I’ve said it before – I love mountain bike stage racing. I’m not particularly good at it, I seem to frustrate team mates, have good days and bad, and sometimes the half way point comes around and all I want is a set of fresh legs. But stage racing can give you so much! Of course, there are the social and racing contacts, the physical experience, the travel, the sense of achievement, and the greater level of fitness you can attain.
Stage racing does usually involve a lot of time on the bike – at least for people of my ability it does. This can give you more than just a sore bum and scranus. More time on the bike gives you greater confidence on the bike. Although this seems obvious, it is amazing what you’re comfortable doing a few days into a stage race.
My bike handling skills are pretty sub-optimal. Whether that is due to a remarkably large saddle to bar drop, or just poor skills, is open to interpretation. Schotter (gravel) is the trail surface of choice in a lot of European marathons and stage races. And with good reason. It drains, and is easy to maintain. But it’s also easy to have a wheel slip out on you. It’s common place to hear other Australians ranting at the end of of a marathon or stage:
“How was that gravel descent? It was so sketch! Then some Euro took a crazy line past me full gas!”
But we learn.
We adapt.
We learn the Euro Lines.
Mid-season, or mid-race, you figure it out. Where to brake, where to let it roll, or how tight the corners normally are. Are they Tuscan Tighteners? Or has the trail been meticulously built by the Austrian Army in the early 20th Century? Your knowledge of history can play a part here. Soon enough you’ll be happy leaning into the line that some competitor was about to snake you on.
At Trans Alp 2010, Turbo Tom Hemmant had a revelation:
“It’s descending by numbers. When you’re tired, you just need to look for the right colour and you will be OK.”
Tom was drawing a parallel between descending when fatigued and learn-to-paint books.
How so? Well no matter how close to the pointy end you may be – more wheels have been there before you. At a large race, course markers and marshals will have ridden the fastest line on motorbikes before you. As will a few media motos. Perhaps a paramedic moto or two. A couple of private photographers will have been through. Spectators may have ridden part of the course to get a good position. And then there are all the profi’s in front of you! Any foreseeable problems on a fast trail are now usually out of the way. Large rocks have been cast aside by motorised two wheel race officials and affiliates. This holds true in both wet and dry conditions. So in either dust or mud, despite reduced visibility all you need to do is look for the paler colour – where other wheels have passed. You can ‘descend by numbers’ relaxed in the knowledge that your path will be mostly clear – save for the odd rogue donkey, horse, cement mixer or logging truck.
With at least four stage races lined up for 2011, I’m looking forward to falling into this fatigued sense of comfort on the bike. Reaching for a bidon at high speed while sitting in an echolon off road, with complete nonchalance, is a thing of beauty – and easily attainable once you ‘have the hours up’. As I once read on a blog by Radio Freddy “High mileage equals high styleage”. With the hours, come the skills.
Stage racing: It’s a numbers game.