Spoke Pony Showdown

I finally got the first race of the season under my belt. Rich Anderson and I teamed up for the 6 hour duo in the Spoke Pony Showdown MTB race at Landahl Park in Blue Springs. We place well finishing 1st in our group. I had mixed feelings about my performance at the race. I went first at the start of the race, it starts with about 1/4mi run to the bikes to better spread out the field. I went hard from the run and the immediate 1st climb, about the longest climb you can do at Landahl. I was somewhere between 12-15th place going into the climb right on Doug Stone's wheel. I tripped up around one of the corners and had a slew of people pass me. By the time I hit the top of the climb my HR was maxxed out and I had to do a slight recovery through the 1/2 mile of double track. I ended up loosing contact with the top 15-20 guys in front of me and there was nobody behind me for some distance. I am by no means a great techincal rider but I have ridden these trails lots, so as the course got more techincal I caught up to a group of 5-10 guys in Rim Job and sat on their wheel for the rest of my 1st lap. I ended up with a respectable 46 min lap but I think I could have shaved a couple of minutes through the last half of the course if I hadn't been held up. Rich came out with a blistering 42 min lap on his first lap. My laps were 46min, 45 min, 48 min and 47 mins, good consistancy but I just needed to be about 2 mins faster per lap to be completely happy. What I found is that my anaerobic conditioning needs alot of work, I have just put in easy to moderate miles all year and haven't taken my HR up enough. At least now I know where to concentrate on, its a long season and this is only my 1st race. I also found out that my upper body, mainly my triceps are not in the off road shape they need to be in, my arms were fatiguing quickly and this cost me some time in the techincal sections, my palms also are very sore and starting to blister. The weather here has kept me off road and it just going to take some time. Shad Schreiner was absolutely flying and won the overall, one of my friends Doug Stone had a great race, finishing 3rd in the 3 hour 30-39 group.