I am beat.

Today was the first race of the 2013 Texas Cross Country Mountain Bike State Championship Series, the Sun & Ski presents The Rocky Hill Roundup. Apparently there is a prize for the longest name and these guys might be winning, but I digress. I’m talking about the race, so let me start at the beginning (known as yesterday) and I’ll tell you my story.

Yesterday, I loaded up my car with all my necessary equipment, almost left, grabbed my phone, then left. I’ve driven out to Rocky Hill Ranch a few times and it is a pretty easy drive. It’s 142 miles away, but you only take four roads.

So anyway, I got there and set up camp. Camping at race venues is a pretty awesome thing. You don’t have to worry about showering, or spending a lot of money on a hotel, or waiting in line to get in the park the morning of the race. But there are some down sides, and since I haven’t made a list in a while, I’m going to use that format.

Down sides of camping at a race:

1. The Weather. It can get hot when you camp. It can get rainy when you camp. And both of those suck. The one weather that I’m usually prepared enough for (the cold) doesn’t happen when you camp in Texas. Not even the second weekend in February.
2. The Bugs. Now this is more if a general camping rant, or maybe a Texas camping rant, but bugs do kinda suck. There are spiders, which are just creepy. Mosquitos, which are just annoying. And there are ants, which are painful. Yeah, I was never been bit by an ant until I moved to Texas. They hurt.
3. The Loud People. There is this thing about cyclists, where they like beer. If you ever have a cyclist buddy and you want to get on his good side, offer him a beer. And cyclist + beer = good time. And good time = loud time. And it usually is around the time I’m trying to get to bed and rest up for the big race in the morning.
4. The Getting Trapped. Now, this doesn’t happen at every race, but Rocky Hill it does happen. The camp grounds are inside the course, so to get out you have to cross the course with your car; pushing the racers out of the way. And the race officials frown at that.
5. The Hydrating. One of the things you do to prepare for a race is drink a lot of water. I personally try to get at least a gallon of water drunk, besides the normal water in my bottles when I ride. And I’m pretty darn good at it. But when you’re camping, you don’t have the luxury of rolling out of bed, walking ten steps to the bathroom. No, you have to pick yourself up off the ground, try to decide if you want to walk out of your tent in your underwear, decide you don’t, throw some shorts on after searching for two whole minutes in the dark, find your shoes, unzip the tent, walk up the hill to the porta potty, realize you don’t have a flashlight, etc and etc. And you do this at least five times over the course of the night.

Back to the boringness of the post. I set up camp, moved the camp cause of ants, ate lunch and went out for a preride of the course. The preride went well, I ended up almost going over my handlebars up a hill, and ended up with too little air in my tires and them getting really squirrelly. Nothing really interesting happened, I just spent the rest of the time catching up with my friend Ian.

Today though, was interesting. I work up pretty early, and I decided that I didn’t want to get my car trapped in the campground and having myself stuck at the ranch till quite late in the day. So I packed up all my stuff and drive down to the normal parking area before 7:00. I went and washed my hands in the bathroom and put my contacts in, and while I was putting the stuff back away in my trunk, I hear this guy driving by. He says in this sing-song voice, “It’s going to raaaaain…”. Right after he said that, I hear a raindrop here. And one over there. And then some more. I quickly close my trunk and hop in my car.

Instant deluge. And wind.

Tents were flying everywhere, rain was coming down sideways and in buckets. And I was so glad that I was not wet. So I ate brekkie and waited for it to dry.

After the weather decided it was going to behave and play nicely, I got out and started to warm up with some friends. I shifted to a different gear and my chain popped off. Looking down, I saw that one of my spokes was broken. I got a mechanic guy to take it off for me, which was quite nice.

And then my cycling computer’s sensors fell off. Somehow both of the zip ties just broke. If I was thinking, I might have thought it was a sign or a warning or something. And I’m kinda glad, cause I would have been stressed out for no reason; the race went fine.

The race was fine, but slick as snot. The rain just made everything mud. And riding in mud isn’t something that I’m very good at. I just haven’t really had any practice. Some of the climbs I remember pedaling and my back tire spinning and I’m barely moving forward. I ended up hiking quite a few of them.

Both my bike and I got covered in mud. I’m going to have to spend an hour or so cleaning it this week.

The mud also took out the parts of the course I was counting on using to gain some time. I couldn’t go fast cause my tires would just slide out and I didn’t want that to happen.

So I ended up finishing the race in 14th, with a time of 50:45. I’m not sure how long the course was, since there were some detours that were made. If I had raced in my old age group category, I would have came in 6th. Which would have been nice, but I’m not too sad about 14th, we had a pretty large group.

I have to say, having a race at your local course is always fun. You get to wake up in your own bed and eat breakfast that you cooked on your stove. It’s just a nice perk. Not to mention that you also know the course well. That’s always useful.

So yesterday, I did just that. I woke up early and headed out there. The weather was cool and drizzly, which was a bit different than the frigid, sunny day that the race was last year.

I started with everyone else at the bottom of the first climb at the start of the lower loop, rode up the first mile or so in the middle of giant pack of bikers. For at least 2 miles after we hit the single track, we were pretty much tire to tire. After that, we managed to break apart into smaller groups of just a few.

I rode well on the lower loop, kept a good pace and didn’t get passed by hardly anyone unless I stopped. I swung through the feed zone, ate some gummy thing, finished off my water, grabbed more and took off to the upper loop.

This is where my race went down hill. I got a flat. I tried to get my sealant to seal, but it wouldn’t. So I had to put in a tube into the tire; I basically changed the same tire twice. It took about 10 minutes to do it all, and all the friends I made on the trail passed me. I noted their names and put them on the list. The list of people that I had to catch.

Sadly, I didn’t catch all of them. I caught one of them, then crashed. It wasn’t a bad one, but it slowed me down a little. So I caught that one again, caught another (Ann) and crashed hard. I’m not really sure what happened, my front wheel slipped out or hit a rock wrong and my bike stopped, and I went a little ways further without it. I slammed hard on the dirt, narrowly missing very hard rocks, and bruised my elbow and scraped my calf. My bike was okay, besides the fact that my wheel didn’t point the way my handlebars did anymore. I quickly fixed it and worked on catching Ann again.

This is the second time that Ann’s passed me so far, and I’m not opposed to being ‘chicked’, I just am opposed to just being passed in general. So I knew I had to catch her and pass her again. She’s not a particularly fast rider, but she’s got quite lead on me now and I’m in pain.

I did catch up with her and passed her on this nice flat jeep trail, and I made a joke about how she’s probably going to pass me again soon. And I was right. Painfully right. The trail goes off up this little hill. There’s a part where it gets a little steep, so I get up out of my saddle to climb it…

AAAAAANNNNDDD both quads cramp. It is probably one of the most painful things I’ve felt. They weren’t little cramps either, these were full on from knee cap to mid-thigh on both legs. They are locked straight and I can’t think. I do remember the phrase rolling around in my head “Don’t cuss, don’t cuss” as I let out some moan/yell of gibberish. And I also have to figure out how I’m not going to fall over, since I’m brake standing with legs that I can’t move and in extreme pain. I somehow manage to unclip my cleats stiff-legged and get off the trail. I collapse into a kneeling position and just sit there. I reach over and manage to manhandle my bike out of the path.

Ann passes me.

I eventually recover after more stretching and letting my legs get the cramps out. And I catch up to Ann and pass her.

I end up crossing the line at 3:23:28, catching 3 of the 4 people I wanted to catch. Last year I finished around 3:34, so I shaved 11 minutes off of my time. I am just left here wondering what would have happened if I didn’t get that flat and I happened to drink more water. Would have I been able to do it in 3:10? Sub 3?

I guess I’ll have to wait till next year to find out.