Bonebender

Coming off a great weekend at Sylvan Island, I spent the whole week looking forward to getting back out on the dirt. Since the mountain biking season is just getting started, there were few options for racing. There was a lot of talk about a race in Missouri – the Bonebender, offering 3- or 6-hour racing options – but I remembered hearing from last year’s racers that it rained a ton before this event and it was barely ride-able. Though it rained a bit during the week, reports from the race directors said that conditions were great and that we should all come out and race!

Cam and I headed down to KC on Saturday mid-day, checked into Hotel Streeter (his friends from college) and went out on a little bike path shake-out ride to test out Cam’s calf and remove the rot that accumulates in one’s legs when you sit in a car for 3+ hours. Cam’s leg felt near 100%, so it was game-on for him to do the 6-hour race.

I was really up in the air about whether to enter the 3- or 6-hour event. I went back and forth quite a bit. My longest ride of the season so far had been four hours. I’ve been feeling great on the mountain bike, but didn’t want to get sloppy as I tired and accidentally launch myself over a ledge or into a tree. Six hours would be good for me, from a training perspective, and I was pretty sure that there would be less competition in the 6-hour. But, in the end, I decided on the 3-hour. I could always ride more if I felt like it, and I knew that Roxanne Abbott (out of Omaha – a major player in the Psycowpath Series) had signed up for the 3. This would be a good test of how I stacked up against someone with her racing experience and prowess.

There was quite the festive atmosphere developing as we pulled into Smithville Lake. The weather was looking to be near perfect. A large contingent of racers flying the Rassy colors had already arrived and were busy setting up camp. On the women’s side were Maria Ruhtenberg and Sally Logan. Maria is still pretty new to the whole MTB thing, but is very eager to gain experience, so she signed up for the 6-hour and collected a few extra tough-girl points. And, though Sally is in training for Leadville, she opted to join me on the 3-hour circuit. I signed up immediately – before I had a chance to second-guess my decision to do three instead of six.

They do the start LeMans-style, meaning there is a foot race to your bike in hopes of thinning out the traffic heading into the singletrack. With over 200 entrants, that was a good choice in theory, but the actual application of it didn’t work out so well, as there was still a pretty major bottleneck and multiple back-ups throughout the first half of the first lap. For the most part, the men on the course were courteous when passed or passing.

Once I’d found some open trail and was able to ride at my own pace, I realized just how fun of a course this was. There were some pretty challenging rock gardens that would have been mostly un-rideable for me last year at this time, but I really enjoyed being able to push my way through them now! The next challenge was figuring out how to pace myself. Though it is a three-hour race, if you finish one of the 11.5-mile loops anywhere up to 2:59, you have the option of heading out for another lap. With my lap times being anywhere from 1:10 to 1:15, I could be racing for closer to four hours than three. I settled into a fairly comfortable pace, checking my heart rate monitor often to make sure I was where I thought I needed to be and began picking off women, one-by-one. Though I had no idea how many women got ahead of me at the start, I could at least tell if the women I was passing were 3- or 6-hour racers based on the color of their race plate. I knew Sally was ahead of me, as I could see her off in the distance or when the course would sorta double-back on itself in a few places. It seemed as if we were staying pretty consistently spaced during lap one.
I felt awesome after the first lap, managed to take in a little of my secret weapon – caffeinated Hammer Gel – and some water. I pushed the pace a little more on lap two and went in pursuit of Sally. We met up at a creek crossing that neither of us liked and we hung together to the rock garden. I think she was beginning to tire a bit, so she took it a little easier through there, and I took off to see who else might be ahead.

I still felt great after the second lap, so I kept up the pace until I felt like I might start getting a little sloppy from fatigue in the technical sections. I really enjoyed the course and found myself a little disappointed that I hadn’t just bucked up and did the 6-hour. I crossed the line around 3:44, and was pleasantly surprised to see that I was in second place, although I ended up about 30 minutes back from Roxanne. Even without the bottlenecks and traffic jams on lap one, I’m not sure that I could have gone 10 minutes faster per lap to keep pace with her. Sally ended up with third, about 10 minutes back from me. Once again, I avoided being lapped by Cam who had a very good race, finishing 5th overall and second in his category.
The weather could not have possible been any nicer. Temps were in the 50-60s and the sun shone most of the day, but never in a solar oven sort of way. Big thanks to Chad and Angie who hosted us in Kansas City, fed us, and gave us a place to call home for the weekend.

No dirt next weekend. We are heading to Iowa City for a weekend of racing and back to Bettendorf for Cam’s niece’s birthday!