Did my first MTB race this morning. Damn it was fun. It was the Snake Creek Gap Time Trial run by the NWGA Sorba chapter. Snake Creek Gap is on the Pinhoti trail and the time trial is 17 miles of singletrack along the trail. The trail was everything from nice climbs to awesome downhills to crazy crazy rock gardens like I’ve never seen. About 2700ft vertical feet of climbing over the 17 miles.

The day started out way cold. 24 degree temperature with wind chill at 12. Brrr. The trail started with a fairly easy but long climb all the way to the top of the mountain. I didn’t push hard as I was unsure of myself over the distance, so I did a bunch of granny gear spinning, and I felt really good as we got to the top. Shitty news was that the GoPro screwed up again, so no video. Sending that thing back next week. There was some absolutely rocking downhill after this. Everything from a few switchbacks to rocks hidden under leaves. Wish I had the camera. After the downhill, climbed a rough fire road to the 1/2 way point and had some water and fig newtons.

From here, the trail got way hard. Rocks here, rocks there, rocks everywhere. Uphill on rocks, downhill on rocks, man lots of rocks I cleared a lot of the climbs and all of the downhills. Only had 1 fall and it was pretty much at no speed as I didn’t carry enough speed and the front tire got caught on a boulder. Again, did a lot of granny gear spinning instead of trying to push a lower gear, which was a great idea considering my current level of fitness. There was also a decent bit of hike a bike, including a big uphill section that was straight damn uphill. I got passed by a couple of the “money class” riders and even they walked it.

Got to the top of that climb, to the cell towers, and the rest of the way was downhill. Some gravel, some singletrack, and then the last mile was pavement. I pushed on these, and ended up with a 31.5mph top speed on the road.

My original goal was “to finish”. I finished in right under 3 hours, which isn’t bad at all. I’ll be back for the February time trial, and I’ll be able to push more on all the climbs. New Goal? 2:30, which would put me into the Top 3 in my class. We’ll see what happens!

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 2nd, 2010 at 5:59 pm and is filed under All, Biking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.