Dirt Sweat and Gears.

Ok, so our trip down to Dirt Sweat and Gears last weekend was a bit of a milestone for me. Not necicarily a good milestone, but lets call it unfortunate timing on a change that was three years in the comming.

For a number of years I raced in with the pros in the hyper-endurance events. To me it seemed a bit silly to travel around the continent to compete for a secondary prize like a age group award or an amature tite. On a number of occasions I have sat back and compared lap times to discover that a race that left me back in the double digits somewhere in the elite race would have put me on the podium or winners jersey had I only been competing for one of the lesser prizes.

At the beginning of this month we celebrated my sons 3rd birthday. This marks roughly three years since the last time I went out on a ride that I considered a "training ride". It also marks the first time that I fealt comfortable registering for a race as an amature rather than a pro. Although I have only got about 12 hours of time on the bike logged this year I was still really concerned what might happen if I actually did well in the amature ranks? As I said to one of my friend going down. "I will feel like a schmuck if I do well here"

The ultimate irony is that the training I did for this race was actually better training than most of the seasoned racers who showed up. For those of you who haven't heard the details of the race, the rain started while we were on the start line. Rain made the trails sloppy, but the rain stopped soon after we started. Most of us turned the first lap in about an hour and a half, and then everything turned to peanutbutter. Mud clogged every aspect of the bike every time the wheels turned making almost the entire course unridable. Without a doubt this was the slowest and most demoralizing race I have ever done.

My second lap took around 4 and a half hours. The picture above was taken sortly after I discovered that it was faster to carry the bike than to push. Pushing the bike was nearly impossible because the wheels wouldn't turn, so most people moving forward had their bikes in the air. Sortly after this picture was taken, I walked past my friend who is a much stronger rider than I am. It was then that I realized that my training for this race was better than most. While everyone else had been out riding bikes, I had been carrying a 40 pound toddler around all day. You tell me, if you are going to carry a 50 pound mud coverd bike through the woods, which is better training?

So I walked. Lap two took roughly three hours longer than expected so I was low on fluids, but I took on a lot of energy and fluid in the pits and went on out hoping that it would either start raining again or dry up so the third lap would be more reasonable.

My third lap took 5 hours. At one point I got stuck. I tried to ride down a hill to a gully, and my wheels locked up and I almost made it to the bottom. Three of four steps dragging my bike to the bottom left me in a ditch trying to get out the other side. My bike was so caked with mud that I couldn't lift it and the wheels were so clogged I couldn't push it out the other side. I was stuck. Eventually I took on some fluid and cleaned enough mud off the bike that I could lift the frame and carry it out the other side.

What I didn't realize as I was slogging along was that only two amatures actually went out on the third lap. So with a 2 mile and hour average, I walked my way to the podium. The leading pro did four laps and my three laps would have put me in 4th in the pro catagory.

So while I do feel like a schmuck for taking a podium in the amature I have to think that this race was an outlier. As we return to the racing season I thing the advantage will again return to those who train by riding their bikes.