Xterra East Championships 2015 Race Report....T'was hot and hard!

What a great race and weekend! Over the weekend of June 13/14 Sarah and I headed down to Richmond to take part in the Xterra East Championships race weekend, the 3rd stop in the US Pro Series. Yup we both took part!

We headed down on Friday afternoon and after spending a few hours on I-95 I was able to preview the Buttermilk trail section of the bike course. I had heard lots about the Xterra Richmond bike course( check out the course preview here) so really wanted to see the technical sections and prepare for the race on Sunday. I am glad I did as there are some gnarly sections that would catch you unaware on race day. It was probably at this point that I realized that my MTB skills are still gradually coming back after a 10 year layoff. I knew I would be losing time to the uber bikers on this course... Oh and it was a hot and humid 92 degrees that would hold over the weekend.

The exciting part was that on Saturday Xterra were hosting a 10km/21km trail race. Somehow I has persuaded Sarah to enter the 10km with the promise that I would run it with her. Not ideal prep for me ahead of the tri on Sunday but excellent that this gave Sarah the motivation of a race and besides it would be fun!

Sarah had nailed her training over the previous 6 weeks and really got consistent with her running.  Yes she was nervous ahead of the race having never done a trail race before and the threat of the Mayan Ruins wall and the dry rocks didn't help. We had a great time though and completed the race in 1hr 9mins which is awesome for a technical 10km.  Bad news is that she finished 5th in her age group just 4 secs behind a podium slot! She is already planning her revenge for next year.

Sarah on the Dry Rocks

After the 10km I got out onto the bike course again to see the rest of the trails. Good luck/bad luck happened halfway round as my chain snapped and I didn't have the parts to repair it. Good luck that it didn't happen on race day - bad luck that I was out in the sun and 3 miles from the race village. After a combination of running/coasting I got back to the village got the chain replaced and started the rest of the days recovery by binge watching Flip or Flop! With a 10km and too much time on the trail I was feeling pretty tired, not ideal ahead of the race.

Xterra races don't usually start until around 9am so the alarm on Sunday didn't come around too early. After setting up transition it was good to the lines that the pro field took through the swim course which you is certainly not typical. There are zig zags, sand bars, rocks and a mid swim run....definitely not your usual swim course. We headed off at 900am and I felt good in the water. I swam good lines, didn't get pushed off by the current and exited the water in around 20th place. Only down side was stepping on a rock during the middle of the swim which actually cut my foot. It felt bad to begin with but by the end of the swim I had forgotten and it wasn't until after the race that I actually remembered!

Walking on water

Through T1 and onto the bike! It was getting toasty and hydration and nutrition would be key for the 2 lap, 20 mile ride. The first mile or so is across the road bridge and then you dive onto the trails bordering the James River, the Buttermilk trails leading to Forest Hills and then onto the North Trails.  My aim was a) not to kill myself, b) enjoy it and c) keep it steady.  The first few miles saw the uber bikers whizz by and it really is amazing how they blitz the trails, I have a lot of work ahead of me but I think that will come in time. I have to remind myself that this is the first season of Xterra and I have probably ridden my MTB about 10-12 times since getting back on it in January.  

The course and atmosphere on the trails was great, at the most technical sections like the river crossing and the rock slab there were a bunch of people partying and having a great time

Party time on the Buttermilk Trail

Despite not being as quick as perhaps I would have liked, I stayed in the hunt and the 2nd lap got kind of lonely as the field was much more strung out. I also took better lines as I was learning the trail more, so much so that my 2nd lap time was almost identical to the 1st lap time.

On the North Trails

Having run the 10km with Sarah the day before I knew what I was in for and felt that with the hot weather and the tough bike course it wasn't going to be a day of laying it down on the run! Much like the bike course, it starts off tame along the canal and then throws you up the Mayan Ruins wall and onto the trails.

2.5 hours into a race this feels as bad as it looks!

My plan was to just keep it steady and to be honest I didn't have much left for the run at all....even if I had wanted to push the pace I didn't have anything left. The Mayan Ruins felt as bad as it looked and the Dry Rocks were both hot and hard.  Races are funny things though and as bad as you can feel you never really know how the rest of the field is feeling.  I made my way around the course at just over 8min/miles and crossed the line in 3hrs 04mins. 

Pushing it to the end of a hard day

Yes I was pleased to have finished a hard course but was a little disappointed in the time. It felt slow and I was totally spent. One of my goals coming into the race was to be close enough to the pointy end of my age group to see if I could grab one of the 3 automatic qualifying slots for the Xterra World Championships in Maui in November. With the race I had I didn't think I would be even close so it was with much surprise that I finished 4th in the age group and now have to wait on a potential roll-down slot if one of the top three do not accept. Again no matter how you are feeling it is always critical to push yourself to the end as you never know what is really going on with the rest of the field.

There are definitely some takeaways from this race and further work as I enter more Xterra races:

1 - Technical MTB skills are critical.

2 - Knowing the course really helps....next year at this race will be even better.

3 - Don't underestimate the overall effort needed in MTB'ing

4 - Despite my constant lack of swimming, I seem to be "ok".

5 - Overall strength needs to improve over simply swim, bike, run strength.

On-wards to the next Xterra race on July 12th at Xterra Ex2 at Rocky Gap.

Thank you goes to:

Parvilla Cycle & Multisport, Pactimo, Retul and of course Sarah!

May 2015: Training Ramblings....Road Racing and Gambling against the House!

May ended up being a good month in terms of volume but it just seemed that I never got into a training rhythm. There always seemed to be a break one way or another through work or something else.

One thing that didn't get off the ground was trips to the pool. It was a shocking swimming month and I really do need to be more consistent. I must end up saying that every other month but it really is something that I need to get a grasp on. Like most people I need accountability to really get me in the water regularly. Something like a morning master's class would be great but the closest is some way away. Perhaps I need to call out Greg & Dave to make it to Sportfit with me and then we would all be awesome at our next races!

What I did do in May was continue with some road racing and getting my first road race podium. After racing earlier in the day in the Masters 123 field at Bunny Hop I headed into the Masters 3/4 race with a plan. The plan was to sit in and recover from the earlier race with the intention to follow any promising breaks in the back half of the race. Fortunately nothing was shaking in the first half so the plan was coming together. We were all still together with less than 10 laps to go and I was sitting in the top ten. With 5 to go there was a brief lull in the pace and heading out of Turn 1 I attacked and knew it was now or never. It was only 5km to go and luckily a couple of strong guys bridged over and the three of us drilled it to establish a small gap on the field. With a step on the podium available I probably worked the hardest out of the three to keep the break going and with 1km to go it looked like we had a 50/50 shot of sticking it. Being on the front and laying down the watts was nailing my own coffin for the top step but I would rather have 3rd than nothing at all..  With 200m to go the peloton was closing in, we went round the final turn and my non-existent sprint started and I rolled across in 3rd.  Road racing is a lot like gambling, you have to take chances and more often than not the house wins.....this time the gamble paid off and we stayed away!

You have to take chances in bike racing

The good news is that we got to initiate the Parvilla Cycles trucker podium cap

Mum and Dad also headed out from the Motherland for a few weeks in May and were able to take in the sites of Baltimore at the BikeJam race! Having never done that race and hearing all the horror stories about the road surface and various crashes, I was worried what the Master's 123 race would bring!  Luckily it was nowhere near as bad as the stories and it was a fun race if you like racing around at 28mph for a hour with 75 racers within millimeters of your handlebar....no place for personal space in bike racing.  

Embrace the suck! Photo Credit: Tods Photo

The end of the month was something of a novelty...for the first time in 6 years or so I got to race the Church Creek Time Trial. In years previous I was part of the race director team for the TT so never got to race.  This year we passed the baton to the new ABRT board and they did a great job.  Good news for me was that I got to suffer through 40km of wind on the Eastern Shore.  With less focus on on-road triathlon in 2015 my time has been limited on the Guru Cycles TT bike this season and it showed with a just about sub-hour time (59:00mins). The wind was some of the worst that I have experienced on the Church Creek course so times were down throughout the field. Hopefully the race redux in July will be better weather conditions and I will have spent a bit more time on the TT bike by then.

In other non-racing news I was able to spend a couple of rides out at Fountainhead Mountain Bike Park, which is a great trail system that challenges me to improve my technique as I look to the season's Xterra races.  With only 6 months under my belt after 10 years off the mountain bike it's taking a little while to get the flow back as well as the cojones to ride some of the more technical trails. Gradually I am getting back into it! Oh and I also formally got my invite to Xterra Nationals after my result at Xterra Jersey Devil.

Playing with rocks at Fountainhead!

So that was May.....a month of road racing and a bunch of fun!

What I am drinking this month:
Four Barrel Coffee:  COTECAGA / BOURBON / RWANDA: The Cotecaga wet mill was built in 2006 in the Nyamasheke region.  It processes coffee for over 1,700 members.  The establishment of this new mill some 7 years ago has given the area the infrastructure it needs to turn a quality crop into a marvelous bean.  This is welcome in a country whose coffee production has much more often been hampered by issues of processing than problems with microclimate, terroir, or harvest.The bourbon varietal is ubiquitous among specialty-grade coffees exported from Rwanda.  The selection at hand demonstrates the body and corresponding chocolate and molasses tones which often accompany the varietal.  The current specimen is distinguished by tones of caramelized red pepper, presenting as complementary simple sweetness with a subtle savory character

May Total: 642miles/43hrs 29mins/2806 TSS
Swim: 5.34m/2hrs 48mins/ 117 TSS
Bike: 553m/30hrs 45mins/ 1900 TSS
Run: 83.6m/9hrs 55mins/ 789 TSS