On September 11th, I participated in the Rockwood Park XC Mountain Bike Race in Saint John. This was my first time doing this race, but me and a group of friend had gone down to Rockwood Park in late July to pre-ride most of the course.
When doing a race, if possible I always like to pre ride the course ahead of time. I find that it allows me to get a general feel for the course and also helps me in my decision when it comes to choosing which class to race in.
The race course was 8.5km in lenght and I had pre ridden about 4km's of it ahead of this. This particular race offered 4 different classes. They had a kids class, C class, B class and A class. C class was 1 lap of the course, B class was 2 laps of the course and A class was 3 laps of the course. I decided to register for the B class since I felt that this would be the group of riders that I would be competitive with.
So on a cool sunny September morning, me and 4 friends set off at 7:00 a.m. for the 1 hour drive to Saint John from Fredericton. We got to the race course around 8:30 a.m. and it was quite chilly. But once the sun came out, it got quite comfy and it turned out to be an excellent day for an XC Mountain Bike Race.
The A, B, and C class races were scheduled to start at 10:15, so after doing all our preparations, a small group of us including my buddy Alex and Matt decided to do a small warm up ride about 30 minutes before the race. I was looking forward to doing a small warm up ride since it would allow me to ride the start section of the race course which we hadn't covered on our pre ride back in late July.
So we set off as a group from the start line for our warm up ride, and the course started with a nice little climb that lasted for about 2 minutes. Once you finished the climb, you turned left went through this nice technical rooty section before hitting a nice flowly double track trail with a couple of nice jumps and obstacles. This brought you out to a power line which consisted of another little climb before doing a hard left onto a trail called It's Gotta Go.
It's Gotta Go is a trail that we had pre ridden in late July and I knew that this trail was quite lengthy and didn't loop back out to the start finish area. So I decided to turn around and ride back to the start finish line. My buddies Matt and Alex decided to keep going on It's Gotta Go.
So by the time I got back to the start finish line, it was about 15 minutes before the start of the race and they announced that we should start lining up since we would be having the pre race meeting in about 5 minutes. So I lined up at the start finish line and kept looking for my buddies Matt and Alex to come around the corner at any second. 10 minutes before the race, still no Matt or Alex. About 5 minutes before the race, I see a couple of other riders who had gone out on the warm up ride show up, but still no sign of Matt and Alex. I started worrying that they were going to miss the start of the race. About 3 minutes before the race, both Alex and Matt showed up and you could see that they were in a panic. Turns out Matt had gone over the bars on his warm up ride and Alex has gotten a flat tire. Alex was racing in the A Class and Matt was racing in the B Class with me. By the time both of them made it to the start finish line, the A class group had already taken off 30 seconds before hand and the B Class was about to set off. Alex took off right away trying to catch up with the A class guys, and our B Class wasn't far behind him.
So it was finally time for our group to set off, and as soon as we set off I settled in mid pack. We started up the first climb and there was this guys ahead of me who was struggling a bit, but there wasn't really any place to pass him, so I just stayed on his rear wheel and figured I'd pass him just after that technical rooty section that was coming up.
Just as we got to the technical section, the struggling rider ahead of me proceeded to perform an endo right in front of me and I just managed to miss him. Once we hit the flowy double track before the power line, things calmed down and I got into the race. I had a pretty good pace and proceeded to pass a couple of riders before we hit the narrower single track stuff that included It's Gotta Go, Rocky Rd and Lolly Pop. These trails are quite narrow, rocky and have lots of roots, so it's difficult to pass so a bunch of us just got together and rode through it all.
When racing, I don't like holding up people, so I try and move out of the way as soon as possible. Towards the end of the first lap, I had a couple of riders behind me, and I asked them if they wanted to go bye, and they said nope that I was setting a good pace and that they would let me know if they wanted to go bye.
So I proceeded to complete my first lap in 43 minutes. On the start of the second lap I was feeling great and ridding much better. About halfway through my second lap, I caught up to my buddy Matt who was running along his bike. Turns out he had gotten a flat but only had a spare tube. He had no CO2 cartridge or pump. I stopped to assist him and offered him the use of my CO2 cartridge but he refused to take it since he would feel bad if I flatted later on and didn't have a way to inflate my tire. He told me to keep going and that he would find someone with a pump. While stopped to assist Matt, I got passed by the 2 riders who had been following me since midway of the first lap, so I put my head down and decided to see if I could catch up.
About 3/4 of the way through my second lap I could see the 2 riders ahead of me but they were about 1 to 2 minute ahead of me so I knew I wasn't going to be able to catch them.
I ended up completing my second lap in about 47 minutes finishing in 12th place out of 31 riders in B Class. My buddy Matt managed to find someone with a pump just after I left him and he ended up in 16th place, 5 minutes behind me.
After the race, Boston Pizza was giving away free pasta to all the racers and they proceeded to give out the awards and prizes. I ended up winning a red commuting light that will come in quite handy during our group night rides.
Overall it was an awesome day and I'm really looking forward to doing this event next year once again.
