Its like that... Mansfield 8 H

That's the starting hill? Shiat....

8 Hour is done. Total laps for the team 14. Total laps for me 5. Total fade from first lap to last lap 5 min. Best lap 33 min, worst lap, 38. Sub 35min lap....... mission accomplished.


BILL
MIRO
MIKE

1: 29:16
2: 33:19
3. 43:19
4: 30:17
5: 35:04
6: 43:39
7: 30:57
8: 35:44
9: 46:36
10: 31:54
11: 36:22
12: 32:47

13: 38:38

14: 33:54

1 under 35... and I blame the 35:04 on the fact that the card readers were being bitches... so yeah 2 sub 35s. Now I'm not sure exactly how fast that is when you compare it to say... the riders this year. Bill pulled a 29 min lap, which was pretty incredible, musta been motoring. I was happy with my first lap of 33:19. It wasn't far off Bill and he put in some really competitive times...

I got my 5 laps in, but I still had legs for a 6th, and I'm pretty sure it coulda still been 30s.

But lets take a look at last years times for me... on a course I considered easier.....

41:15
43:55
43:11
47:40

Yup... not one 40 in my entire day of racing.... how you like them apples?

Anyway.. RRRRRRRRRRAcereport.

On Friday I spent the morning getting everything ready and packed up. Lawn cut bike cleaned etc etc. Done and done, and was out of the house by about 2:30 for a 3-4pm arrival at Mansfield. Good times except for the heat was really bad, and the sun was getting a bit relentless. Met up with Bill who was also setting up with his sons. Once the tent was up, I took the bike out, got all my stuff into the shade, blew up my friggen mattress *Who does this now anyway? Why don't I have an electric air pump yet?* Threw that in the tent, threw the blankets into the tent, got into some relaxed riding gear, waited for Mike to show up, and took a pre ride lap around the course.

First thing: They changed the hill up. Instead of the long road grind they now have a steeper hilly climb where you go up more but get a few places you can gun down really quickly to get some sort of momentum into the next climb.... trolled you right from the start.

Kinda like this...

Once we were up the hill, the usual wasn't really that bad. Some really sweet single track and a bunch of sand... oh yeah sand. Everywhere.

Mike, Bill, Bill's sons, and I head back to camp after a leisure ride make dinner then close up shop for the night.

Usually when I camp I don't sleep super well unless it gets cold, and with the heat all day I wasn't really anticipating a good nights sleep after melting in the sun, but I figured it was worth camping over given that I'm not a morning person and driving to Mansfield wasn't exactly my cup of tea at like 6am sans coffee. I was super happy to find that the temp dropped so much that I was able to get a really decent nights sleep and was super happy to get woken up by my alarm rather then randomly through the night.

Boom Mansfield pancakes and some snausages, couple of bagels, a fresh DD from Tims, a Gatorade pre game, and I'm wired.

Bill started off the day with a 29 minute lap and our transition was pretty smooth. We were ahead of a lot of riders and I had a good chance to ride without getting caught behind people.

The first part of the course I rode at what I felt was near redline. Nothing really to report on. The tricky sections were ridden well, and I don't think I made any mistakes. I made sure to power out of corners, take good lines and oh hay whats this... false flat into zac's revenge... well that ain't no false flat, thats just a plane old hill....

First hill and into Chewbaccas. Pretty fun actually. Last year Chewbacca ended up putting me on my ass because I had no idea what I was doing. I was too far over the bars and ended up eating dirt where the trail dips down. After looking at it a bit, you could ride the right side and avoid the bad stuff and just keep moving at a good pace... so thats all I did all day.

Zac's revenge was completely unrideable for me. I didn't even attempt, I would take a running start at it, try to get as far up as I could, dismount it, and then run. I rode the top, then would dismount again over the top part, remount and get going as fast as I can.

As much as I wanted to ride it, I found myself passing people on foot too. Fine by me.

Down the final downhill and out into the sand for a sprint finish hoping for the best, I powered through my first lap pretty hard. I was a bit worried about my time till I went to check it out at the tent... 33min.

Actual sub 35 Victory Dance

The rest of the day saw me race around the same pace with a fade of about 5 min from my first 33 min lap to a 38 on my 5th.

I have to admit though, for my 4th and 5th laps I rode a geared bike.... and I kinda liked it. I'm not quite sure how to take the times. They were slower then my SS, but something tells me that had I rode my SS I would have put in worse times just on account of fatigue.. I'm not sure but I may investigate this geared thing more.

I need to get that SS silent though, its such a massive distraction when riding, I always think I'm 1 or 2 mashes away from breaking my cranks again I donno.

Anyway, back to training, with eyes forward to the Summer Solstice in June.