Iceman Cometh 2009

What a fun time.  With 47 finishers in my age group, and ALL the women lined up at the start of my race, I was nervous as to how I would finish.  My Friday wasn't exactly what I had hoped for. . . . .a derailure mechanical put me out of commission and I had to watch my teammates pre-ride while I did nothing.  Not a good combo for my legs after the 9 hour ride.  They needed some spinning.  BUT, things happen, and it was what it was. . . . .so once they got their pre-ride in, we headed to the local bike shop to get me a new derailure.  WHEW.  Problem solved.

Saturday morning there was just a flurry of people preparing for the race.  My understanding is they had a little issue with the lottery system, and because of that "boo boo" they ended up letting in nearly twice the participants.  Warming up, you could definitely tell there were WAY more people than in years past.

When they gave us the "riders go", we rolled on out.  Thankfully I lined up on the front line (I think Frankie Andreau gave me "the eyes", I must have looked fast).  Immediately a group of roadie girls went to the front and darted back and forth as those "roadies" do.  The lead out was a good mile or so of road, so these gals bumped up the pace a bit off the bat.  I managed to hang on. . . . .then we hit the dirt.  We went from 2 and 3 across to single file and I could see the lead girls forming a bit of a gap.  I was on another gal's wheel and I felt my pace was pretty good, given the fact that I was in for a race much longer than I'm used to.  I didn't need to use it all up right out of the gate.

I rode this gal's wheel for a while, until we started hitting some hills.  Almost immediately we started catching the men and after the first couple hills I was able to pass the gal who I was riding with, along with another gal.  That was about the only time in the race that I saw any other women.  I believe ONE other woman passed me at some point mid-race. . . .but other than her, it was all me passing men.  HUNDREDS of men.  There were SO many men, I'd pass packs of 10 at a time.  The interesting thing about that was these passes often required me to dart off the GOOD LINE into the sand, or the leaves, or just the harder part of the trail to get around.  Talk about a race full of "intervals".  Each time I'd do these large passes, I'd have to expend a large amount of energy just to get back to the "good line".  I was hoping that energy expenditure wasn't going to catch up with me.  One can always hope, right?

With about 7-8 miles left to go, I came upon "The Wall".  The wall was a steep hill climb which leveled out and dumped into some very tight single track.  At that moment, I did not know exactly what "the wall" was, I just knew for some reason there were about 100 riders stopped on this hill. . . .not moving.  I thought someone was hurt and they stopped the race to clear them off the trail.  Nope, it was just an astronomical amount of traffic dumping into single track.  And when you dump 10 wide into single file, it causes a MASSIVE bottleneck.  Talk about irritating.  I literally stool STILL for a good 3-4 minutes.  As we all waited our turn in this single track, we watched a NUMBER of riders decide that cutting the course was a "good" idea.  WHAT THE HELL?  Sure, it wasn't fun to wait for this bottleneck, and it wasn't fun knowing there were more people in front of me than in front of earlier waves, so my wait was going to be longer simply due to the sheer number of riders. . . . .but how does that give you the right to CHEAT?  It doesn't.  So I waited.

The last 7-8 miles were full of more passing, lots of screaming spectators, massive leg cramps and fatigue.  I had to work my way around the remaining sport boys I was passing coming into the finish chute because they were so exhausted they were hardly moving.  Finally when the chute got tight, I gave up passing and settled in behind them and rode it in for the finish.

I finished 3rd out of 47 in my age group.  If I calcuated correctly, it looks like I took 8th out of 90 sport women.  Fun times.  I managed to hold an average heart rate of 180 for the 2:25 it took me to finish that race, DESPITE the 3-4 minute stand still.  Pretty sweet.  I'm VERY thankful for what I've achieved this season. . . .thankful for finally being able to "undo" what I did last year. . . .thankful I finally feel like "I don't suck".  And I'm looking forward to a fantastic off season this winter.  I have a lot to accomplish.  :-)