Kirkwood 9-5 Race Report by Rafael

A pretty nice turnout of about 125 riders for this first time race. The Bigfoot
guys put on a great race. This 8-hour race was made up of a 6-mile lap with
about 900 feet of climbing per lap. The hard part was that the race was at
elevation between 7,800 and 8,300 feet

The first lap started, and we sorted ourselves out nicely on the 1.5 mile climb,
but shortly after about a mile into the downhill section, I blew a turn, and
when I tried to ride back onto the trail, I went OTB. Ouch, derailleur bent
into the spokes 2 miles into the race. I bent it back out, and surprising, it
popped back out and was shifting perfect! So on we go to what is supposed to be
the fun, rolling part (based on the profile). Lots of rocks, loose descents,
and 3 or 4 hike a bike sections. This (downhill/rolling) section turned out to
be the hardest part of the course, harder than the climbs. Just for the fun of
it, I went OTB for a second time, and another minor slide out, still on lap 1.
I was having a hard time getting my HR to settle down (we were at 8,000'
remember). Then the last mile was a flat grind on a narrow trail along a big
meadow. Pretty smooth, but still needed to pay attention the whole time not to
scrub the sides of the narrow path. This was a pretty rough 6-mile course, with
no downhill sections to let you catch your breath or relax for a moment. It was
a very fun course and would great terrain for a couple laps on a normal xc race,
but not sure I'd want to do it 5-10 times. Anyways, the early crashes sorta
threw off my first 2 or 3 laps, but I kept going.

By lap 5, I was thinking about the buffet and the upcoming vacations, and was
very close to calling it a race (and season), and heading for the beer. My
buddy Roy (PenVelo) called it after 4 or 5 hours as he was having difficulty
with the altitude also. I took a 15 minute break at the pit and decided to go
for a sixth lap, which turned out to be one of the better laps, so I kept going,
and did a seventh. My legs were surprisingly feeling pretty good. I finished
the seventh lap around 3:30PM and I new I had to go for the eighth, otherwise I
would be killing myself if one of the leaders also quit early (they didn't).
The eighth lap turned out to be one of the best laps, with me cleaning a lot of
the sections I had to dismount on previous laps. My first lap with the three
crashes was about 49 minutes, and then I averaged around 45 to 50 minute laps
for a while until I started taking longer breaks. I finished 4th out of 10 in
the Sport class, about 4 minutes off of the podium. D'oh. Enough of this
endurance stuff. Now where are those shuttles and chairlifts?

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