Maybury Time Trial

Today I raced the Maybury Time Trial, my third mountain bike race ever and the very first of the time trial discipline.   Maybury State Park I have a bit of a love hate relationship with.  When I first started mountain biking two years ago it was the location of a very nasty crash I had.  Leaving me with bruises all over along with both sides of both knees bruised.  I didn't ride there again till last year, I broke my chain before my ride barely got going.   Living so close by I should be hitting this trail once a week, its nice.  There are plenty of nice hiking trails also.  However I refused to go back till this year.  Frustrated with my road racing season a little over a week ago at Hometown Bicycles they had the Maybury race website up on the computer.  A few of us there talked about it and decided we should do that race since it is so close.  So with only a week to prep I needed to put the demons aside and learn to conquer this beast of a trail.

Maybury can best be summed up as a short, ~6.5 mile or so trail.   It is very technical with lots of twists and lots of trees waiting to knock you off your bike.  Twisty has never been my thing, so I did some serious upgrades to my mountain bike to improve handling.  Man did they pay off, when I took to the trail I really enjoyed it for a change.  With it being so close to my office why had I avoided this place like a plague.  Anyways I rode into today with three days of practice there totaling 6 laps.  Enough to at least understand it.

I signed up to race Sport 19-29, being only my third race I wasn't quite ready to sign up as Expert.  Even more so since this trail did not suit my ability well.   For the time trail they added a few extra sections, mostly for passing.  Also to add a few hills to make it a bit harder, so the race route was about 8.5-9 miles I heard.  Lucky for me I was set off to be the first one off the line in sport class.  I would have a clear trail with no traffic.

I started off in a blaze using my road legs to my advantage quickly tearing through the connectors leading to the trail head.   I started to hard maybe because my heart rate was pegged.  When I finally reached the single track I was breathing hard.  On the first hill of the regular trail I picked a bad line on the erosion and drifted into the bushes.  Unfortunately I got a branch stuck in my front wheel and had to get off the bike.  I yanked my bike out of the shrubbery and sprinted to the top of the hill to get back on my bike.  I really thought I had blew the race,  we started with only 30 second time gaps.   Lucky for me though I started so fast I was still clear ahead and had my clear trail.  I quickly composed myself and relaxed.   I pushed my bike and tires hard through the single track.   I had several near misses almost losing control in corners.

However I just got in my groove and made up ground on the straight sections and hills.   Surprisingly I made it to the end of the single track still on my own.  I could hear second chasing me, but knew I was putting ground on him.  However I was out of the single track and on the paved bike path for .75 miles of pure speed.  I used that and the final single track connector to push my gap to 23 seconds on the guy chasing me.  I sprinted like mad across the line, then let the waiting game begin.  Turns out my time held to be number one in my class and 14th overall in sport division.  Getting the 1st class win under the belt felt amazing, also confirms I might be ready to race Expert.  I know I probably lost a good chunk of time on my incident, otherwise I would have been in the top 10.  I will take that though since I am a newbie when it comes to mountain bike racing, especially on a tight twisty technical trail.  Next up are a couple more crit races and then 3 more MTB races to get me in tip top shape to take my revenge on Iceman.  If I am not on the podium there for my age group I will be disappointed.  The leg is still touch and go, but the fitness is finally getting closer to on track.  Hopefully the end of the season will contain a few more podiums like today.  Its a huge relief and monkey off my back with all the heath and injury crap I have had to deal with this year.

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