A Lovely Rude Awakening By Yankee Springs

The second race of the year, and my first XC race in 7 or 8 years is under my lengthening belt. The closest I have come to this sort of racing was a couple low key CX races in 2008, and the Snotcycle race in Leesburg in 2009, everything else has been hundies, 12 & 24 hour races.

My 2011 race season started with the 35 mile Barry-Roubaix gravel race, in temps of around 24 degrees. I figured by mid April and the Yankee Springs Time Trial I would be racing in just a jersey and shorts, and maybe some arm warmers. Well, maybe if I were a bit further south in Ohio or PA, but I forgot that I am Michiganderburgher now, and race time temps were about 32-ish with some pellet like snow blowing around every so often, and a non stop gusty bone chilling high wind. Brilliant!

I drove down early Sunday AM, and took MP race buddies Mike and Chris along with me. With gas $4 a gallon it made a ton of sense for us to carpool even it it was a bit cramped in the xB. Mike guided me there on a maze of back roads that was WAY different than any way I have ever gone to the Yankee Springs area. But it saved us some time, and gave me a look at some interesting little rural Michigan towns I hadn't been through yet, as well as allow me to drop a pre-race poop at a McDonalds near the venue. Crap food, but crap worthy bathrooms.

Once there we met up with Napper from Terry's and some of his friends that had a bad ass RV that we were welcomed to hangout and stay warm in. That really rocked, and sure as hell beat standing around shivering. Big thanks to the Shuttle for keeping my before race cockles warm.

I was racing the Expert 40-49 class (God I'm so old! And fat, don't forget that), and before I knew it, race officials were corralling us like cattle into the start pen (sadly there was no cattle prod to spice it up), and putting us into pairs to launch from the start house every 10 seconds. I gave the the go head to my start partner to take the lead out of the box so as to prevent any potential crash as we exited and headed down hill through a short sandy section. As I mentioned I haven't raced an XC race in forever, therefore my expectations are/were pretty low. The main goal of doing these races is to check out the scene in my new state, ride some trails, and see if I can not finish last. To be honest if I had a "placing" goal it was just to being the mid pack, but I wasn't sure that was really possible given my lack of XC race experience and potential to suck the business end of the suck stick.

The first part of Yankee is a slight down hill, then it's pretty rolling before starting some climbing. As soon as the legs had to put forth an effort, I was immediately less than thrilled with their response. I had felt pretty damn strong earlier in the week up at MMCC, but the cold temps just seemed to be sapping their mojo, not to mention my warm up was less than stellar given the temp. I mean it is HARD to get the legs warmed up and get a sweat on when it's 32 and blowing snow out Jack Frost's poop chute. Luckily the legs and slight bit of mojo started coming around after a few small climbs. Not to mentioned descending, and rolling around berms through sweet single track is enough to make you forget the pain, OK maybe not forget, but at least accept it more openly!

I was passed PDQ by my co-pilot Mike who started about 30 seconds behind me, and nearing the end of the first lap I was passed by back seat Chris who started a few minutes behind me! LOL! I just kept my pace tried to overtake riders when I could, but often found myself sitting in behind them and adjusting to their pace. Why? Dunno? Just did. Not something you really want to do in a time trial effort! Ha! But it's all in the re-learning of this sort of racing. So many of the races I have done in the past 6 years have been to just to try to finish, I had some OK results here in there (AKA "flukes"), but the main goal was just to put out a huge effort and get to the line and earn some beer and Mexican calories. When a race is only 22 miles, as long as I don't die or something I am pretty certain I can make it to the line. Now, making it there FAST is a whole other story and something I need to try to learn and push myself to do.

Although temps were freezing and the wind was a howling, frozen bitch, I was dressed fine with just the Craft windblocker base shirt under the jersey, some cool weather gloves and knee warmers. Anything more would have been overkill and had me overheating for sure. The first lap seemed to fly by and before I knew it I was crossing the line and out for lap two.

There were 12 rocks on the course
and they are all in this photo.

Much of lap two I found myself riding alone. No rabbit to chase meant that it was easy to loose once again lose sight of the goal of going FAST! Towards the end I got behind a rider who was going less than my desired speed, but finding a pass was proving difficult. By the time I made my pass there was only a short stretch of trail leading to the finish. I crossed the line in 1:54:53.1. In the end it was good enough (or bad enough) for 23rd place out of 39 in my class.

I hoped for mid pack, but sort of ended up closer to the back. The only consolation is that racers 18 through 23 finished within mere seconds of each other, so I guess I SORT of made it to the mid pack in my age class! But wow, I am really grasping at straws to try to feel good about this effort, am I not? LOL! It was sort of nice to go out, race hard for 2 hours and be done. Also nice to not have to worry too much about puking up spent Hammer Gel all over my top tube (not that I didn't have snot and drool spewing out of my face for almost 2 hours). It still hurt, but in a different way than I am used to.

On a whole this racking was a rude awakening for my XC race skills, but it was still fun. Saturday it will time to do it again in a more traditional XC format up at MMCC in Harrison, MI at the Rust Shaker.

Later.