WORS #9 ~ mtbVegan

WORS #9 Reforestation Ramble Sunday August 30, 2009
by: Regina Campbell

After much debate I decided to head up to Suamico, WI for WORS#9 and test out the tailbone. The original plan was to hit up preride, the decided how the tailbone felt, if all was well…race…not so well, spectate. I know myself well enough to know that spectating really was never an option. It’d been 3.5 weeks since I had last been on the mtb, so we all know I was dying to get on some trails. We rolled into Reforestation in the early afternoon…it was sprinkling, then raining, then sprinkling…and we just didn’t know if preride was an option.

I sat around, thought about how flippin’ cold I was and not wanting to ride around in wet chamois and risk crashing and injuring myself even more. So I did the smart thing and opted to skip preride. Chris was game because really, who like’s to ride in wet coldness?

After dinner it was time to crash and get some much needed rest before race day. Race day came and I ate a monstrous breakfast…oatmeal with soy milk, peanut butter, dried blueberries, a banana, and coffee…awesome. I’ve been trying hard to make sure I get enough protein on race weekends due to my early season bonks…so this breakfast was a new combo to test out. Then we rolled out to the race course. The warm up was good, I felt good on the bike, no pain (yippee!). Actually I felt downright spunky on the bike so I had to try put effort into not over doing my warm up.

Got to the start with a few minutes to spare and checked out the rather small number of women in the elite field (all of 14). No call up this time, but there were so few of us it was fine. “GOOOooooo” and we were off. Making a mental note that next year I need to work on my starts. I’m not the fastest off the line but I worked my way up the women’s field rather quickly. Rolling alone with Elizabeth, Renee, followed by Brenda and Christine.

Renee and I worked our way past Elizabeth and put the hammer down for quite a while in hopes of opening up a gap on the rest of the women. It worked. I got ahead in the last few miles but knew she was still close behind. In the last section of singletrack I let a few comp riders by and then Don came by, caught my handlebar and took me down. It hurt. I had comp guys barreling at me and got a tire in the back, while Renee got by. I was a little panicked about the tailbone but hopped up, got the chain back on the bike, and started rolling. I caught back up with Renee and we proceeded to go back and forth for the rest of the race. I felt great riding with her and was just happy I was on the trails again.

Renee was pushing strong and pulled away on a climb, while I shifted to hammer after her and my chain was in my spokes. Bummer. Should have just raced the singlespeed! Got the bike sorted out and just put my head down and pedaled trying to catch Renee. I failed and she beat me by about 15 seconds. She rocks! I ended the day in fine form I think…10th overall, 7th in age. The funniest event of the day was just that Don took me out in the singletrack. At the finish he came up and apologized and we joked about how it was actually physics that took me down. He was great though and mostly it’s just a funny story.

The good thing was my tailbone only hurt once in a bumpy section of trail. I didn’t bonk, ate enough, drank enough, was able to push my limits and hammer harder than I thought I could. I had fun and that’s all I can ask for.