Sunday, March 12, 2006

RACE REPORT: 2006 Cool MTB Race

So I knew that I was in for a long day as soon as I got to Darrington Trail on Salmon Falls Road. It was obvious that Friday's scouting report of the Cool MTB Race was not quite correct. To illustrate the difference, on Friday the trail looked like this:
Olmstead PreRace 2
Whereas today, by the time I parked, Cool looked like this:
Car Parked At Cool Race
While the weather had obviously not cooperated, the Cool MTB Race crew had organized a nice race. The course layout was swoopy with some long uphills, they had an efficient registration and an enthusiastic crowd (more cowbell!). But wow, today's weather really made for a miserable race. In fact, the organizers even acknowledged the fact by asking the racers if they really wanted to do more that one lap (not that any group was willing to cut their race short).

The trail was quite simply a mess. What was a mudfest became unrideable for large parts - either it was a actual stream or unclimbable due to the snow and mud. Stream crossings were sketchy at best and it seemed like almost everyone had some kind of mechanical problems (sidenote: shimano components really don't like freeze mud). It's really too bad that the weather went so south -- I think this would have been a great race, in say May. UPDATE: Someone posted two great photos over at MTBR (they are near the bottom of this thread).

As you can imagine from the general demeanor of my report (and past races), I didn't have a good race. By the end of the first lap, I had broken two fenders (front and back, at mile 1 and 4), suffered two epic diggers (complete endo into the water on one), burned through my back brake, lost all feeling in my feet and iced up my rear derailleur. And posted a sweet 1:33 lap time. For ten miles. Needless to say, I racked up the first DNF of my year and my career today.

Race results are posted ( PDF ).

2 comments:

Brian said...

Which bike did you ride? The Voodoo or the Specialized

/k said...

VooDoo. Didn't want to spend the next month cleaning mud out of the suspension on the Stumpjumper.

Found out I wrecked the front fork on the VooDoo also.