Welcome to Wednesday night mountain bike racing. I’ve been going to the races for years, cheering on George and our friends or helping out at our tent on our sponsorship nights. But this is the year that I’m going to get out there and race too. I feel like I need to get that feeling of painfully pushing myself with other people all around me. Due to the pouring rain on opening night, last night was my first evening to toe up to the start line (George and I are alternating racing weeks so someone is there to hang out with the kiddo.)

They call up the under 35 3-lappers. As I roll up to the start, I look left and right. Holy smokes, I’m the oldest one in my start group. Seriously. Everyone else is a UVM student. And I’m certainly the only one on a singlespeed. Oh well.

The start goes pretty well. I head out at a good clip, but then end up behind another girl in the singletrack section and she’s going a little slower than I want to go, but not slow enough that I can really get up enough steam to pass her. Finally, on a downhill I roar past her. Only to be passed again as I have to walk a long, steep climb.

Over the hump of the climbing on the course is where my troubles start. I’m cruising down some twisty singletrack, feeling OK when BLAMMO! Over the handlebars with no warning. I’m up, I’m okay but my right brake lever has been twisted just out of my reach. I can’t move it and I consider quitting. But really, I can still use the brake it’s just hard to reach. By this time the next start wave has reached me and I have to fit in amongst all those folks while trying to get my groove back.

Then I’m riding over a rocky old fenceline and crash onto the other side. sigh. Two crashes and I’m not even through the first lap. I pick myself up and get going again, at this point I just want to relax and ride the thing. A bunch of friends pass me who started later, I know I’m faster than that. They should not have passed me until the second lap, and now I just start feeling a little bit bummed.

The only bright spot is passing my old boss in the woods. He was doing the two-lap race which started 30 minutes before our race and was obviously struggling a little bit. Tried to be supportive, he might have been a raging asshole to work for but he did just buy a very nice, expensive bike from our shop.

Anyway, the remaining two laps continued to bum me out. Getting passed by faster folks. Getting stuck behind slow folks, finally passing them only to be passed again on the climbs that I couldn’t ride. I finished in about 57 minutes. Considering that my slow warm-up lap took me 17 minutes, I was way off the pace that I should have been. I was hoping to finish closer to 47 or 48 minutes.

Frankly I was pretty bummed about it. Though I guess on the plus side, being bummed about my time shows that I’m working on developing my competitive nature. It’ll be three weeks until I’m back there again, between turn-taking and some upcoming travel. And I’m hoping to trounce that result next time.