22nd annual Mudslinger

Another casual drive to a Spring mountain bike race......IN THE SNOW! holy schnikes it just keeps snowing, last year we were riding full time about mid Jan. on but this year Winter is going to roll until September. Bruce and I drove over that morning and at the race venue it was clod and snow and rainy....just like we like it. I wore knee and arm warmers but just a normal short sleeve jersey and was warm enough for the race. things I have found out in the past is that while racing I get plenty warm so I ditched the hat at the start line into a pocket and the toe warmers are for road rides since they just get muddy.

First race with the new rise and it performed flawlessly. I must say the course was super hard. It was all Huge climbs to the tob of this forested area up some windy logging roads with one section called the stair steps that hit 27% ( not sure if thats right as that is what the promoter said....but read the people in front of me all walked their bikes their for 100 feet) then some granny gear climbs that jdub would have loved I am sure. I was in the mix in the front pack until it leveled out a bit at top and they rolled away. those hills got me. I felt solid as I had not trained for the race and was just here to kill the body and was doing that. made up a bunch of time in the first set of single track where I caught them again as they had likely bottled necked, the single track was Greasy. it was some of the greasiest, muddiest conditions I had raced in aside from cyclocross.

I thought I would catch them at the top but i had a shift/chainsuck incident that only took me about 30 seconds to fix but that was all it took and I lost sight of the group. Now somewhere mid pack I marched on a bit too hard trying to "make up" for the mistake. I got a leg cramp in my left leg for just a second that was quite the pain. I laughed as this is something i am usually giving Utrek and Bruce crap for as they cramp all the time and I never seem to.

a lot of super muddy downhill technical trails and a big climb up to the finish.

Shane took a lot of pics and are making them available to the group for free so I will post some after they come of race action shots.

I finished up a great race that of course as a workout is the way to go. you will never workout as hard as you race so racing into shape is the way to go. Thanks for talking me into it Bruce. I went and cleaned up at the car using a camp shower ( best thing since sliced bread) and got some free soup and bread. I waited at the finish line for Bruce who was racing expert. He predicted third place but alas was out gunned and got fourth ( see the video for his fullk explanation of the loss for the podium)

Great race, great day.