What a start for the week ahead, and perhaps a compact view of what to expect.I think there are a few givens for the next seven days:
1. An early start. Racing starts at 7am each day. Although today we were on the start ramp for 8:24am. The alarm was for 5am.
2. Dust. There’s a lot of it to chew through out there. Get in a line of riders, and you’ll want to get through to the front, pretty early on.
3. Obstacles. Today was interesting figuring out what to call for Will, when I was doing a turn. “Log, hard right, rut, baboon!”. There were a couple out there to make things interesting.
4. Competition within your physiological ranking. Justin’s Nut Butter/Singletrack.com have a Master uber-team here, and we were their 20sec men. Their white and brown long sleeve skin suits were on our tails pretty quickly once started. Although we managed to get in 30 seconds up on them. Somehow. I think we’ll be racing together a lot this week.
5. Being looked after. You cross the line, your bottles are filled, your bike is taken to be cleaned and lubed, and you get a care package from Woolworths for food. This will be easy to get used to.
So this has been my first race with Will. So far, so good. he was super smooth and powerful the whole time out there, and polite to boot. I think we are pretty well matched. No doubt we will all have our good days and bad days, but that happens. I’m stoked to be stage racing – this is what makes working six days a week through summer worth while!
Read Will’s Blog on the MarathonMTB.com Race Team website