Ridgeline Rampage

Well, I kicked off the race season last weekend with the Ridgeline Rampage. My marathon class rode 6 10 miles laps. It was hard.

I went off really, really well. I never once went out of my comfort zone (I don't use the silly hr monitors) and was in a really good flow. Rode the first two laps with one of my teammates and co-workers. We were steadily passing 20-30 people per lap, reeling them in on the flats and then putting minutes into them on the downhills, rode every single up-hill in my granny with the intention of keeping this pace the whole race.

On lap 3 I tried to put a little dig into some other racers as we rolled through the feed zone, what I wasn't accounting for was that the temperature had risen a solid 30 degree since the race started and I was not taking in enough fluids. I exploded in a blaze of fire at the end of the lap, cramps in my stomach and legs and the beginning of a headache. I did set an awesome lap time however.

Lap 4 and 5 I was wasting probably half an hour of each lap standing next to the side of the trail trying to work my cramping out. My overall placing just went straight backwards. I was hurting bad enough that on one short powerful uphill my quads simultaneously locked up and I could not get out of my pedals, slowly finding my way to the dirt on my side from that high up 29" perch. Colorado is funny that way, in KS my body would tell me if I wasn't taking in enough fluids with a little lead time to take them in, simply look at my arms and make sure that my air conditioner was kicking out the sweat. Up here there's no warning, I'm going to start experimenting more with sport legs and perpetuem a little more.

I decided to pull the plug on the race at mile 50, my head was throbbing hard enough and I was starting to get dizzy enough that I knew dehydration might land me with an IV stuck in my arm if I kept going. It looks like I would have rolled in around 6th place if I would have finished the race up and I could care less about that placing. 3 of my teammates, Paul, Barry and Russ, ended up on the podium for their respective age groups while everyone else out on the team rocked it out hard. We had an awesome two tent set-up along pit row and we looked about as pro as could be out there all day long.

I need to get out and roll some gravel miles now. My plan was to get up early and put in a 5-6 hour day solo. But I slept 'til 11:00 and now here I am. I'll probably roll a metric by myself and then wait for Neta to get home and ride a little with her. I don't know about anyone else but I am pretty done training for DK200, it was fun for awhile and I feel like my base is solid but the weather is just too dang hot to be grinding gravel on a cx bike. I'm really looking forward to getting back on the carbon road bike and doing some speed work next month and spending all of my off days back on the mtb or climbing a rock.