The Weeping Willow MTB race is one of my favorite races. It's on some of the sweetest single track around in the Willowdale State Forest in Ipswich, MA and it's run by my good friend Aaron Millet and his crew which is a bunch of great guys. With a week's worth of rain leading up to the race the course was in surprisingly good shape. Mostly dry and fast, but with a lot of wet roots that were like ice.
This was my first mtb race of the year and I had all the normal pre-race jitters wailing away on my insides. I went down with my buddy Ron Steers and he commented on how he wished he could just show up and start racing and not have to spend an hour getting ready, warming up, checking everybody else out on their $5k full suspension full carbon rigs looking all pro and intimidating. I know exactly how he feels. This is my second year of racing mountain bikes and I'm racing in with the expert field with guys who have been doing this forever. I have a long way to go to match most of these guys on any kind of technical single track.. But that's OK, what I lack in technical ability I more than make up for with a blatant disregard for my own physical well being. This was on full display today with a couple highlight reel crashes that even I was surprised I walked away from.
The staging area was a mass of humanity. Being close to Boston, and central to New England in general, the Weeping Willow draws what has to be the largest crowd of the season. In the Expert men 40-49 field alone we had close to 40 riders, most races that I've been to are lucky to draw half that. There had to be 700 racers there overall. So they're calling up each group and by the time my field gets to the line I find myself at the very back of the pack. With 40 guys in the field, this was bad. There was about a half mile of double track to start the race, and I put in a massive effort to make up space but was still only able to work my way up to the middle of the field by the time we hit the single track. Heart rate is through the roof and I haven't completely worked out the jitters yet and I make two ridiculous technical errors in the span of about 2:00 which caused me to lose back about 10 spots. So I'm pretty much in the back of the pack again and the day is going to be spent killing myself to work myself back up to the top 10 if I'm lucky... Once the best guys get away in the front of a field this large it's pretty unlikely you're going to be able to pull them back in from where I am, especially once you factor in lapped traffic and slower riders from fields that got to start in front of you that you will inevitably have to try to get by on singletrack sections. Whatever, if I can get to top 10 I'd be pretty happy in this field for sure. I settled in and started finding a rhythm. The rooty sections were killing me though, they were like ice and they were kicking me all over the place. Every time we hit double track I pegged it and passed a lot of guys. At this point I'm passing guys from my field as well as other fields so there's really no telling how far up in my own field I'm getting. I just know that I'm passing lots of people and nobody is passing me. That's good, right? Then somebody comes up behind me, yelling "race leader", which I guess means I need to move out of his way, which I did. It was Paul Curley. Once he got by me, I latched onto his wheel and followed his lines. Man, can that guy ride. Following somebody who knows what he's doing is amazing. But then he made the most brilliant pass on 5 guys in a section of the course and he was gone, I couldn't follow it. So we get to the end of lap 1, about 50 minutes in.. This is where I left a second water bottle in case I went through the first one that I carried with me during the first lap. It was at this point I was able to finally take my first drink from the bottle I had with me, looks like a 2nd bottle was not going to be required today.. This is also where I became a train wreck. First thing that happened was I hit a section of roots that kicked my bike sideways, knocked me out of the pedals so my feet are swinging out the sides of the bike and my ass is bouncing up and down on the saddle. On the last bounce, I came down right on the nose of the saddle and bent it down at about a 30 degree tilt. Now I had the luxury of not being able to sit for the last 90% of the last lap without feeling like I'm being thrown over the handlebars. This took it's toll on my quads and back as the lap wore on. Still I was making up ground on people on some single track sections and especially when we would hit the double track. I eventually caught up to a couple guys that I hadn't seen since the very beginning of the race and I knew I had to be close to the top 10 because these guys were strong racers, you can just tell when you get in behind some of these guys and follow their lines that they know what they're doing. One of them was Richard Brown, I don't know who the other was. So I hung on to these two for a while waiting for the next double track section because I knew I'd be able to get by them at that point. All I had to do was not screw up. Then we came up on a tandem mtb. I'm sure there's a reason why a tandem category is necessary in a mtb race. No, really... Anybody? Anybody?........ So Richard starts yelling to them that we're coming up and he wants to pass on the right. They oblige, kind of, just as we're coming into a tree that we need to get over. The tree is notched out in the middle to make it more passable by mountain bikes. Richard and the other guy get around the tandem just as they get to the tree, but I don't make it around in time and the tandem doesn't feel like letting me by before they attempt to get over the tree. Not that they have to, but come on, they know I'm in an actual race against other racers. By virtue of being the only tandem there today, they already won, they could have let me by. So the tandem has to stop to get over the tree, with me behind them. I don't have the patience to watch Richard and the other guy ride away from me while I wait for this boat to cross the tree so I try to jump the tree to the right of the notch where it's maybe 20" high. Normally I'd be fine with this, but I'm at race pace and I'm in the second lap, and let's not forget my lack of technical ability at race pace in the second lap. This is where my disregard for my physical well-being takes over. I launch myself over the tree into a spectacular endo right in front of the tandem, coming down really hard on my head with my bike right behind me. Their mouths said "Nice try! Are you all right?", but their looks said "What an idiot, why didn't you just wait 10 seconds to let us get out of your way?".. Having matured like a fine wine over the past couple years I sped away without dropping so much as an accusing glance on the mountain biking lovebirds as I was determined to make up, what had now become, a ton of lost time. I hit the last extended section of double track and I knew there was a big climb coming. I murdered myself to catch back on to the guys that I had just lost. Finally, I saw them up the trail and just continued to dig in. I caught them on the climb, passed them, and put about 5 seconds into them right before we got to the last section of single track. Perfect! All I had to do was stay in front of them on the single track and I knew there was no way either of them were getting around me on the last stretch of double into the finish. I caught up to a couple racers from another field and this slowed me down enough that the other two were right on my wheel. Still a good position for me as long as I stayed on two wheels till we get off the single track. Then we hit this little rock wall at high speed, with me a little too close to the guy in front of me. I don't really know what happened. All of a sudden I didn't have my bike with me and I was sailing through the air. I landed very much like an airplane that forgot to put its landing gear down, face first. Someone behind me crashed to avoid me, another one yelled "Whoa!", and somebody else asked are you OK at least 3x before I responded with "I don't know". I had a mouthful of leaves and dirt, my bike was in a heap, my helmet and glasses were on the side of my face. I lost a good 30 seconds collecting myself, I got back on and started chasing again, amazed that I was riding my bike at all. There was only about 5 minutes left in the race at this point so there was no way I was catching back on to Richard and the other guy, but I was happy enough to not get passed by anybody else. I finished 12th.
On the way to the race, Ronnie and I were talking about "fun". It occurred to me the other day when I was watching the Bruins game that I used to have "fun" playing hockey. Fun in the true sense of the word. We started talking about cyclocross and how it doesn't really fit the definition of fun. It's way too painful to be fun. Mountain biking is fun. Mountain bike racing? Not as much. Cyclocross and mountain bike racing are approximately 50 heartbeats per minute beyond the "fun" threshold. I don't do it because it's fun. For fun I like to collect Elvis stamps and save endangered salamanders. I do it to compete. I do it to beat people at it. Simple as that. It's the competitiveness of it. I got home and limped over to Michele. There wasn't a part of my body that wasn't beat up and hurting, including my face. She asked me if I had fun. "No. But I don't do it to have fun.". I went inside, filled the tub with cold water, threw 20 pounds of ice in and jumped in for 15 minutes. Listening to "Blood on the Tracks" on the iPod, soaking in freezing water, I decided I needed to call my insurance agent on Monday and get an insurance policy. You know, because I'm out having too much fun on the weekends.
Is my face hurting you as much as it's hurting me?
