That was the last race of this year's XC series at Riverside State Park. The course was short, relatively flat, and mostly dry and sketchy for cornering. I had a tough field to race against and came up 5th this time.
Next project: do longer rides to get ready for the Midnight Century, and hopefully lose ~5 pounds in the process. Who else has the Midnight Century on their radar this year?
Last Wednesday was the sixth of the seven-race Wednesday-night series out at Riverside State Park. As you all know, the weather was quite warm on Wednesday, which encouraged an excellent turnout. I got there very early, pre-rode the course (and measured the distance for Gino), and still had time to burn.
Riding in the heat made everything tougher. The course was diverse, featuring most of the rock gardens from the 24-hour course, as well as about 900ft elevation gain per lap, and finished with a singletrack climb up Boat Hill, followed by a 35-40mph doubletrack descent leading down to the Start/Finish area (if you watched last week's video, it's last week's first section in reverse). The competition turned out to be quite tough as well, and it was great fun seeing how it was all going to end up. The video below gives a blow-by-blow account; if I do this next year, I'll make sure to get a second camera to capture the rear view.
Next week's the final race of this year's series. If you've ever wanted to try a mountain-bike race, give it a try. Don't let the video intimidate you, that's just the front-line action... there's people having a super-fun race all up & down the ranks. Hope to see you out there! :)
Up until Tuesday, the weather outlook for the fifth of seven Wednesday-night XC races looked promising. Then the forecast began calling for rain showers instead. I was hoping for good weather and a good turnout this week in particular, since it was Two Wheel Transit's night to sponsor the race and we'd put a lot of effort into our schwag bundle.
Sure enough, there was rain as predicted, and only about 50 racers this week. Well, that means more schwag for them, right? Pro tip: always come to Two Wheel Transit's race. ;) Incidentally, if you haven't been to the Wednesday-night races, one of the awesome things about them is that the schwag is given away by random drawing, not by how well you placed. And you get to pick your prize from whatever hasn't been given away yet!
I rode out to Riverside in intermittent rain, with time for a full course pre-ride, and was intrigued by the first section of the course. I liked it! The first bottleneck was about 1/2 mile in, after a steady ascent that had some passing opportunities, but also some sections with just one good line, so any passing on the ascent would need to be done decisively. At 1/2 mile, racers funneled into a fast singletrack descent, connected with the 24-hour course, climbed 5-Minute Hill and Devil's Up, descended Devil's Down, and then hung left and came down The Spine.
My own race went OK, weather notwithstanding, and since JT wasn't there for this race, I've now sneaked into 1st place overall in the series for the Two-Lapper Men category. Here's my video summary below, if you're into these:
This week's shop ride had light turnout, maybe due to the uncertain weather forecast. Two members of Gonzaga University's road-racing team dropped by, and we did the usual route until we reached the top of Doomsday Hill, at which point we headed home instead of back to Two Wheel Transit. I had my helmet cam along, so here's some video for those who like such things:
The first bonus video is mountain biking from this week's TNR (Tuesday Night Ride) with Spokane Rocket Velo, and it's a little long because it shows the whole Tour de Moon, a very rocky trail beyond Deep Creek.
The second video's from the TNR before that, where Craig hit two very large jumps while the rest of us illuminated them with our lights.
Recovery food!
720p resolution is recommended. If you just want to see the inner-loop highlights, skip forward to about 3m 30sec. As you can see, this time the camera was helmet-mounted, but still suffers from vibration in rough areas.
The report: the outer loop is almost clear of snowpack, but Little Vietnam is currently closed because the river's high. The inner loop has one sizeable section with lots of snowpack, but is otherwise quite good. If you want to go ride XC in Riverside, it's ready. Do keep your eyes open for newly-fallen trees, horseback riders, and Turnip ;)
the trail opposite the gun club is temporarily closed due to high water
looking back, just before Devil's Down
The video was shot with the ContourHD 1080p on a frame mount this time. For mountain biking, the frame mount is an improvement over the handlebar mount because it's less sensitive to large steering movements, but I'll have to pick up a helmet mount... it's still too much vibration for enjoyable viewing.
The video above is shot in full 1080p resolution at 30 frames per second. As reports led me to expect, this results in a Jell-O effect when the camera's having the stuffings beaten out of it being moved around quickly. Next on the agenda: the Action HD 720p resolution with the 60fps framerate, which is reportedly pretty smooth for trail videos.
Ok, related product plug: the Finish Line brush set is great for you fearless mud riders (and you know who you are). I think we're down to one set, but I'll make sure we get some more in. I use these a lot in our repair shop, especially the large one for the rims and frame, and the loop-shaped one behind cranks and between spoke flanges.
yeah, I'm parking THAT in my living room... NOT.
...where we met up with Chad, Alan and Ron from Spokane Rocket Velo. Alan and Chad were racing the time trial down in Lewiston the next day, so Chad was rockin' aero bars, and Alan had a full-on TT bike, which they were giving a pre-race shakedown. As if these guys weren't fast enough already...
The five of us rode the Liberty road-racing course, first used last year. This year, Liberty is the opening race of the Inland Road Race Series, presented by Larry H. Miller Lexus, and I liked the route. Between the round-trip ride to Spangle, and a feisty lap around the race course, Shawn and I bagged 67 miles and 2400ft of ascent, which was about all my legs could take at this point in the season. But what doesn't kill you... yeah☺
I also got a chance to try out my new ContourHD 1080p bike cam. Just before heading out, I'd installed the optional Garmin speed/cadence pickup, but the spoke magnet kept sneaking out of place, so if you see some anomolous speed readings in the video, that's what's up. The wattage meter's stuck at zero because I don't have a PowerTap, SRM or other power instrumentation. The data overlay is done using DashWare. I'm still getting the hang of it.
For higher quality, click "720p" at the bottom of the video after playback starts. This is video shot at 720p resolution and LOW quality. I've got a higher-capacity memory card on the way so I can try out the higher-quality modes and full 1080p resolution without running out of recording time.
On Sunday, Ron and I went for an XC mountain-bike ride at the South Hill bluff. Good news for the XC crew! There was a bit of mud and residual snow & ice, but the Bluff is quite rideable. Ron's an excellent Masters road rider who's just starting to try out XC, but he was game for everything that came at him☺We chalked up another 17 miles and 1600ft of ascent.
I took the Contour camera along again, and shot some video (below) for those of you who are interested in current Bluff conditions, or who've never been down there. Next thing on the agenda is to rig up a frame mount for the camera, so it doesn't turn with the bars. Stay tuned!
For higher quality, click "720p" at the bottom of the video after playback starts
I'm thinking about setting up a weekly XC-training ride in the evening, so give a holler in the Comments if you'd be interested (and not just the Bluff; once Riverside's snowpack melts, we can train there too). Daylight Saving Time's changing next weekend, but lights would still be needed for a while. This would be towards the pain-is-good-for-us end of the spectrum, not casual stop-&-go. ;)
