Last night was the first race of the Ascent Series, which I suppose marks the start of the local race season in Colorado Springs. Sand Creek Sports has been organizing this five race series for two decades and it is definitely a mainstay of Front Range mountain bike racing.
The format is essentially a dirt criterium, an hour of all out effort on a 2.5 mile course with about 340ft of climbing per lap. That may not sound difficult, but having to climb and recover over and over at that pace will wear on you quickly. Now, I don't consider myself much of a short track racer, so I was definitely heading into uncharted territory here...
The pros and singlespeeders toed the line for a 6:15 start, and once the whistle blew we were off and there was no slowing down. We had a decent sprint off the line, where I was rubbing elbows with the big boys and leading the singlespeeders up the first climb.
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| photo cred: Tim Bergsten/PikesPeakSpots.us |
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By the time we made our way back to the "long" climb on the second lap, Nick Thelen (husband of Tracy) motored ahead of me on his full suspension SS and so began the battle. I held his wheel for a couple laps til I decided he was descending too fast for my comfort and gave him some space. By the third full lap I was feeling mentally fatigued and started making some mistakes and thus may have used some foul language, of which I am not proud. I quickly got my head straight, pasted a stupid grin on my face and began work on the second half of the hour, and my smoothest laps yet. It's incredible how a slight shift in your mental game can affect your entire physiology. My cornering had slowed down a bit but I had a good flow and was enjoying myself, and that was all I cared about by the time we made it to our sixth and final lap. I spent that last ten minutes going back and forth with Trevor Von Boeck, who's a junior worth keeping an eye on. We had made a solid gap at this point and I was able to let my guard down a bit and relax as I crossed the line in second place at 1:03:50, 14 seconds behind Nick. Despite my inclination to be disappointed with my result I was ultimately happy just to have a decent result amid some seriously fast and experienced racers.
Lesson learned and the moral of my story: Do more pyramid intervals.
The next Ascent Series race is at Palmer Park on June 26, where I hope to sharpen my teeth and develop my XC skill set.
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| photo cred: Tim Bergsten/PikesPeakSpots.us |
Mad props to Andy Bohlmann and Sand Creek Sports for putting so much work into making this series happen year after year. And thanks to Tim Bergsten at PikesPeakSports.us for lending his photog skills.
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