Let’s say this season has been pretty shitty for MTB. Lot of
rain and trails pretty much closed all the time didn’t give us the chance to
spend as much time as we would like on MTB. After 2 6Hr Races and a XTerra
already cancelled this year, we were finally able to race this last Sunday.
So Hueston woods was the place for the 1st Race of
the Tri-State 6Hrs Series. I’ve been running in this series last year in a
relay team with my buddy Hunter and we took 3rd at the end of the
season. This year in parallel of starting to jump more in Triathlon for IM
distance, I decided to go solo for this series as Marc had a bad crash on bike and is off for now for this kind of event.
Hueston woods is probably the toughest race of the series,
with 90% old school rooty single track path. The racers were set free a 9am
sharp.
I placed in a leading group but after the first push on the pedals I
could feel that it’s going to be a long day, no motivation for racing, no legs
and already tired after 10 min….the heart is high and the speed not that good
but I will stick to my strategy.
Basically, I set up two backpacks with 2 liters
of energy drink in each, the second one with caffeine for the end of the race.
The plan was to stop at 3hr or 3 laps to quickly change my backpack and spend
as little time as possible in the transition area. The strategy went pretty
well for the first 3 laps, getting into my pace, passing 2 or 3 6hr solo racers
in the second lap to place in the top 5. The course is fun, lot of steep and
short climbs with logs to pass and some fast downhills to relax a bit the legs.
End of third laps, I
changed my back pack, checked that the precious liquid is running into the
camelback and in less than 1 minute, I was back in the race with no one passing
me. At this point I was thinking of putting 6 laps (85k) but my camelback
decided another end for this race. After 5 minutes in the 4th Lap, impossible to
drink!!! Damn!!! the camel is clogged, I pushed a bit during 30min to take some
distance with the guys behind me and stopped at the top of a climb to try to
fix the issue….okay the drink is running in the pipe so let’s start again…I
lost a bit of time but just one guy passed me. Five minutes later, same issue
and I got that I will have to stop at the end of this lap again to transfer the
drink into the other bag.
End of lap 4, I’m totally dry, 50 minutes without drink in a
hot and humid afternoon; I felt dizzy and took way too much time to change the
bag loosing half the drink during the transfer. In order to maintain a good
position for this race, I decided to go for a 5th lap…this one was
tough, totally dizzy, a fall in a climb touching a three with my handlebar so I decided to finish easy just enjoying the downhill
Almost
15minutes more to finish this lap than the previous ones. A short rain made the
end of the loop pretty slick and slippery. Two riders passed me in this lap and I
finished the 5th laps after 5hr12min, no time and no motivation
anyway for one more lap.
I finished 7th of the male Solo category and 14th
overall finally not too bad after a week continuing the IM training. I can
definitely feel the lack of MTB time this year but the race was fun and the day
was more than enjoyable. Next one in England Idelwild, let’s hope that the
weather will allow it!!
