6 hours of Gears; 6 hours of Misfortune

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This past Saturday was the start of the Wisconsin Endurance Mountain Series (aka WEMS). The series kicked off with the 12 hours of Gears race at Kettle Moraine Forest Preserve in Kewaskum, WI.  I deiced to do the 6 hour event which started at 1pm and ended at 7pm. The field had around 25 riders in the 6 hour solo format. As in most endurance races there was a run lead out to our bikes. The run was more of a 25 foot sprint then a run at all. I placed the paragon up just past the main group of riders hoping that a strong sprint would allow me to get an early jump on the bike and avoid bike mounting and race start traffic. Sadly this was the first of many miss-happenings of the day. Once the race countdown was announced and the sprint began someone happened to place their bike almost directly on top of mine. This meant even though I got to my first i had to move another bike out of the way! In the time it took to remove such bike the whole field was on top of me mounting and riding up the start hill. Once mounted and trying to make my way threw the large group of riders the field began to split as usual. I was able to get into the lead group of riders and about 4 wheels behind my fellow racer and friend Nevada Dave of Johnny Sprockets. I remained in this group until my second misfortune of the race happened. About 3 miles into the race while entering into some very tight single track I made a right hand turn but my wheel didn’t respond(not a good thing when entering a sharp U-turn after a blazing decent)! This caused me to fly into a tree directly in-front of me! After getting up after the crash i realized that my stem was not tightened enough to the neck of the fork allowing it to move freely without a corresponding movement of my wheel! A quick fix got me back into the race a minutes later. I was then able to make my way back into the main pack. I stayed there for the reminder of the lap, finishing with a lap time of 28 minutes. Before continuing onto my second lap I made a pit stop to check my stem again and re-tighten anything that might have come loose.

After three laps into the race my third and final misfortune took place. I started to respond negatively to the Perpetum that I was fueling off of. I began getting a terrible stomach ache and headache as my body started to shut down. Realizing that it was my drink that was the cause of my dismay I switched to water and Heed after taking a long break to allow my body to recover and my stomach pains to calm. Still not feeling 100% my mentor, mother and other teammates encouraged me to get back on the bike against what my body wanted to do-Rest and Recover. I did another lap surprisingly fast despite my bodies pains and pleas for rest.  Before going on another lap I put some solid food in my body hoping for a faster recovery! To my surprise I began to fell better but still not the way one would like to feel when racing. As before I was encouraged back on the bike. I went on to ride for the remainder of the race only pitting to replace my empty water bottles.

In the end my three misfortunes cost me valuable time, especially the long recovery after lap three. I was not able to reach my goal of 12 laps with only 8. Discouraged and a bit angry at myself I began the drive home only to get a phone call from my sensei Paolo. We discussed what happened during the race and he helped me to understand that the race wasn’t a complete failure as I thought it was. He expressed to me that being only 17 I am still finding out how my body responds to certain fuels and that my body doesn’t respond to the same way as other people. He also boosted my moral by explaining to me that my perseverance to finish the race was extremly impressive under these circumstances that I faced. As for my friend Nevada Dave he ended up winning the 6 hour solo race with an extra lap over the man in second, he was a machine. The race turned out to be more of a learning experience then anything and because of it I can ride, train and race better in the future.