to get a couple hours of sleep before the 5:15 wake-up.
Race morning was perfect; temperature was in the low 60’s and it was clear and sunny. Fellow Melrad teammates Heather and Bruce M. were there to race as well. It would be Bruce’s first race back since the Richmond race, so props to him for getting back out there again. I wasn’t too excited about the swim format. They broke the group of only about 150 people into 6 waves 2 minutes apart. Since it was a two loop 1200 meter swim, this meant that on lap two you were constantly navigating around people. I had a good swim but came out of T1 a little slower than I had hoped…still need to work on those transitions…The rain made for a lot of tricky riding as all those roots just got wickedly slick after the rain. There were also lots of log crossings, some you could ride over, but several were dismounts, which at times made this feel more like a ‘Cross race. The course really let you keep hammering the whole time pretty much. Because of the staggered start, it was hard to really know where you were in the order, which I find a little frustrating. I am the type of racer that needs to have someone to chase or someone chasing me to really hit my top speed. I passed a couple guys early and never saw anyone else the whole time, so it was pretty much a solo race out there. Coming into T2 I was met by Bruce waving his hands saying “can I have your wheel, can I have your wheel?” I don’t know what happened, but of course you can…so there we went out of T2, me running for the final leg and Bruce next to me carrying my front wheel…is that even legal?? Must have been a funny scene and the fact we had matching unis.
The tire exchange…
It’s gotta be da shoes…
The run was good but pretty tame. It was only 4 miles, so it was a quick finish. The Avia-Stoltz were money here. With the slick roots and twisty turns the extra traction was perfect and I had great footing the entire time. I ended up getting 2nd which I was pretty happy about. I rode hard and other than my slow transitions, I think I raced really well. It was great to get back out in a race again after a couple months of just training. This race would be one of the better ones on the tour if they would make it closer to a championship length. Heather won her division and Bruce and his son (who was racing his first ever Xterra) both finished well.
Ali was a great sport. She got to spend her weekend off (she is a Vet so works every other weekend) with me racing while she tried to manage our two 75 lb golden retrievers in a pretty bad hotel without getting any sleep.
Sammy
Then of course since I was tired, she offered to drive home. We made great time until she got pulled over for reckless driving…oh well, I guess she really needed that to round out her great weekend.
So I took over from there…
Isn’t crusie control great!
I sometimes forget the sacrifices our wives/husbands/boyfriends also make to allow us to do what we love to do and to support it as best they can. It certainly wouldn’t be as fun without someone to share the highs and lows of racing and training with, so cheers to all of you.