Domnarski Farm

Sorry for the race report delay oh faithful three readers. Last Sunday I headed up to another Root 66 Series race with B. Cantele at Domnarski Farm in Ware, MA. It was to be two 10 mile laps for the Cat 1's and for anybody that broke an hour, you got $10 and a "kick in the ass" from Matt Domnarski himself. Weather was questionable heading up. I'm still a newbie to all this so any help I could get from Mother Nature would only help in the technical department. Apparently, they had been hit by a deluge the day before and earlier that morning. Pre-riding affirmed this as the course was quite wet. So yeah, there would be alot of running, er, walking really fast.

My starts have been terrible so I focused on series points leader J. Harris. I was probably about 5th or so heading into the singletrack, which was a mere 100 meters from the start line. I immediately dismounted and ran as there were a couple of small brook crossings early on and I didn't want to risk a bobble and lose valuable spots. I stuck to Harris like glue until he botched on a wet off-camber rock and I went by. I held him off for a while, maybe another 10 minutes or so, until he came by on the steep, long techy climb. He was gasping for air as he went by and it got me thinking that I don't think I'm trying hard enough. I keep having this fear that I'm going to completely blow up in a mtb race and everyone's going to pass me. So because of this, I find that I'm holding back 10% or so. This is evidenced in my lap times which are usually within 2% of each other. You'll see what I mean later.

Getting to the top of the long climb, Harris was now gone. There were 2 guys in my category that I kept within sight. The fireroads up top were flat, fast and wet. These were big ring sections involving zipping around (or through) large puddles. Well, the latter didn't work out too well for me as my front wheel decided to wash out at around 20mph and Alex went for a little, I mean, BIG swim. I'm talking entire body immersed in the puddle type of swim here. I stopped, took stock of body- Everything ok physically. Checked wheel- Fine. Brake lever and handlebars were functional, though they were twisted about 5 degrees from center. This was annoying but I didn't feel like taking any more time to fix them. I remounted and off I went. I probably lost about a minute. I wondered how much bacteria was now covering my body. I was completely covered in shit. Ah, the joys of mountain biking.

B. Cantele, starting a minute behind me, caught me soon after, as I slipped on a wet off-camber root while circumnavigating another puddle/swimming hole. I stayed with him for a while through the fireroad sections but once we hit the singletrack he too was gone. The lap continued on in some twisty singletrack with a few crossings of uber wet rock/mud sections. There were some nice bridges in place that helped you through but I found that running them was WAY faster than "cleaning" them on the bike. We made it out to the power line section in back and this was a real doosy. You came out of the woods and immediately in front of you was a 100 meter wall pushing 25+% grade. Needless to say it was painful. It flattened out for a spell and kicked up to an equally hard grade and length, then a 30%+ section that was unrideable (for most) and then it came back down to ~22% for another 100 meters. There was a nice descent on the other side of this ballbuster which provided for much needed recovery. The rest of the lap was a mixture of swoopy singletrack, mud, rocks, bridges, and more mud. There were a couple of unrideable steep rocky sections in the back as well that required a dismount.

Just before the end of the first lap the 3 chasing 40+ guys caught me, some 7 minutes plus after B. Cantele passed. So, barring mechanical catastrophe, he had this one in the bag. Crossing the start/finish, I my lap time was 1:00:51. Had I not decided to swan dive into the biggest puddle on the course I probably would have went sub-hour and won my first money racing a bicycle. And a kick in the ass. Oh well. Anyway, one of the 40+ guys continued on, but I hung with the two others the rest of the race, one of them being M. Gunsalus. The other guy was better than Mark and I on the techy stuff but we were outclimbing him. So the three of us see-sawed back and forth for the next hour or so. I felt pretty good being able to climb with M. Gunsalus, well at least within a couple of bike lengths on the steepest pitches. I had no idea where I was in my category, as usual. I think I passed one other 30+ on the second lap and as I said before, the series points leader was gonezo on the first lap.

I ended up running alot more in the 2nd lap and I was actually feeling pretty good doing it. The rest of the 2nd lap was a blur although I got thoroughly pissed when a guy came up from behind the three of us and totally went off the trail around a deep mud section while we were running through it. I don't know what kind of rules there are as far blazing your own line on a cross country race course, but that was bullshit if you ask me. His "line" was clearly WAY faster. Whatever the case, the group of (now) 4 of us finished the last lap together all within 5 seconds of each other. My time was effed up by over a minute as M. Gunsalus and the other guy in the 40+ were shown to be 2:10 ahead of me, when they started only 1 minute behind and I finished with them. Being an exact numbers type of guy, I was annoyed by this but I guess there are bigger things to worry about.

I did, however, find out that I ended up 2nd! First Cat1 podium in only my 4th race as a Cat1! I was and still am pretty pumped about that. I didn't wait around for the results as there seemed to be a big cluster eff, but I contacted Matt and he's going to mail me my $50! I'm not in it for the results but it's a nice validation of all the work I've done on the bike in the last 4 years. Who knows, maybe I can make it to the top step by year's end, but I am certainly enjoying the journey.

For number geeks:

1st lap 1:00:51

2nd lap 1:03:24

Finish 2:04:15

19.80 miles, 2458' climbing