I recently competed in my first cross country (XC) mountain bike race & it was a blast!
The event was named The Endless Ride, named after the seemingly endless days associated to the summer solstice. The event started at 7pm, which seems crazy, however in Seattle at this time of year the sun doesn’t set until after 9:00pm.
Lemon Peel, who are the event organisers have a highly inclusive approach to their events. They support classes for different ages alongside supporting mountain bikes, gravel bikes and runners! I guessed and entered myself into Cat 2 Open as I was certain the Cat 1 Open was going to be outrageously fast.
The course used the Grand Ridge trail system, which connects Sammamish to Issaquah. Total distance was 12.5km, with 350m of climbing. While it mightn’t sound too tough, when you combine sections with 15-20% gradients, roots, rocks & ruts – even with the massive gearing on a mountain bike it is definitely challenging!
My race plan was simple, go out really hard in the first 3km to try and get a gap on the pack as that section only had 50m of elevation. Between 3km and 8km, I knew I was going to lose time as there were competitors who were 15-25kg lighter than me. The weight difference doesn’t hurt you on the flat or downhill, but is a huge penalty on gradients over 4%.
Overall this worked out pretty well, by the time I got to 3km mark – I couldn’t hear or see my competitors behind me. As expected, some of the other racers got past me by the 6-7km marker. Fortunately, I was past the steepest sections by that point and the downhill started at 8km mark. I crossed the finish line in 53 minutes and was shocked to hear my name called for 2nd place at the ceremony.
From an effort stand point, it was definitely an all out – Garmin said it was “highly impacting V02 max”. That doesn’t surprise me whatsoever, my max HR is 183bpm (which I hit) and I averaged 170bpm even after accounting for the downhill where it ‘recovered’ to 160bpm.
It was a heap of fun being on a course with other people racing!