August Wrap-Up

To close out August, and the height of the mountain bike season, I competed in the Murphy Sprint Series on the 17th and the Border Battle on the 21st.

The Murphy Sprint Series put on by Freewheel has a growing vibe and is a fun training race on Wednesday evenings in August. The race is a time trial format, where riders stage themselves and are sent out in 30 second intervals.

I staged myself toward the back, as I hadn't ridden any of the previous races and wasn't sure of my true positioning. I was riding gears for this race to give the knees a break and allow some spinning. The race went well, and I felt good most the time. Murphy is tight singletrack, so speed is probably more determined by handling skills and I was making a number of mistakes. In short, I rode the trail in 47 minutes and placed somewhere in the top third. What surprised me is the improvement of over 6 minutes from the last time I raced this TT. It was a good confidence builder going into the Border Battle.

The Border Battle race was at Whitetail Ridge in River Falls again this year. Unlike years past, the weather was dry and cool. I was racing in the SS sport category, for my second single speed race of the series.

It could not have been better conditions. The singletrack was fast, the weather was perfect, and Andy and Josh where both at the race. For the Wisconsin series, SS is an open category, so there were a lot of riders in the group. At the line-up we were staged with the 16-20 YO riders. Within the SS category there were 17 riders.

My plan for the race was to be the first SS rider to the singletrack. In order to do that, I would need to sprint to the first climb and stand on the pedals all the way to the top. At the start I was in the second row, and felt like I had a good start position. The gun went off and the chaos began. At the start of the climb, I was in 5th position and surging. As the young guys with gears dropped to something easier, I mashed on the pedals and rode behind two of the young riders. Here is a photo of my arm (black/orange twin six jersey).

At the top, I let the two youngins pace me to the singletrack. That was probably a bad idea, as it allowed some of the other SS riders to close the gap. We rode the singletrack for a while and caught the back of the group in front of us. Mid lap I was caught by one of the SS racers. I let him pass and pace. Again, another bad idea. I wanted to go faster through the singletrack and was riding his wheel. It also allowed another SS rider to catch us. I rode in #2 until the 2nd climb. On the climb we hit a lot of traffic. #3 broke around the traffic with #1 grabbing his wheel. I tried to follow, but couldn't hold on. I rode the rest of the race chasing/running and holding onto #3.

The racing tactics made for a very fun race.

Coming up - Cyclocross (18+ possible races) and the last MMBS race in St. Cloud