Its like a new sport.

Four of us piled into the Mayhew's wagon for the WVMBA lost creek race on Saturday. The race has 3 names from what I can tell: WVMBA #6, Lost Creek, and the White Oak Challenge. When a race had 3 different names, that is serious. It was going to be close to a 3 hour race. On the road, I know exactly what I need to carry for 3 hours, how much I need to eat, how much I need to drink, etc. Mountain biking... uh....ummm

I thought back to my last WVMBA race. I drank one half of a bottle over 2 hours. That means one bottle should be good for 3 hours right? Oh wait, its like 90 degrees. The burner was following the fast dudes and watching them pick bottles up off of picnic tables as they went past. Each lap I would see where people stashed bottles on slower sections of the trail so they could grab them. Learn the hard way.

The most surreal part of the race was on the last half of the last lap. Im slowly climbing. Im in like 3rd place, waiting for the fast dudes to blow by me, totally blown up. I look ahead (we were passing lapped sport riders) and I see somebody JOGGING on the trail wearing full bike stuff. I am totally blown and cant really comprehend what I am seeing. My thought process was like this "A duathlete training?... The harder I go now, the sooner I get water... Why is that person jogging on the course? How can those fast dudes only have a 2x9 setup... I am in my 22x34 I think....." Then I realize that the person jogging is the STOKER FROM THE TANDEM. I guess she jogs the hills and he rides them? They enter the Clydesdale class and are competitive from what I can tell. Totally nuts considering that there was a hike a bike that I could barely push my bike up.

Mountain biking is cool at the end. Everybody was blown and pretty friendly when you came up on them. One dude was like "go ahead bro..." as he dropped from 2nd to 4th in a matter of minutes.

Can I got a post about this race without mentioning that Gunnar cut the course all 3 laps and then out sprinted me in the last 100 yards? Its like the scene in 3 amigos where the guy finds out that all the quick draws were camera tricks and fake, he is totally devastated. Apparently the guy who got 2nd also did that, but he would have beaten me anyway. The extra 20 dollars Gunnar got is not going to be worth me NEVER letting this go.