Stottlemeyer 30 Mile Mountain Bike Race

What a great day of mountain bike racing.  A handful of Cucina Fresca teammates and I made the annual pilgrimage over the water to Port Gamble and the Stottlemeyer 30 mile mountain bike race.  The trail conditions and the weather probably couldn’t have been better.  I lined up with the 40-49 masters, which was grouped with the Men’s Open resulting in a total of 190 riders at the line – a bit crowded. 

A bit fuzzy but it gets the point across

The thirty mile race is broken down into two super technical laps, which begin after an initial two mile ride up a well-maintained fire road.  My technical skills have improved exponentially since last year, but I remain one of the more technically challenged riders on the course.

For the first lap there were probably five or six guys thinking, “that damned Cucina Fresca guy is driving me nuts,” because I’d pass these guys on the ascents and the fire roads and then they’d run up my butt on the technical stuff, I’d let them by and then we’d just repeat the process in another mile.  Fortunately these guys all stopped at the 15 mile aid station, which I blew through – thanks to 100 oz of water and 6 scoops of Sustained Energy in my Camelback.  Note for Leadville: the Camelback is key.

Any experienced triathlete will attest to the fact that the clock speeds up any time you stop during a race.  I've had transitions that I swore were less than a minute, but when I go back and look at the chip time I realize that I spent three to five minutes trying to get my shoes on.  With this in mind I didn't stop pedaling for the entire race and I'm positive that it bought me at least five minutes.

I didn’t cramp until the final 100 yards and I knocked 18 minutes off of last year’s time, so I’m super happy with my results.  I feel on track for the 60 mile race on June 8th at Echo Valley and Leadville in August.

After the race we hung out in the sun drinking cold Rainier, eating hot dogs and listening to the local high school rock band crank out some pretty good cover tunes.   A good day in the woods.