:: race report: skyline

We are about to leave for our preride, it is Saturday. A woman rides up next to us. She is wearing a Fox jersey, rocking an older but still awesome Santa Cruz Blur XC. Obviously, she is also preriding. I open the conversation. She is pissed. She begins an embarrassing rant claiming the promoters should be more clear about the course. I'm confused, not many people race Skyline without knowing what they're getting into. I ask her if it was the heat {it is at least 90 degrees}. She scoffs, "The heat is the least of my concerns." Her rant restarts. She feels wronged by the difficulty of the course. I hear a familiar line, "This course is harder than Downieville." True story. She reveals that she works at Fox. I am shocked that her coworkers weren't more clear about the race course. She packs up her tent and goes home. I immediately thought about my friend, Alicia Halpern {a junior racer, in her first year of mountain biking}, who rode this course for the first time on a cheap hardtail with a Rock Shox Dart fork, without crashing or complaining.

Skyline is my favorite race course. It's no Fort Ord. Everyone will get off their bike at least once on this course. There is a claimed 1600' of climbing per 8ish mile lap. Sport racers do two, Expert/Pro do three. It is nearly all singletrack, going up and coming down. There are huge rocks, steep-decreasing radius switchbacks, roots, water-bars, and shear rock faces. It is the most technical race I have ridden. To give away the ending, I placed horribly but I don't care. Being able to finish this race in one piece is enough of an accomplishment, because even though it is the USA Cycling NorCal State Championship only one other person showed up for my category {in which I was last}.

Where I screwed up: 

1) Three weeks before the race, I was track standing in the parking lot and fell. I cut my leg open on my chainring, and couldn't do the preride because I needed stitches. My only other chance to preride was the day before the race. We spent two hours in the 90+ degree weather preriding--not exactly a good prerace strategy. 

2) I should have eaten more salt. There is a torn feeling in my legs today, exactly where the cramps happened while racing. I don't eat a lot of salt, but I really should. Looking back at my meals leading up to the race, my salt intake was far too low.

3) Starting position--it's all about starting position. I was in the second wave, which was huge. For some reason I wasn't feeling competitive and resigned to starting in the back of a gigantic pack. Stupid. 

What I'm happy about:

1) Ice in the camelbak--saved the day.

2) Made sure to eat and drink--this sounds easier than it is when on a technical trail.

3) Maintained f***ing composure--less than 45 min into the race I began having body chills, nausea, and feeling very faint. I was breathing way to hard for the effort. In full sun, 90+, I was shivering so bad my arms were shaking. This was a familiar feeling. It happened on the Downieville preride climb last year. Heat exhaustion, possibly heat stroke. I wanted to finish this race so badly. Never once did I want to give up. I told myself to maintain f***ing composure {thanks Kirt}. I knew that cooling my core temperature was the only way I could finish. There was ice in my camelbak. I kept drinking, feeling the cold water helped. I slowed down, slowed my breathing, relaxed, and concentrated on staying alert. I was teetering on disorientation which is very dangerous on that type of course. I knew that if I didn't keep it together I could easily go off the edge. Maintain f***ing composure.

So, nope I didn't place that well, my finishing time kinda sucked, but I'm terribly happy with my self. In fact, I have a sh** eating grin on my face right now. I'm stoked I finished. Stoked I didn't crash, not even once. Even more stoked that kept pushing till the end and finished feeling strong.

{Pictures to come}

:: garmin stuff - actual finish time was 2h20m, I forgot to hit stop.