Last night was the kick off to my favorite training series. The Farmall Hill Challenge Series held by RV & E Bike Shop. I’ve been racing this series for countless seasons in the Spring and then again in the Summer. The Spring series is kinda my unofficial kickoff to the mtb season in NY and it’s fun to catch up with old friends and hit the dirt with them.
The course is a nice mixture of open grass, singletrack, high speed short descents, and super steep power climbs. Often the majority of the racers are off and running them. I’ve lost count of the number of races and laps I’ve done on the 2 mile loop, but I’m guessing it’s well over 250 laps on the course over the 6+ years I’ve been racing there. Still it’s fun each season to go back and really test yourself for the 70 or so minutes it takes to finish the race.
Keep going for the full race report….My fastest time of last season on the exact same course was 1:07:01 (which was only a 3rd place for a hotly contested race!). I was hoping to break that time, though some of my best season times have been around the 1:05 mark. It gets tough to go super fast on the course because of the heavy lap traffic, but you gotta keep it gunned full gas the whole race.
I started off strong on the start and established a gap on the prologue loop and heading into the woods, by the time we came out of the woods I had about a 15-20 sec gap on 2nd place. I was feeling pretty good considering I had been fighting a head cold for the past few days. 2nd lap I continued on and increased my gap over 2nd and 3rd. Though there was an intense battle going on behind me for 2nd place who was eventually overtaken, I was content to stay up front and out of the mix and hold my gap at about the minute mark. A mistake on a corner had me washing out and hitting the deck, luckily I was able to get back on top of my game and keep rolling. I held my gap over 2nd till the end and slightly increased it to up around a minute or so over the final few laps. In the end I finished with the W at 1:07:57. Pretty happy about the time as it’s only 1 minute off last years best, and I think I can really throw the hammer down next week and top it!
This weekend is the Highland Hex 6 Hour race. Hopefully it doesn’t rain, I’ve been through some 6 hour mud & suffer fests on that course plenty of times already!
