Winter Park Hill Climb

So, this year I decided to bike racing more of a try, especially mountain biking. I joined the actual race team of my cycling club, ICCC, and by being on the team I was given a good discount on a bike purchase, but also had to commit to racing 6 races. On June 17th, I participated in my first mountain bike race of the year at Winter Park Resort. It was a ‘hill climb’ that involved riding up to the top of Mary Jane from the base of Winter Park on a 5.3 mile long fire road including over 2000 vertical feet of elevation gain. I’ve been doing a lot of training, but mostly on my road bike and haven’t done a whole lot of race pace training on my mountain bike.

Kendra, Marcia and I drove up Friday night and camped near winter park at the base of Berthoud pass in a campground called Robber’s Roost. It was nice, but a little to close to the road, creating lots of noise. It was pretty cold, but we kept warm in our 4 season tent that we borrowed and nice warm sleeping bags.

We got up early and headed over to the winter park base where the start of the race was to be held. I went over and got my race number at the start line and then headed back to the car to get my bike and myself ready for the race. After my bike was all set I started warming up by riding up the road back towards Berthoud pass. I thought it was going to be a faster ride back to the resort and rode out a little to far on my warm up and had to race back to the car. I grabbed the girls and then had them hustle over to the start line with me. I was getting a little anxious though so I went on ahead. I got to the line about a minute before they started, just in time to hear the start line official give his informational speech.

At exactly 10:48 they blew the horn and we were off! I was pretty well warmed up, much better than my first ever mountain bike race last year, which is a good thing because this race starts straight up the mountain! I tried not to go out to fast so I wouldn’t burn myself out to quickly. I just wanted to try to settle in to a good rhythm, not caring too much about the other racers, but also trying not to let any of them get away.

A few guys pulled out ahead quickly, but I was able to hold back and let them have their fun. I settled in behind a few guys in about 4th or 5th place. By now, one guy was about 100 feet off the front, but we didn’t worry and just stayed at our own pace. The guy in front of me was quickly burnt out and dropped off and I jumped onto the guy’s wheel in front of him. He led me up past the guy that was dropping off in front of him and another guy and then there was only one guy left in front of us. The guy right in front of me was going at a pretty good pace, but I was able to stay on his wheel. We were slowly reeling in the guy who was off the front because he had gone out of the gates a little to fast. Before the first mile was behind us we had caught him! Now it was just me and this other guy in front of me, wearing a black jack porter jersey. He was going at a very good pace, but I was able to hold on around the first couple turns. I looked back, and we had a very good gap on the rest of our field. By this point we started passing some of the field that had started before us. I was starting to feel tired and wondering if I could keep this pace up for the rest of the race. I looked back again as we went around another switch back and could not see anyone from our field. However, this guy I was following was starting to pull away. I tried to chase back on to him, but he was going too hard and continued to pull away from me. I tried, but just could not match his effort and soon he was out of sight. I continued to work as hard as I could without blowing up and kept picking off riders from the earlier category starts. I looked back again and saw that I had second place in the bag and so just tried to push to get the best time I could without bonking. I soon saw the top of the mountain approaching and gave it all I had to the end.

I finished in 2nd place with a time of 45:53.6, just under 5 minutes behind 1st place and almost 10 minutes ahead of 3rd place. Complete results can be found here.

We decided to hang out for the awards ceremony and I received a silver medal for my efforts. J This was a great race. It was well organized, very fun, and an amazingly beautiful venue.