Sunday morning I lined up to compete in my first ever European race. I was kinda nervous about the race for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it was a really strong field (this race is well-reknowned for the strength of it's field. Everyone seemed to be in a pro team!). Secondly, I was nervous it might sap the legs out of me for world champs in three weeks time. And thirdly, and it may sound a little silly, but I was nervous that if I didn't feel strong, it would affect me mentally for world champs (silly huh? On the same note, if I felt really strong, it would be a great confidence boost for world champs!).
I managed to get through Fridays registration with no problems and on Saturday afternoon, riders were invited to a "pasta party" which doubled as our race briefing. To be honest, I'm not sure if I would have called it a "pasta PARTY"... Probably more of a "pasta gathering". Party isn't the word that springs to mind instantly when I see a line of hungry riders lining up for a scoopful of pasta with a very plain tomato sauce, and then sitting themselves down very civilly on benches at trestle tables to devour their pasta and wine(?) in one mouthful and wait for the race briefing (I went out for a second dinner and gelato after my pasta appetiser). The briefing was interesting. Lake Garda is in Italy, but apparently the history of the place is that it used to fall within the German border. The organisers of the event are from Germany and a lot of the people who attend are German, so EVERYTHING is in German (including the race briefing). I must say I find it odd to be in Italy and then attend an event where I am expected to understand German. I also found it kind of arrogant (if I could use the word with the utmost respect... the event was, after all, very well run) that a local rider, whose town and trails are being invaded for this event and this race, would not be able to rock up at the race and enjoy being able to speak their own language... Bizarre!
Anyway, the briefing began with a series of slides, the first of which I had no idea what it said. One other thing I found bizarre was that events seem to have English names and as the briefing unfolded, you would hear "something something something Rocky Mountain Mountain Bike Marathon something something" (surely there is a German or Italian word for "Mountain Bike Marathon"?)... Just another unusual idiosyncracy I had the pleasure of noticing! After a brief introduction (well, I assume it was an introduction), the presenter asked if there was anyone present who needed the briefing in English... I gingerly raised my hand (along with two other people). They also asked if anyone needed the briefing in Italian (three more people). So, the main presenter would spend ten minutes talking in German and then a translator would spend thirty seconds re-hashing what he had just said in English and Italian... Great... I just hoped that the course was very very well-marked!!! It was a good lesson in making sure that I had all the information I needed myself... Where the race starts, when I needed to be there, where the drink stations were and then to be early in case had misunderstood anything! Lesson one... It is my own responsibility to make sure I know everything I feel I need to know about the race!
I am not a fan of early morning starts for races. I don't like trying to eat breakfast at that time of morning... I don't like that I still don't feel quite awake... Thank God 24 Hour Solo World Champs starts at midday. If there was ever a very convincing case FOR 24 hour racing, it would be that you get to sleep in before the start (how very ironic). So anyway, I was up early Sunday morning for the Garda MTB Marathon... 105km and 3500m of climbing around beautiful Lake Garda. It took in a few trails I had ridden already during the last couple of weeks, and also some new trails, which was pretty cool. The hotel opened breakfast an hour and a half early for us, which saved me the hassle of having to coordinate my own breakfast before racing. Then I rode the 3km to Riva as a nice little warm-up.
This race has a reputation for attracting not only a very large field, but also a very strong field. With over 3000 riders, the starts are set off in waves, up to group F... Because I entered so late, a start in group D was the best I could manage... As usual, I felt pretty nervous pre-race. It's always before the race that I feel like crap and it seems to help me if I just tell myself that I'll just take it easy and then see how I feel... Ha! Yeah right! So the start gun went off for our wave and I took off up the road straight towards our first climb of the day. We were in a pretty large bunch and after my bunch experience at the Cape Epic, I was quite comfortable hopping from wheel to wheel to help me stay stay on the back of the bunch. The pace off the start and the stiff cutoff times were very indicative of the quality of the field (we had 3 hours to do the first 45km and 1500m of climbing! I just scraped in with 15 minutes to spare!)
Our first climb was pretty much an 1100m climb straight up to San Giovanni (with a couple of little, indistinguishable bumps in the profile on the way). As we headed up the road, then into a steep, cobbled side street, the bunch got squeezed, and there were a lot of people who couldn't ride terrain this steep... It was really bloody frustrating. There really was nothing else I could do but sit in and be patient whilst taking in the magnificent views around me. Once the road widened again, we were in business, and I set about picking off riders one by one as I climbed. I was surprised that whilst I seemed to be overtaking a lot of people, there weren't too many catching me, and my legs felt good and strong climbing at a good cadence, which I was really pleased with.
The drink stops were an interesting affair... I knew how to ask for water, but I didn't want water... I wanted sports drink and coke. I found pointing and saying "that one... Per favore" seemed to get the result I was after... Way to embrace the language and culture Megan!
Being my first race in a non-English speaking country, it's hard to know what to yell out to people when you are passing or when you want to warn them you are there. I had a particularly amusing moment on the ascent just past Treni on our final pitch to San Giovanni. This particular incident happened on another steep section of track. A guy stopped in front of me to walk and I yelled out "WOAH!" in an attempt to get him to move out of the way... The guy just behind me yelled out "ACHTUNG!" and the guy just to his right yelled out "ATTENZIONE!"... No joke... It was highly comical, and although I was on the rivet, I couldn't help having a bit of a giggle to myself... The poor guy just got abused in three different languages at once!
Once we arrived at our first peak, at 1145m, it was time to have some fun... The descending was amazing, and especially after having been riding the terrain for the last two weeks, I was pretty confident hitting it up with some speed (which made it even more fun!). Once again, there were a lot of people around who weren't comfortable descending some sections, but I found it really weird here that firstly, people walking their bikes don't seem to move over for people riding to get through and secondly, if a technical piece of trail comes up and someone can't ride it, instead of just dismounting and running up it and continuing on the way, people stop and wait in line until the person who couldn't ride it is out of the way so they can have a clean run at the piece of trail. Total kudos for wanting to ride it, but we're racing here people!! I remember one descent where there were some tricky little gnarly bits and I was actually quite pleased I managed a clean run through. There were a lot of people walking (and probably understandably so, actually)... I exited the trail and there were a couple of marshalls and some Ambulance staff standing there (obviously waiting for the casualties) and I had this huge grin on my face and yelled out "that was fun!"... They seemed to think this was amusing, maybe because they had been watching people edging their way out of the trail on foot and it seemed so strange to see this small girl barrel out of there on her bike hollering (in English) like a hoon. Yep, it was pretty obvious that I wasn't from around here!
It was really difficult to gauge how I was doing compared to the rest of the field for a couple of reasons... Firstly, the start groups meant that someone may be physically five minutes ahead of me, but race time, actually be five minutes behind me because they were in a group that started ten minutes before mine. Secondly, there were three different length races and it was impossible to tell who was in which one, moreso because the rules of the race actually let you decide on course which one you want to do, and it also meant that if people missed the tight cutoffs, they could continue on the shorter course with no penalty. In a way it was good because it made you ride your own race, but for something so "short", it would have been nice to have some sort of reference... I ended up being beaten by a girl in B group by seven seconds, but there was no way I could have known before seeing the results posted.
There was some flat riding before we hit our next climb, which was only about 400m of ascending and then went up and down a few times before our final big climb. I remember thinking at about the 50km mark "wow, I feel pretty bloody good for half way in", and we were not only half way in distance, but also pretty much half way in climbing, as well, which was reassuring. It was really difficult to put my finger on a time that I thought I would finish in because it could take us an hour and a half to ascend a climb, and then only half an hour to descend it... It all depended on the terrain and gradient we were climbing and then how technical the descent was... I guess that's the same for any race, but the effect felt amplified with the size of the climbs in this particular race.
As we rode through the final cut-off point (which was also the course split for the grande and extrema courses), the trail pitched up steeply on a gravel road. This was our final 800m pitch to the top of our last high point... From there, it was all downhill, literally (or so the course profile told us). I gave it some really good stick up that last climb... Just put my head down and buried myself. I would ride up onto a wheel in front of me, and if they were going too slow, I would just ride around and keep going. As I passed two guys at the start of this climb, I heard them talking in German. I heard the word "machina" or similar and then the other guy said in English "are you going to try to follow?". I flattered myself at the time with the thought that they may have been saying I was a machine... The same two riders came up to me after the race and said I climbed like a goat... Finally my climbing legs had arrived (albeit a little late for the Cape Epic). So anyway, yes, this guy was going to try to follow me by the looks of it, and before I knew it, I had a leech sucking energy out of my back wheel while I tried to climb this monster hill... Now, I'm really sorry, but no amount of flattery will get you a free ride. I let him sit there for a bit, then I swung out to the side of the trail, as if giving him room to come through and take the front, and he just moved over with me... Annoying. Short of telling the guy to p@#s off (which I didn't know how to say in German anyway), my only option was to ride him off my wheel, so I added a couple of gears and upped the pace a bit. Thirty seconds later, I looked behind me to see him grovelling away by himself. That last climb seemed to go on forever, and it was relentless. It pitched up the whole way... There were no flat spots or breaks... At least I wasn't losing elevation... I knew the climb went up to 1245m. One thing I had found worked really well for me on the long climbs was to lock out all my suspension (front included). It made the climb a bit rough, but I'm sure it saved me tonnes of lost energy through the forks.
I finally arrived at the last feed station at the top of the climb. I filled my bottle and shoved some cake in my mouth, then headed off to work my way down the mountain. Not long after we started descending, the trail started undulating along a ridge... This was not in the course profile! All I wanted to do was whack it in the big dog and get back to the finish line as quickly as I could. Finally, it pitched downwards, and stayed that way. The descent was amazing. I'm told the first bit of trail we descended was the famous "Anaconda" and it was lovely, classic Garda rockiness. What was even better was that all the faster riders had already been through there and the best line to ride was quite clearly visibile down the trail, so I felt comfortable to open up all my suspension, just let the brakes go and make my way down at some unforgiving speed. The trail came to an end on a gravelly, rocky road and as I started descending the road, another rider came up behind me. I had some pretty decent speed going down here... Without focusing on my speedo too much (I really needed to pay attention to what I was doing), the top speed that I saw flash up on the screen was 52km/hr (on a loose rocky road)... I felt like I was just pinning this descent so well... And it felt so good. The guy on the hardtail was still behind me, and seemed quite content to stay there. I was cutting the line for him, but it didn't bother me too much... I would prefer that to having him sitting in front of me. I feel really uncomfortable descending at speed behind other riders. I had a couple of really sketchy moments at speed down here. I was tired, and I remember thinking to myself "just focus on what you are doing Megan... Stuff it up down here at this speed and you are in real trouble"... That was the last I thought about anything but the trail in front of me. The Ninja floated underneath me, navigating her way over everything in her path. I felt so smooth and so good. I was enjoying every minute of this!
We hit the bottom of the descent and I went through our last checkpoint hollering with joy. I was so amped about the descent that my whole body was shaking with adrenalin. What an amazing final ride to have here in Garda! The last 5km seemed to be the longest of the whole race... It was on a flat, boring road, just getting us back to the finish in Riva. Two guys came past me and I hooked onto the back of them up until, the last km, but that's when I popped. I crossed the finish line feeling like it was all I had left, and I'd had an absolute ball, too. What a bloody cool experience!!! I finished a fair way down the rankings, 22nd female across the line in 6 hours 51 minutes (which the locals assured me is a pretty impressive time for that particular course with all the climbing), but I wasn't too concerned about where I finished. What mattered was that I felt bloody awesome, I had ridden strongly, and I felt I was on my technical game, too, and this held me in good steed for the real race in three weeks.
Little did I know beforehand just how beneficial I would find this race to my preparation for world champs. Not only did I feel strong and my legs got in a final, good run before the race, but there were so many things about racing in Europe, in a non-English speaking environment that were better learned now than in three weeks time at world champs... How to communicate with other riders on course, the inevitable non-English race briefing, the differences in the way riders behave on course... It was all somehow very different to back home, and competing in this race was, for want of a better expression, a little "heads up" for what to expect in Finale... I'm really looking forward to World Champs. I have a good feeling about everything, about how I feel and what I have experienced over the last month or so... I feel I am going into the race much wiser than I ever have, and enjoying riding much more than I ever had. I can't wait to see what effect that has on my race!
I managed to get through Fridays registration with no problems and on Saturday afternoon, riders were invited to a "pasta party" which doubled as our race briefing. To be honest, I'm not sure if I would have called it a "pasta PARTY"... Probably more of a "pasta gathering". Party isn't the word that springs to mind instantly when I see a line of hungry riders lining up for a scoopful of pasta with a very plain tomato sauce, and then sitting themselves down very civilly on benches at trestle tables to devour their pasta and wine(?) in one mouthful and wait for the race briefing (I went out for a second dinner and gelato after my pasta appetiser). The briefing was interesting. Lake Garda is in Italy, but apparently the history of the place is that it used to fall within the German border. The organisers of the event are from Germany and a lot of the people who attend are German, so EVERYTHING is in German (including the race briefing). I must say I find it odd to be in Italy and then attend an event where I am expected to understand German. I also found it kind of arrogant (if I could use the word with the utmost respect... the event was, after all, very well run) that a local rider, whose town and trails are being invaded for this event and this race, would not be able to rock up at the race and enjoy being able to speak their own language... Bizarre!
Anyway, the briefing began with a series of slides, the first of which I had no idea what it said. One other thing I found bizarre was that events seem to have English names and as the briefing unfolded, you would hear "something something something Rocky Mountain Mountain Bike Marathon something something" (surely there is a German or Italian word for "Mountain Bike Marathon"?)... Just another unusual idiosyncracy I had the pleasure of noticing! After a brief introduction (well, I assume it was an introduction), the presenter asked if there was anyone present who needed the briefing in English... I gingerly raised my hand (along with two other people). They also asked if anyone needed the briefing in Italian (three more people). So, the main presenter would spend ten minutes talking in German and then a translator would spend thirty seconds re-hashing what he had just said in English and Italian... Great... I just hoped that the course was very very well-marked!!! It was a good lesson in making sure that I had all the information I needed myself... Where the race starts, when I needed to be there, where the drink stations were and then to be early in case had misunderstood anything! Lesson one... It is my own responsibility to make sure I know everything I feel I need to know about the race!
I am not a fan of early morning starts for races. I don't like trying to eat breakfast at that time of morning... I don't like that I still don't feel quite awake... Thank God 24 Hour Solo World Champs starts at midday. If there was ever a very convincing case FOR 24 hour racing, it would be that you get to sleep in before the start (how very ironic). So anyway, I was up early Sunday morning for the Garda MTB Marathon... 105km and 3500m of climbing around beautiful Lake Garda. It took in a few trails I had ridden already during the last couple of weeks, and also some new trails, which was pretty cool. The hotel opened breakfast an hour and a half early for us, which saved me the hassle of having to coordinate my own breakfast before racing. Then I rode the 3km to Riva as a nice little warm-up.
This race has a reputation for attracting not only a very large field, but also a very strong field. With over 3000 riders, the starts are set off in waves, up to group F... Because I entered so late, a start in group D was the best I could manage... As usual, I felt pretty nervous pre-race. It's always before the race that I feel like crap and it seems to help me if I just tell myself that I'll just take it easy and then see how I feel... Ha! Yeah right! So the start gun went off for our wave and I took off up the road straight towards our first climb of the day. We were in a pretty large bunch and after my bunch experience at the Cape Epic, I was quite comfortable hopping from wheel to wheel to help me stay stay on the back of the bunch. The pace off the start and the stiff cutoff times were very indicative of the quality of the field (we had 3 hours to do the first 45km and 1500m of climbing! I just scraped in with 15 minutes to spare!)
Our first climb was pretty much an 1100m climb straight up to San Giovanni (with a couple of little, indistinguishable bumps in the profile on the way). As we headed up the road, then into a steep, cobbled side street, the bunch got squeezed, and there were a lot of people who couldn't ride terrain this steep... It was really bloody frustrating. There really was nothing else I could do but sit in and be patient whilst taking in the magnificent views around me. Once the road widened again, we were in business, and I set about picking off riders one by one as I climbed. I was surprised that whilst I seemed to be overtaking a lot of people, there weren't too many catching me, and my legs felt good and strong climbing at a good cadence, which I was really pleased with.
The drink stops were an interesting affair... I knew how to ask for water, but I didn't want water... I wanted sports drink and coke. I found pointing and saying "that one... Per favore" seemed to get the result I was after... Way to embrace the language and culture Megan!
Being my first race in a non-English speaking country, it's hard to know what to yell out to people when you are passing or when you want to warn them you are there. I had a particularly amusing moment on the ascent just past Treni on our final pitch to San Giovanni. This particular incident happened on another steep section of track. A guy stopped in front of me to walk and I yelled out "WOAH!" in an attempt to get him to move out of the way... The guy just behind me yelled out "ACHTUNG!" and the guy just to his right yelled out "ATTENZIONE!"... No joke... It was highly comical, and although I was on the rivet, I couldn't help having a bit of a giggle to myself... The poor guy just got abused in three different languages at once!
Once we arrived at our first peak, at 1145m, it was time to have some fun... The descending was amazing, and especially after having been riding the terrain for the last two weeks, I was pretty confident hitting it up with some speed (which made it even more fun!). Once again, there were a lot of people around who weren't comfortable descending some sections, but I found it really weird here that firstly, people walking their bikes don't seem to move over for people riding to get through and secondly, if a technical piece of trail comes up and someone can't ride it, instead of just dismounting and running up it and continuing on the way, people stop and wait in line until the person who couldn't ride it is out of the way so they can have a clean run at the piece of trail. Total kudos for wanting to ride it, but we're racing here people!! I remember one descent where there were some tricky little gnarly bits and I was actually quite pleased I managed a clean run through. There were a lot of people walking (and probably understandably so, actually)... I exited the trail and there were a couple of marshalls and some Ambulance staff standing there (obviously waiting for the casualties) and I had this huge grin on my face and yelled out "that was fun!"... They seemed to think this was amusing, maybe because they had been watching people edging their way out of the trail on foot and it seemed so strange to see this small girl barrel out of there on her bike hollering (in English) like a hoon. Yep, it was pretty obvious that I wasn't from around here!
It was really difficult to gauge how I was doing compared to the rest of the field for a couple of reasons... Firstly, the start groups meant that someone may be physically five minutes ahead of me, but race time, actually be five minutes behind me because they were in a group that started ten minutes before mine. Secondly, there were three different length races and it was impossible to tell who was in which one, moreso because the rules of the race actually let you decide on course which one you want to do, and it also meant that if people missed the tight cutoffs, they could continue on the shorter course with no penalty. In a way it was good because it made you ride your own race, but for something so "short", it would have been nice to have some sort of reference... I ended up being beaten by a girl in B group by seven seconds, but there was no way I could have known before seeing the results posted.
There was some flat riding before we hit our next climb, which was only about 400m of ascending and then went up and down a few times before our final big climb. I remember thinking at about the 50km mark "wow, I feel pretty bloody good for half way in", and we were not only half way in distance, but also pretty much half way in climbing, as well, which was reassuring. It was really difficult to put my finger on a time that I thought I would finish in because it could take us an hour and a half to ascend a climb, and then only half an hour to descend it... It all depended on the terrain and gradient we were climbing and then how technical the descent was... I guess that's the same for any race, but the effect felt amplified with the size of the climbs in this particular race.
As we rode through the final cut-off point (which was also the course split for the grande and extrema courses), the trail pitched up steeply on a gravel road. This was our final 800m pitch to the top of our last high point... From there, it was all downhill, literally (or so the course profile told us). I gave it some really good stick up that last climb... Just put my head down and buried myself. I would ride up onto a wheel in front of me, and if they were going too slow, I would just ride around and keep going. As I passed two guys at the start of this climb, I heard them talking in German. I heard the word "machina" or similar and then the other guy said in English "are you going to try to follow?". I flattered myself at the time with the thought that they may have been saying I was a machine... The same two riders came up to me after the race and said I climbed like a goat... Finally my climbing legs had arrived (albeit a little late for the Cape Epic). So anyway, yes, this guy was going to try to follow me by the looks of it, and before I knew it, I had a leech sucking energy out of my back wheel while I tried to climb this monster hill... Now, I'm really sorry, but no amount of flattery will get you a free ride. I let him sit there for a bit, then I swung out to the side of the trail, as if giving him room to come through and take the front, and he just moved over with me... Annoying. Short of telling the guy to p@#s off (which I didn't know how to say in German anyway), my only option was to ride him off my wheel, so I added a couple of gears and upped the pace a bit. Thirty seconds later, I looked behind me to see him grovelling away by himself. That last climb seemed to go on forever, and it was relentless. It pitched up the whole way... There were no flat spots or breaks... At least I wasn't losing elevation... I knew the climb went up to 1245m. One thing I had found worked really well for me on the long climbs was to lock out all my suspension (front included). It made the climb a bit rough, but I'm sure it saved me tonnes of lost energy through the forks.
I finally arrived at the last feed station at the top of the climb. I filled my bottle and shoved some cake in my mouth, then headed off to work my way down the mountain. Not long after we started descending, the trail started undulating along a ridge... This was not in the course profile! All I wanted to do was whack it in the big dog and get back to the finish line as quickly as I could. Finally, it pitched downwards, and stayed that way. The descent was amazing. I'm told the first bit of trail we descended was the famous "Anaconda" and it was lovely, classic Garda rockiness. What was even better was that all the faster riders had already been through there and the best line to ride was quite clearly visibile down the trail, so I felt comfortable to open up all my suspension, just let the brakes go and make my way down at some unforgiving speed. The trail came to an end on a gravelly, rocky road and as I started descending the road, another rider came up behind me. I had some pretty decent speed going down here... Without focusing on my speedo too much (I really needed to pay attention to what I was doing), the top speed that I saw flash up on the screen was 52km/hr (on a loose rocky road)... I felt like I was just pinning this descent so well... And it felt so good. The guy on the hardtail was still behind me, and seemed quite content to stay there. I was cutting the line for him, but it didn't bother me too much... I would prefer that to having him sitting in front of me. I feel really uncomfortable descending at speed behind other riders. I had a couple of really sketchy moments at speed down here. I was tired, and I remember thinking to myself "just focus on what you are doing Megan... Stuff it up down here at this speed and you are in real trouble"... That was the last I thought about anything but the trail in front of me. The Ninja floated underneath me, navigating her way over everything in her path. I felt so smooth and so good. I was enjoying every minute of this!
We hit the bottom of the descent and I went through our last checkpoint hollering with joy. I was so amped about the descent that my whole body was shaking with adrenalin. What an amazing final ride to have here in Garda! The last 5km seemed to be the longest of the whole race... It was on a flat, boring road, just getting us back to the finish in Riva. Two guys came past me and I hooked onto the back of them up until, the last km, but that's when I popped. I crossed the finish line feeling like it was all I had left, and I'd had an absolute ball, too. What a bloody cool experience!!! I finished a fair way down the rankings, 22nd female across the line in 6 hours 51 minutes (which the locals assured me is a pretty impressive time for that particular course with all the climbing), but I wasn't too concerned about where I finished. What mattered was that I felt bloody awesome, I had ridden strongly, and I felt I was on my technical game, too, and this held me in good steed for the real race in three weeks.
Little did I know beforehand just how beneficial I would find this race to my preparation for world champs. Not only did I feel strong and my legs got in a final, good run before the race, but there were so many things about racing in Europe, in a non-English speaking environment that were better learned now than in three weeks time at world champs... How to communicate with other riders on course, the inevitable non-English race briefing, the differences in the way riders behave on course... It was all somehow very different to back home, and competing in this race was, for want of a better expression, a little "heads up" for what to expect in Finale... I'm really looking forward to World Champs. I have a good feeling about everything, about how I feel and what I have experienced over the last month or so... I feel I am going into the race much wiser than I ever have, and enjoying riding much more than I ever had. I can't wait to see what effect that has on my race!
fantastic write-up and kiss ass effort girl! you are going to be on fire when you get back home for the last of the club winter series races!
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