Swamp Donkey Or A Falcon?

OK...I'm late with this and there might not be room on internet for more of this topic but here goes.

I used to not like XC racing all that much back in the old country. Rocks and roots were my least favorite things. So the solution was very easy, I didn't do XC races. I accidentally registered for Finnish nationals back in 2002 and finished the crapfest just to confirm that I didn't like that stuff. I used to do some DH and quite a bit of XC as a teen, but my idea of fun was bit different than your average Finnish XC race. I got back to this stuff in 2007 because, as some of you may know, if you want to do more than half a dozen of races (or something along those lines) here in Manitoba, you need to do every single bicycle related race/event all over the different sub-genres of this sport. 2007 provincials course was fun though with good amount of climbing and all the non-XC stuff that I knew from back home. So yeah...it was fun for a while. I even got my own bike and let Daniel keep his rigid winter rig.

It was time to get a reality check though. Last Sunday at Falcon Lake sucked more than...well I can't really use the proper comparison here, but it sucked a lot. The rocky parts of the course were worse than any other XC race I had done before. Oh yeah, in addition to rocky sections, the sections in between were 50/50 swamp and somewhat ridable stuff. There were no sections long enough for me to ride hard enough to feel like racing. It was ridiculous, too bad the organizers couldn't make the decision to run at least some parts of the course on double tracks and gravel trails. Or maybe they did...maybe the course was even worse before the added 1km of logging road.

Maybe 4 km in was the moment when I realized that the race was over. I should have realized it even before we started, but I'm not that smart. I just thought that how bad could it be, I've done worse, it's not a bid deal and come on...the race posting said that it would be up and down so I should be just fine. Well...it was flat and worse than I pictured.

Post race I didn't hear too many positive comments, I had to wait till Tuesday to hear Tristan rave about the best XC race he has ever done. All I can say is that he has some serious issues and should seek help. But what can you do, he doesn't seem to understand that riding without a powermeter is like not riding at all. The time and effort put into riding just gets sucked into a big black hole and become nothingness. I will offer my consultation just to make him understand that the soul of cycling lies within the tiny numbers on the tiny LCD display. 6 hours in Ingolf is not an epic ride, downloading your record 60 min power onto your computer is epic.

But seriously. Good for the guys who had fun doing the race. If someone really had awesome time running through the bog, I have nothing against that. I've had awesome time on my bike and it's great if someone else had awesome time on Sunday, I guess it's their turn.

At least the junior member of Team Hoot support team was super pumped about the mud and outdoors in general. I guess it was better than being stuck in the city.

Otherwise the training is going good. I backed off a little bit trying to get longer rides in this and next week before switching back to L5 stuff. My trip to Finland is all but certain because we haven't booked the flights yet, but if I'll get there in August, I'll do some racing. If we won't get the flights, cycling is the least of my worries.

Ja suomilukijoille. Kuvitelkaa mielessänne tekninen enduropätkä ja sitten kuvitelkaa sitä samaa pätkää kilometrikaupalla. Teknisten pätkien väliin sitten polveen asti upottavaa suota ja mutaa. Nyt alkaa mielikuva olemaan aika lähellä sitä, mitä sunnuntain kisa piti sisällään. Kiva että joillain oli hauskaa.