InCycle XC Challenge
by Rob Blue on October 8th, 2007
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I walked away from the InCycle XC Challenge with nothing except a flesh wound and loved every minute of it.Â
The InCycle Challenge is held at Bonelli Park right next door to the Raging Waters water park in San Dimas, CA which was made famous in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure as Waterloo I think. Bonelli Park also hosts a California State Championship Series race earlier in the year and is one of the better venues to bring family and friends to. The State race sucks because it is always over 100 degrees and they run a longer lap that has a brutally long climb on the backside. The InCycle race runs shorter spectator friendly laps. It may be shorter but there is still a fair amount of climbing per lap.Â
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Zach and I started this race at a disadvantage. We arrived at Bonelli 15 minutes before they closed registration. After filling out the forms and collecting our race numbers we got geared up but had no time to get any kind of warm-up in. I also did not realize that they didn’t send the different age groups out in waves. The entire category including the women and young up-and-comers left in a mass start. Had I known this when we lined up I would have gone to the front. As it was, I ended up starting in the timing chicane right before the start/finish line. By the time I got out of there at the start half the field was long gone never to be seen again.
Chalk that up to not doing my research ahead of time.Starting mid-pack meant a huge traffic jam at the requisite transition from wide road to narrow singletrack. I got pushed wide and rode through the weeds at this point until I lost traction and had to hike-a-bike it up a small hill and back into the cue. At least after this section there was a fireroad climb with plenty of passing lines.
Being a 3 lap race I paced myself hard but not too hard and passed as many riders as I could before the next singletrack funnel.This was a good moved because the first downhill caught me a bit off guard with it’s steepness. The race was a bit strung out now so without any pressure from behind I was able to point and shoot down this loose trail that was obscured by a cloud of dust from the riders in front of me. Good thing there were no big ruts!The middle of the race lap was a bunch of fireroad ups and downs. Nothing exciting or technical just maxed out climbing efforts with not enough recovery in between. All this fatigue set you up for the massage-like (I’m joking here) downhill section which had a lot of baby heads and forced you to just gun it to try to keep your teeth from rattling out. This is where my Nitrous really shines. It has just the right amount of travel for an XC bike. It takes the edge off of the roughest stuff extremely well. You always feel like you are in control.
A bit more climbing set you up for the last little downhill which was nasty. Not that it was all that technical, nothing in this race was, it was just so torn up that there must have been 6 inches of dust covering whatever trail was left. It was also pretty steep so you really had to get off the brakes and try to float over it. That didn’t help me at the bottom of this on the first lap where I panicked a bit and grabbed just a touch of front brake. Over the bars I went. I’m glad I missed the cactus patch that looked pretty menacing on the side of the trail.
This may not have been such a bad thing. You don’t usually want to crash but just as I was finishing the first lap my lower back started to cramp up pretty bad. The pain in my leg actually helped me on the second lap since I wasn’t thinking about my back any more.The third lap was a battle against my back pain more than anything else. I had already lost the race with my poor starting position. I settled into my pain zone and just kept turning over the pedals. Looking back at the data from my computer I actually kept my effort pretty consistent over the 3 laps.
Lesson learned or at least reinforced:
Do your homework about how the race is run. If they not sending you off in waves you need to be up front.
Get there early enough to warm-up and stretch.
Pre-rides are good. You always go faster on a course you have ridden before.Â
Never forget the MTB recovery drinks!
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Well, for me, that’s pretty much it for racing this year. I’m looking forward to next season. I am already training for it with my coach Marci Titus-Hall. I hope to get some more events in and do some ultra endurance stuff as well. Hell, Brett has me convinced that I need to get a DH rig and race some of that too. Hmmmm……..
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DH sounds fun if you like getting your balls jammed your ass… sign me up for super-D tho.
Glad you missed the cactus. I allways though homework was overrated.