The Bike Transplant

Race Report

Alright…wow what a race. Swanson is always a good time. Mike had a great race his first time out and looks like he’s gonna go Platte River now too next weekend. He finished 6th in the masters 45+ race out of 12…way to go for a first mountain bike race ever.

Now, as for me, I got 8th in the sport open category. Here’s how it went down. Warm-up legs felt good, HR was in the target area i was looking for. On the opening sprint I pushed hard and settled into 7th wheel and for the first time ever didn’t feel like I over did it. Normally my legs blow about 5 minutes in, the point I nervously awaited in the race. Approaching the nasty rivine that gets everyone, I settled in and gave the guy in front of me some space incase someone botched the exit and there was a backup. It was a good call as sure enough the guy in 4th screwed up. I dismounted and ran past, remounted and got going again, now in 6th. Again, legs have not blown yet…amazing. I chased up to the lead 5 guys who had opened a good gap due to the chaos behind. As I approached there wheel…feeling great. I hit a small piece of debre in a turn which threw my rear wheel out, and causing my right bar end and shoulder to make contact with a small tree, I was down. Remounted quick but as I got going, my chain was off. Quick dismount and chain fix back on. But now caught in traffic, like 20 guys traffic. I got onto the back of a group and spent the rest of lap 1 trying to get around as many as a I could with the limited passing there was.

Once in the start/finish area open field at the end of lap 1, I passed about 5 more guys and reentered the singletrack. On lap 2 I caught up to a couple more and chased as hard as I could. Lap 3 was the same. My legs never blew, in fact, although the efforts hurt particularly b/c I had to do short sprints to pass, I had the most fun ever.

All in all this was my fastest race ever at swanson, 1hr 15min. Probably had the legs to win the day considering I went from 6th back to 20th back to 8th and only finished a couple minutes behind the winners.

Here’s the data from the Garmin upload. Which might I also say is awesome…Its awesome to review the data and say yep…that was a pass, that was hard or to see where i can make up time and push harder. The low HR (under 180) areas are traffic LOL.

Here’s some shots that Becky took, as you can see she brought trey out which was cool to have him around enjoying the nice spring day.