2011 Front Range 60

In my opinion an endurance race should be no more than two laps around a long circuit, but when there is a six lapper around a short circuit that is well organized and tends to draw a good amount of racers that is only 10 miles from home it would be silly to pass it up.

Yesterday was the Front Range 60, the second race in the Rocky Mountain Endurance Series. For me, this race signified a completion of a full year of taking mountain biking to a more serious level. Last year the 2010 FR60 was my first race since the 2009 Leadville Trail 100. Although, for this race season it is already my fifth race.

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The race course is located at Bear Creak Lake Park, a city park of Lakewood. The course itself is very fast and non-technical with a couple of grunts and short climbs that start to wear on you late in the race. I use the course often for tempo training since it is reasonable dirt close to home. From training I knew I could knock out three 40 minute laps back to back no problem and going sub 40 minute laps should be doable for me, although I had to do six laps instead of three.

The race started as I had planned mostly with the first four laps ranging between 39 minutes to 43 minutes for the fourth lap. During lap four I experience some cramping that I thought I was managing with taking salt tablets and more aggressive hydration, but as I started my fifth lap I knew I was headed toward a world of hurt. At a quick pit stop I chugged extra electrolyte and took in more salt tablets and headed back out. Well shortly, the extra liquids kicked in and I needed a nature stop. This stop killed my time and a lot of people caught and passed me. For whatever reason I just kept going and going and going.... I really had to go! The whole time I was thinking, am I ever going to stop!?! The long stop did not bode well for my cramping situation, but it started to clear up I think. On a couple of the grunts I got caught behind slower traffic and there were no passing options. One grunt in particular I was headed up it so slowly from the person in front of me I almost had to DAB! And it was too difficult to attempt a pass especially with my cramping situation.

Finally on lap six I was feeling okay again, although it was really hot by now. I think the temps got above 85 degrees, the warmest ride with intensity I had done previously was in the 60s. I started lap 6 at my 40 minute lap effort, but was hitting all sorts of slower traffic. On the final climb up Mt. Carbon I was stuck in the middle or near the back of a train of more than a dozen people, so it was more of a resting effort than the all out effort. Oh well, that's racing. I did get in a good hard effort for the last couple of miles, which was the fun part of the course.

In the end I finished 32 in the Men's 30-39 plus Pro category at 4 hours 24 minutes. Not bad, but once again I'm disappointed. I'll eventually have my hydration issue figured out I hope.