Escape From Muddy Granogue

Get out of race for free card-Escape from Granogue, DE
May 3rd 2009

Today I traveled to Wilmington De to race the " Escape from Granogue" mountain bike race. I have done the Cross race there for the last 5 years but never had a chance to do the mountain bike race. Mark Vettori ( aka www. fatmarc.com) is a super guy who does allot for the sport, so I wanted to support him and did his race rather than Michaux.

As I started the trip to the beautiful Dupont Estate it started to drizzle a little, I silently shruggd it off and thought no biggie to myself for about 20 minutes or so, and then it started pouring, gulp, I looked up through the sun roof at my v brakes, yikes. This is were I could use a " get out of race for free card" if there was such a thing. The problem was that I pre-registered ,and that makes it hard to bail.

On my way up to grab my number I saw " Smokin" Joe pushing his bike back to his car , snapped derailleur . Turns that a few dozen bike shops will be paid a visit this week with similar issues. The word on the street , or in this case estate , was that allot of sections were unridable. How bad can it be?? I mean come on, it cant be that bad can it?? So I mentally prepared for some tough times.

We went to staging and waited for the "go" in the pouring rain, nice. I started out well , got the hole shot and headed up the road, only problem was I did not know where the 1st turn was and I actually slowed up for the guy behind me to tell me "right here" , smack into the peanut buttery mud and up the same hill they use for the cross race. Up the climb we went and hit the single track, everyone off their bikes running, back on bikes . off again. Finally it opened up a little and started making a little progress. At about the 3 mile marker things got really bad. Everyone was off their bikes pushing , bike seat stays and forks were clogging up with mud, causing everyone to stop (walking not riding) every 20 or so yards to clear everything off. I have never heard so many grown men cry over something that to me ,seemed to be the an obvious result of the circumstances that we were presented with. I mean come on, you are racing expert, this isn't your 1st time, deal with it. Anyway ,as FM says, I digress.

I finally make it through the 1st lap and the clock says 1 hr 22 min , this course usually yields a 48 min avg lap time in dry conditions. With 2 more to go I am going to be out here for almost 4 hours. The second lap went much better . The course actually seemed to get a little better, it was still 2/3 walking and 1/3 riding but the walking sections started to get better. I told myself if I can beat my 1st lap time of 1:22 I would continue. I finished it in 1:15 so the deal was on. I then stopped to get some stones out of my shoe to prepare for another lap of walking, and could not get my shoe off. I spent about 5 minutes working it off and when I finally got back up and going I was cold, shivering and my legs seized up. Unfortunately the road back to the [parking lot was right in my sight and I took it. I know that I could have pushed trough that last lap, but I listened to what my body was telling me and bailed. Was I disappointed with myself? Not really. Would I have gained anything from finishing? I ll let you know when I figure that one out.

Fawn Grove Roubaix

4/5/09

Fawn Grove Roubaix

This was without a doubt one of the coolest and hardest races that I have ever done. Out of the 275 or so registered, I think less than half finished due to either flats, crashes or just plain being chewed up and spit out by the tough competition. Every one that I spoke to after the race had a war story to tell.
I did the 35+ and new that I had my work cut out for me with Spinners and Swashbuckler showing up with big numbers, most these guys are cat 1 and 2's but chose not to race the actually 1/2 race for a few reasons. My strategy was to race near the front right away and go with any move that had one of those guys in it. My plan started ok , and I raced at the front for the first few miles until I got caught up in some bad bike handling on a descent, that was pretty much all it took for the good guys to gap us right away. I worked with a few guys dangling in between the front group and the slowly deteriorating group of guys coming up from behind. The group I was with started to fall apart and on the second of 3 laps I crashed hard on a nasty gravel descent trying to keep the front guys in sight, game over for me. I got myself back together and caught up to Cat 4 racer Zach Adams. He was struggling to get through he nasty flat gravel sections and I worked with him until the finish pushing each other when the other wanted to bail. He is a tough young gun with a good head on his shoulders.
At the end of the day I ended up 11th out of the 13 finishers, I think that there was 32 that started in our class. I was happy to have finished and plan on doing it again next year with some more hard training.