Race Day – WORS Reforestation Ramble 2008

Today was the WORS Reforestation Ramble MTB race that was held just North of Green Bay. We made our way over from the Cottage, which was about a 30 minute ride. We got there a bit early to cheer on our Cottage neighbors that were participating in the Citizens 12 mile MTB ride.

This time around, I decided I would enter the Sports Class instead of the Citizens Class in order to get in a longer bike ride. The Citizens Class was going 12 miles and the Sports Class was going 24 miles. I’m not sure what the correlation between road bike miles and MTB miles, but certainly not one for one. I’m guessing almost a 2 road bike miles for every 1 mtb mile – maybe even more.

I make my way over to the start and wait with the other Sports Class participants. Right away I notice that there are many more participants in this class then what I’m used to. Not only that, they all look pretty serious. I, of course, do not have mtb shoes so I just wear my trusty old running shoes and hope that my foot does not slip off the pedals at the wrong time. I did a quick glance around to see how many other participants had the same idea of wearing their trusty old running shoes – well, that number turned out to be ZERO.

I tried hard to figure out who JWM was, but all endurance athletes look the same so no luck. Next time, JWM, we’ll need to “share” our bike colors or something to help figure that out.

So, I tried to start in the middle of the pack, but somehow I got shuffled to the back when we moved up to the starting line. I guess I need to work on my – move up to the starting line strategy. The race took off and probably 20-30 seconds later I actually crossed the starting line. I knew that the first 4 miles were double track, so my plan was to race “kindof” hard to see if I could get in front of a few racers. At the starting line, I did my normal glance around to see if there was anyone that I might be able to beat – it was hard to tell seeing that this was a better Class, but I had a pretty good feeling that I could take at least a few of those guys.

When we reached the single track section of the race, I was in pretty good position – probably just about middle of the pack (173 racers). I felt good about that and my goal was to not get passed too much if possible. Any time someone would pass me, I’d stick on their tire for at least a few miles and have them pace me. This worked great as the few times that I did that I ended up passing them back after a few miles and they never made it back pass me.

The course was very fun with 2/3 being fast double track and 1/3 being fast curvy narrow single track. There were a few minor hills but not too bad. Most of the race I just kept my head down and pushed as hard as I could. The further along I got in the race, the more determined I got not to give up my position. I kept with my plan on using another racer to pace me and that worked great.

One of the fun parts of the course were the mud bogs. The entire section of the double track was fairly deep mud with just a narrow band that may or may not be rideable. You needed to pick your place along the trail and then hope that your rear tire did not pull you down into the deep mud. The last mud bog that I went through, my rear tire did pull down and I needed to jump off quickly so that I didn’t fall right in the mud.

I ended up 22 out of 28 in my age group and 114 out of 173 overall for the Sports Class. I seriously thought that I might DFL overall for the Sports Class, so I was very happy with my results. My legs are a bit sore and I’m a bit tired, but it was a blast. No question, the MTB races are my favorite.

So, JWM, I’m sure I didn’t meet up with you because you were too far ahead for me to catch up – next time…