Lost Valleu Luau

So the first mtb race of the year is finally under the belt and the series is underway. The Lost Valley Luau had a huge turnout! Hopefully, this is a sign of the newly formed series and not just a fluke. Sure, it brings more competition out, but it’s good for the sport. The true indication that it was a great turnout was that Team Segal ran out of tall cold PBRs!!

The weather was great. In fact I should have dressed down one layer. The course was in good shape. They threw in a brand new 1+ mile section of single-track that was just built “yesterday” by Gorc. Many thanks to Gorc for building the trail. It looks like it’s going to be a great section – once it gets packed in. I would have preferred to not race on it yet – still way too rough and soft in some spots.

Karen and I both switched to racing in the Endurance/Marathon category this year, which is a big step for me from Beginner last year. But I hoped my endurance base from years of Adventure Racing and my recent training would pay off.

Plus Casey stepped up her game and took on a very competitive field.

So now to the results.. Overall, I was happy with my finishing place (13th out of 31). I finished right behind Eric Shuck who has historically done very well in the endurance class. He and I actually worked together for quite a bit of the race. That was fun, until I put some distance on in the rough new single-track section then decided to keep hammering. Of course he then later came past me working with one of his other teammates and I was too gased to hang-on. Lesson learned! I also got to work with Ghisallo teammate Greg Ott a little bit. Greg gave me some good advice on throttling back a little at one section in anticipation of an upcoming hill. I think I forgot his advice too quickly, because at the subsequent hill he blew by about 3 of us and I never saw him again. Great job Greg!!

The endurance format is to do as many laps as you can in 3 hours. I finished my 4th lap in 2:40 and was really starting to fatigue. The 5th lap was painful as I really started to cramp in my groin, quads, and hamstrings.

Casey was the star of the day and took home some hardware with 2nd place! I wound up 13th and Karen got 3rd. Karen was of course looking as strong as she normally does!

Here’s a link to the official results: http://mwftcs.com/images/stories/2009results/2009Race1LVLTotalResults.htm

So, next is Rim Wrecker down at council bluffs. It’s an entirely different course with 99% singletrack and more hills.