Treeshaker 3/6 Hour Mountain Bike Challenge '22

I do not like waking up at 5:30AM to do a "local" event.  It's a small gripe, and mebbe I shouldn't have stayed up late watching YouTube videos with The Pie, but familiarity breeds contempt and all that.

It's just "six hours."

It's just the trails at "Anne Springs Close Greenway."

I couldn't tell how many folks were racing in the 6 hour solo single speed class, and I told myself it didn't matter.  My goals just being to ride my bike for a good part of the day and finish with enough miles to feel like I did a thing.  I noticed the riders last year that completed eight laps were for the most part "fast folks," so I told myself it would be a seven lap race for me... based on what I'll call "not really an ample amount of information."  At least I knew Kevin York was on a single speed as well, so no freebie "1st of one" podiums today.  To add to any concerns I might have, the 18 tooth cog I mounted but never tested is audibly groaning while rolling around the parking lot on my single speeded Epic EVO monstrosity.  Doh.

So line up a little further back in the pack than I did three years ago.  Tell myself that I'll get into the woods with the not fast-as-fuck crowd and be able to do the first couple laps at a reasonable pace just so I can see how the day goes and my body reacts.

Well, that thing they say about elevated heart rates post-Covid?  I guess it's a real thing.  I "feel" like I'm moving along at 160BPM+ but my Wahoo data acquisition device is deep into the 170s and even hits 183 a little over two miles into the race.  It's obvious my body is outta whack, but what does it even mean?  Am I above lactate threshold or does an elevated heart rate like this just mean my heart is working too hard while the rest of my body is on vacation?  

So goes the first four laps of the race.  I don't really know how it's going to be honest.  I've drank my two bottles of purple drank, and now I have to swap to some flavor I've never had before (purple drank was outta stock at the time)... and it doesn't sit well with me, palatably speaking.  I've also consumed all kinds of random gels that came home with me from Breck Epic.  I've also also stopped to lube my seat post between two laps when I didn't plan on stopping because it was behaving badly (guess I was overdue for a rebuild, doh).

And...

Four laps in and the math was certainly playing out in such a manner that I was going to finish the seventh lap (the last lap I planned to do) before 1:30PM... the cutoff for going out for another lap.

Poop.

I've only got another bottle of the same flavor I guess I don't really like and a bottle of water in my cooler.  This game of random gel Russian roulette was only getting more disgusting with the heat of the day.  I have no clue where Kevin is and no idea who else I might be racing and whether or not what I was doing to my heart was healthy and...

I start doing the math trying to figure out how much slower I need to go to not make the cutoff.  In retrospect, I do realize that if I'm only going to do seven laps regardless, doing them faster as opposed to slower makes more sense.

But I wasn't thinking sensibly.  What I was thinking is mebbe I cross the line at about 1:27PM, pretend to head out for another lap, and if someone comes in behind me, mebbe they will be discouraged from making chase... ?

I dunno.

What I did know was that my heart rate was still stupid high on the climby bits, regardless of how not hard I tried.  I'm thinking about my long term health and if what I'm doing is a "good activity."

Armed with a bottle of water and a couple gels that musta been mango/broccoli and caramel/dirt, I started lap six.  I was pretty alone for most of the lap, and when I came around for my seventh lap, I saw Dr Mike waiting for Bill Nye to finish his duo turn.

"Kevin just went out."

Unnh..

Either he's been in front of me the whole time, got around me while I was fiddling with my cooler or my sticky drooper, or I'm lapping him?

Oh, the things I don't miss about the "6/12/24 Hours of" racing.

I start stupidly chasing him down for a hot minute before I remember that I'm not wanting to do that.  I few miles later I catch him, and he is indeed a lap behind.  That takes some pressure off, although I'd told myself there wasn't "pressure" to begin with...

and then I catch up to local semi-nemesis, Robert Mobley... who's a nemesis in my my mind only, as he destroys me any time I go up against him in the local shart tarck races.  I let him know I'm in the single speed category, but that doesn't stop him from hitching on my wheel and holding on while I'm burying myself for no reason at all with two miles to go.

He comes around me as soon as we pop out of the woods and head towards the finish line, and we both cross under the timer with minutes to spare... if we wanted another lap... which neither of us did.

But Kevin also squeaked outta the woods in time and headed out for a seventh lap.  Oof.  Good on him for that.

1st SS and 4th overall is a good enough of an effort to prove to myself that I'm not ded (despite feeling quite ded).

To be fair to the race promoters, there was more to the "winnings."  Kevin had recently done me a super-solid, and I'm not gonna run a non-Maxxis tire, so the earnings were divided respectively.

I'm happy that I was able to do a thing and also finish a thing I'd previously left unfinished.  I'm hoping I didn't set back any of my recovery from Covid, but I did spend the next two days taking it easy (sleeping... a lot).  I realize now I probably need to see how these next two or three weekends go before I go doing anything else potentially stupid.