I didn’t really want to race Wild Ride again. I raced in McCall, ID twice in the past, in 2006 where I broke my rear brake lever minutes before the technical downhill, and in 2008, where intestinal issues screwed my race … I was just wondering what will it be this year?
We arrived in McCall on Saturday afternoon, which gave me enough time for a pre-ride. I raced here twice but I couldn’t remember much of the bike course! I by-passed all the road section and most of the fire road and parked hubby’s truck right at the beginning of the loop. I started riding and things started coming back but it seemed a lot longer than I remembered. The trail went up forever and eventually turned into technical singletrack, but it continued going up, I crashed twice while working on some technical sections. The technical singletrack was punctuated by 2 very refreshing creek crossings, and then it went up some more. Just when I thought the climbing was over, well, there was more, and then it went down, like straight down! I went easy on the downhill and still managed to get some air here and there…When I finally got back to the truck, an hour and half had gone by … yep, a lot longer than I thought!
Sunday morning I woke up too early, I was still on Pacific time, and got totally screwed up …Got to the transition and got set up. Ran into my 2 regional nemesis: Korrie & Yvonne, yep, they were here too.
The race started on time at 9am, the 1200m swim felt very long, turns out it was over 1 mile! Got out of the water in 32 minutes, 30 seconds after Yvonne, but minutes behind Korrie. Once on the bike, I got to work right away. The bike course starts by 3 miles on the road, after a couple of minutes, I caught up with Yvonne, and started to work on catching up with Korrie. The road turned into a fire road and went up some more…I kept working hard and passed loads of people. As we were climbing, the trail started getting narrower and narrower and soon we were on singletrack. Things were going pretty well, and I knew I was riding well and making up time on Korrie.
As I approached the final climb I heard a big “crack”, didn’t think too much of it until I reached a flatter section of the course just before the crazy downhill. Then I heard another “crack” and this time my saddle was sinking on one
side! Oops! I figured, as long as it’s sitting on the seatpost, I’m ok. I started the crazy downhill, and I was riding well, at good speed. And then, it happened, I felt the saddle give up, and fly into the dirt. I stopped to check out the damages. The saddle railings were completely broken and there was only a piece of railing attached to the seatpost, in other words, I couldn’t sit down anymore! I got back on the bike to resume the race & the downhill wondering how the run’s gonna feel once I ride the last 7 miles like this?
Since I didn’t have a seatpost, I was a lot more careful on the downhill, I have a lot more racing to do this season, so if I could avoid a nastly crash, well, all the better.
Yvonne caught up with me at the end of the singletrack downhill, just before it turned into a fireroad. I don’t think she realized I didn’t have a saddle. During the last few miles to T2, I kept getting passed, I just couldn’t generate constant speed standing up on the pedals… Bike: 1h55 (20 minutes faster than in 2008)
When I got back to T2, I was done, my legs were jello. I transitionned into my Avia Stoltz anyway and went for a 10km run. (T2: 30″)
I knew I was too far behind to catch up with the girls, so I focussed on finishing the race. Finished the run in 53 minutes (11 minutes faster than last year) and the race in 3h24. 8th female overall and 6th in my AG! (Man, the women’s 35-39 AG is tough!).
comfy!