Spanish Lake

This past weekend's race returned to Spanish Lake, home of many a local mountain and cross races over the years. While not neccessarily a trail that anyone would chose to ride for recreation, we seem to have at least one race there every year and with this year calling for temps in the high nineties and heat indicies of over one hundred, it promised to be a long grind inside of an angry blast furnace. Having experienced serious heat induced setbacks this season, I spent all of Saturday and Sunday morning hydrating in the hopes that my St. Joe implosion would not repeat itself.

A preride of the course showed some improvement over years past with new singletrack sections at enough regular intervals to keep it interesting and provide the feel of a legitimate mountain bike race. The gravel jeep tracks remained, but they didn't feel quite so dominant this year.

The race began with a decent start, putting me in fifth through the snaking tightness before the first section of gravel. Once onto the double track, I moved around Jay and Brice while Wes and Hafner came around me. A bit of a reshuffling, but still in fifth for the long grind. Scott used his road skills to set off in pursuit of the lead and we would not see him until the finish. With Ploch already well clear, it was now a four way battle for third. Hafner took off after Scott as Wes, Drew Black and I stuck together for the remainder of the first lap.

Going into the second lap, Drew punched it on the first gravel section and gapped Wes and me in the process. I think we both figured it was a bit early in the race to chase and we figured the brutal heat would eventually take its toll. Wes and I caught Hafner right before the second section of singletrack and passed him when we got onto the next section of gravel. Drew had gained a pretty good gap at this point and I was happy for a teamate to be fighting for the podium.

Going into the third lap, I took over from Wes and pulled for the lap. I tried to up the tempo a bit to see if a gap would open, which was likely my undoing. If ever I got a couple seconds, Wes would close it handily and I completed the lap feeling the effects of my effort. Right at that point, one of the 35+ experts passed us and Wes jumped on his wheel. Having pushed a little too hard in the preceding lap, I was unable to follow and had to let the wheel go.

The fourth lap was pure suffering. I just tried to keep it as close to the edge physically as I could, hoping to come around for the last lap. Coming through the start finish to start the final lap, I had Drew in my sights and was hoping to make it up to him before the finish. Throughout the lap I yo yo'ed and dangled at about five seconds, incapable of making the final push to make contact. I was sure I was close to blowing and I was wary of digging any deeper. The heat was weighing on me and I eventually finished fifth, roughly ten seconds off Drew and a minute behind Wes. I'm happy with the result as I kept it together in the heat and did reasonalby well on a course that doesn't suit me. I have a lot of things that I'm personally satisfied with that happened in the race, all of which point to a decent amount of improvement over this season. I have every intention of upping my game next year and hopefully see even more improvement in 2010. For now, it's time for a little rest and then the build up to cross. There may be another MTB race or two before the year's out, but my mind is now focused on cyclocross. It's been a decent ride this MTB season and I hope I can roll the momentum into the fall and into next year. Wish me luck...