The first mountain bike race of the year snuck up on me, catching me off guard and completely out of shape in early March. I spent the winter nursing a hamstring/IT band injury suffered in the last cyclocross race of the season and doing dog-friendly activities with Tucker and our foster dog, Chloe. But, I figured, you gotta start somewhere and it may as well be a 30-mile mountain bike race on my single speed. Echo is a tiny town in Eastern Oregon and frankly a surprising place to hold a mountain bike race. The appeal of dry trails draws riders by the dozen from the Willamette Valley, and the area is also accessible from Idaho and Washington towns that otherwise have very little in the way of race opportunities. This year, 400 people pre-registered and at least another 100 were expected to show up on race day.
The race starts on Main Street and follows paved and gravel roads three miles or so to a network of swooping trails in the rolling hills of the Echo West Ranch and Vineyard. My fuzzy memory of last year's course is that I thought it would never end. Every time I thought we were nearing the trailhead, we entered another loop, switchbacking up yet another sage-covered ridge. This year, I ran with the assumption that the end was never near, that way I avoided being disappointed by false passes by the exit point.
Given my fitness level, I established two goals for myself: 1) to finish and 2) to have fun. The first was certainly achievable, but not necessarily when combined with the second. I had grand visions of being the last rider to cross the finish line. To quash any competitive instincts, I entered myself in the single speed class, which was mostly (48 out of 50) men. Since guys, especially single speeders, are likely to be faster than me anyway, I felt less pressure to do well than if I entered the Category 1 women's field--a class of elite women who are quite strong and likely more fit than me.
The race start was a neutral roll-out along a mile and a half or so of paved road, with the race officially beginning at the turnoff onto a gravel road which we followed for about anther mile and a half. The common objective is to gain a good position entering the singletrack, after which time it becomes quite challenging to pass. My single speed gearing didn't give me much to work with on the road portions, which forced me into taking it easy the first few miles. Solidly in last place at first, I did manage to pass a couple stragglers and rode the first few miles of trail with a fellow single speeder who had forgotten his bike shoes and was riding in sandals with socks.
The flat tires started even before the race and continued throughout the day. The sagebrush hills are also full of goat heads, little burrs than embed themselves in the tire and puncture tubes for those behind the times enough to still be running tubes. I've never seen so many flat tires! At any given moment on the course, you could see at least one person on the side of the trail changing a tube. As I finished on the gravel road, several guys were walking in with bikes on shoulders. I stopped several times to offer assistance and later chastised myself for losing so much time to benevolence. I felt a twinge of guilt when I failed to offer my sole tube to female racer less than a third of the way in (justified in part by the fact that she had 26-inch tires and my tube was 29 inches) but validated my decision a short while later when I came upon my Showers Pass teammate who flatted and only had a 26-inch tube for her 29-inch wheel. I traded her tubes with the promise that if she came upon me in a similar situation, she would stop and help stretch the tube to fit my tire. I later gave away that tube to a guy who was walking his bike with a third flat of the day with three miles to go.
The wind. Oh, the wind. It howled. It was a tad breezy the day before during the pre-ride and I was hoping for calmer weather on race day. Instead, it got much worse and continued to pick up throughout the day. The race photos show racers hunkered down, keeping a low profile. One time, on a rare flat section, I was standing on the pedals just to stay upright, barely making any forward progress. A few times, it was actually a benefit, like a hand on your back, pushing you uphill. The real challenge was that you never knew what effect the wind would have as you changed directions. Sometimes you even had to pedal downhill to make decent time.
I kept a positive attitude and spirits high, in part by pretending to be the iron-willed, indefatigable, never-phased-by-anything Rebecca Rusch leading the pack in La Ruta even though I was really just trailing the pack in a day-race. It made me feel tough and strong. Although there aren't any sustained climbs, the course is deceptively punishing with eternal ups and downs, arcing down just to plunge back up again. By the midway point, my legs were feeling worked, but my winter's core work was paying off as my low back was holding up well to the strain of standing on the pedals, forcing them over slowly on the steeper pitches.
As I exited the main loop and crossed the road to the river bottom and vineyard finale, I found myself in a small pack and ended up passing a couple guys and a pair of women before making my spinning way home on the road. My time was seven minutes slower than last year, 100 percent attributable to the wind, but I felt much stronger this time around.So I wasn't last after all and had a heck of a lot of fun on my trusty Niner!
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