Solitude State Championship 2008

Yesterday was the Utah State Championships at Solitude, UT.

Honestly, it's never been my favorite place to ski, and its never been my favorite for bike racing either. We stayed up late watching fireworks at Sugarhouse Park and I wasn't positive I'd even race.

So having said that, I went and had a great day yesterday. I beat my 2007 time and took 4th place, with a near-miss on 3rd.

For the first five minutes Shannon B led us the climb, and I wondered why the race was starting slowly (but being a slow-starter I wasn't complaining), and then as the grade picked up, the pace didn't slow down and by 10 minutes I was falling back, happily not by much (except from Alex, who was by far the strongest). Bz may have stayed with Alex longer -- he seemed strong and I lost them. I fell back behind Hooptedoodle and about two other guys, but was fairly confident I'd catch him back on the downhill, which I did. At the bottom of the dh, I heard someone coming back on and assumed it was Shannon, but when I looked back it was Chris H, who must have passed Shannon in there somewhere.

So Ch, I, and Chris rode the second lap single-track climb together till we got to the road. I think it was on the road that Chris and I passed both Chad and the other two, moving us up to 4th and 5th. Chris disappeared at the top of the dh, and it turned out he'd crashed. He pretty much caught back up and then crashed again at the bottom of the dh in a rocky section that dumps out onto the pavement. He got back on and followed most of the 3rd climb, but I had a little daylight by the end of the climb and he didn't seem to be catching. By this time I could see Dave Welsh ahead and though I might get him. At the bottom of the steep climbs, top half of the fourth lap, I was within 2 seconds, but pulled he away again up the steep climbs and I couldn't close the gap -- he was still a little stronger.

I still had hopes of catching him on the dh, but didn't quite do it and he beat me by about 5 or 10 seconds. Bz was about 45 seconds ahead, and Alex was several minutes up.

I did try a few experiments yesterday. The first was my fueling -- I used Hammer Heed, but it barely has any salt so I boosted it with sodium and potassium. I know they say you don't need it, but I think they're wrong. There is a sodium salt substitute available in the grocery store that uses potassium, so I put a 1/4 teaspoon of that and 1/2 teaspoon of table salt into 1 cup of water and then put 1/4 of that into each of my four bottles. I've had problems in the past with cramping when using Heed, and didn't yesterday, so maybe the salt helped. I notice that Carborocket has about that much sodium (but no potassium), so maybe I should try that again. I liked it fine in pre-season, but haven't tried racing with it.

The second experiment was my rear tire -- I ran a Stan's Crow. It is super light at 450g (I weighed it), and it is pretty low volume. I did ride it twice behind the house, the first time at about 20 psi and I bottomed it out a few times. The second time I ran 25 and it seemed good, but it isn't very rocky out there, and the Solitude race is rocky. The other thing about the Crow is the lack of knobs. It rolled great on the pavement and seemed generally good on the climbs, if a little loose on the steepest spots. Coming down it was OK, not great, just as expected. The course was pretty loose and dusty, and it did wash out a bit easily, but I don't think it cost me much time there, and the light weight was probably faster climbing.

One last thing was I didn't wear a heart rate monitor or computer -- except my watch. I never look at them during a race anyway. I do enjoy looking at the data afterwards, but with so much climbing on a hot day, I just figured it didn't make sense.

Reed also raced, in the expert 19-29 class. I don't know how much he's really been training, although I know he's been doing some bike commuting. At any rate, he put in a super ride and won his race.

Bob Saffell put in a great ride and would have won, but the recent re-arrival of Chris Bingham into the Expert 40+ category thwarted him with the fastest expert time of the day -- at any age. Justin Wilson, another teammate, won the Expert 30-39 race.