Lake Ahquabi

I couldn’t decide how I felt about going back to race at Ahquabi this year. Part of me was stoked to have the chance to ride this course again. After all, this was where I made my mountain bike racing debut just last year. On the other hand, I found it really hard to believe that a whole year had passed me by. Man, time does certainly fly! And a lot has changed since then.

A year ago, Cam and I weren’t even (officially, whatever that means) dating, he was busy making fun of the 300lbs. bike I was planning to race, and I was scared to death of actually trying to go “fast” on a mountain bike trail. Rolling up this year, I had to laugh a little about the changes from last year.

Last year, it took some convincing me that I would survive the race, let alone doing it without crashing into something or someone. This time around, I was recruiting any and every female who I knew owned a mountain bike. Last year, I thought I would die from the effort it would take to ride one lap at Ahquabi. This year, I was a little disappointed that we were only doing three laps – I thought seriously about heading back out for another lap or two in an effort to get a little more training for Chequamegon. A year ago, I was the one asking all the questions at the starting line, while this time I was one of the ones answering the newbie’s questions. Needless to say, I was much happier this year!

The one thing that didn’t change, however, was that I didn’t want to get beat in the race! Hopefully I won’t ever lose that drive! Actually, I think last year’s goal was to not get lapped by Cam. I figured this year, it would probably happen no matter what, so I just set a goal of not letting that happen until my third lap…

With increased recruitment efforts this year, we brought the Women’s Cat 2 field size up to four – All Nine Yards’ Kristin Reece, Rassmussen’s Sally Logan, Punk Rock Cycling’s Keely Shannon, and me. Keely is a complete stud on the bike, and probably has more experience that the other three of us combined despite her young age of 19. She used to race mountain bikes in her earlier years and now races Cat 3 on the road. Sally, Kristin, and I placed within about a minute of each other last week at Ingawanis, so I knew that I would have some good competition when the gun went off.

Temps were back into the 90s, but combined with the mostly shaded nature of this course, it felt maybe ten to fifteen degrees cooler than the sun-baked blast-furnace-like conditions of the race the day before. The skies (and the forecast) threatened big-time thunderstorms and hail, so we were all keeping an eye to the sky throughout our warm-ups leading up to the start.

Race director Bruce Brown put together an awesome course – 7+ challenging miles of Chequamegon-like trails. With 90% doubletrack and a fair amount of climbing, the conditions are perfect for beginner and experienced riders alike. Even the Dee and Dave Mable broke out the tandem for the day.

Bruce started the whole group of 60+ racers at the same time, with most of us pretty well self-seeded according to category. The start was pretty fast, even back where I started… I was just trying to keep Keely within my visual field, not let her get too far away! I was also pleasantly surprised to see Karolyn Zeller, newbie mountain bike studette, crank out some fast and furious first miles in her race. The crowds thinned out fairly quickly, and about midway through the first lap, I finally caught and passed Karolyn, then Keely. While Karolyn was only doing one lap, I knew I needed to keep the pace up to keep Keely from catching back up to me.

The course was fast, for the most part, and what surprised me the most was how much I was enjoying pushing myself through the tougher parts of the race, despite my fatigue from the previous day’s race, and despite the heat. I was feeling pretty fresh and my legs would go when I told them to. That is a great feeling.

I ended up riding the majority of the race by myself, but the two-way traffic sections meant I got to cheer on some of the other ladies and see Cam a couple times out there. It wasn’t until my final lap that he finally caught and lapped me. He had a big enough gap on second that we rode together for a couple of seconds before he took off.

The last few yards to the finish line was straight up a huge incline. Surprisingly, I still felt awesome by the time I got there, so I just dropped into an easy-ish gear and plugged my way to the top for the win!

This was one of the most fun races of the year so far. My favorite part was seeing so many newbies come out and try out the sport. At one point I walked away from Cam and told him, “I’m gonna go take advantage of having all these females here and go hang out with the girls!”

Hopefully, all these new ladies were bit by the bug that got me at Ahquabi last year, and they will be regulars on the Iowa MTB race circuit!