Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Novi Relay

I had a good time at the Novi Tree Farm Relay this weekend, despite some bad weather and some not-so-good riding. It ended up raining a lot before we raced and some during the race, so the trail was pretty muddy.

I got there early to try to get a good feeling about riding on the trail (I hadn't ridden my mountain bike in a week). After my recon ride (maybe it was too short?), I didn't feel great about my Kenda Karma tires in the mud. Maybe I just don't have enough experience riding them yet; certainly plenty of people rode well on less-knobby tires. Anyway, I decided to switch to my mud tires (some old Geax Barro's) mounted to my old wheels.

I rode 3rd on our team. The trail was in a little worse shape than when I'd ridden it earlier, but it wasn't terrible. I didn't ride particularly well that first lap, lots of little bobbles (and one topple), and I didn't push myself as hard as I should have. It rained on me a few times, but it didn't really affect me too much.


Everybody on the team was turning in decent laps though, and we were in 2nd place when I started my second lap. It had stopped raining for my second lap, but the trail was much muddier. I felt like I rode much better the second lap, no bobbles and better pacing, but the mud slowed me enough that my lap time was a little slower. In terms of pacing, it seemed to help me to have Sport racers to chase down. In contrast, my first lap was basically a time trial, I only saw one other person on the trail.

The team ended up a pretty solid 2nd place in Advanced Co-ed. 1st place was a long way ahead of us, and 3rd place was pretty far behind us. I ended up with the 2nd fastest aggregate time on our team, so I guess I rode OK, but I was really shooting for lap times under 50 minutes.

This race sort of reminded me of the Ruby Campground race last year. Same last minute tire changes, questionable rest and fitness, sub-par bike handling, low motivation, first race of the year, etc. Just got a much better result this time around.

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