Mountwood Park is located about 3 hours east of Cincinnati in West Virginia. This should have been enough of a warning for me. West Virginia = mountains. And being east of us... we had downpours yesterday = they had downpours last night. That pretty much sums up this race. But not really.
The sport course was 17.5 miles long with 2000 ft of climbing. The high temperature for the day (during the race) was 87 degrees. Yes there was some mud spots and some long loose climbs, but for the most part the trails were just tacky.
My start wave had about 50 riders in it so we really took off from the gun to try and make it to the single track first. A group of 4 got away about a mile in and I bridged up a minute or two after they got some distance. The rest of the race was pretty crazy. I made some pretty crucial mistakes like falling off of a ladder ride into deep mud, sliding out in way too many turns, getting stuck behind caught riders for too long, and, the biggest mistake, not taking two water bottles. I took one. One small one. And didn't take on more at the first aid station. Dumb. Because when it is 87 out and there are no leaves on the trees, you bake. Literally. We all looked like roasted pigs at the finish line. Stark white under our jerseys... bright red wherever we were exposed. So I was out of fluids by the halfway point with only one aid station where they would hand me a Dixie cup. Awesome.
I wound up in a group that contained 3rd, 4th, and 5th in our Sport 19-20 group. 3rd (not me sadly) put in a nice acceleration with about 2 miles to go that neither of us remaining guys could handle. So we let him ride off and I tagged on the back of the second racer for about a mile and a half of soggy, steep single track. We finally hit the pavement with about a half mile to go and I flipped my remote lockouts (amazing!) and gunned it with everything I had left. I looked back twice and he just couldn't match it. I wound up with 4th place and a nice 29er tire.
I'll post some photos once they are up on the website. Now off for a post race shower and BED!
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Great job!
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