First of all, it turned out to be a great day and all the riders had a great time.
The morning started off quite cold, but warmed up enough that by 9am it was simply perfect!. Martin & I arrived at 06:00, and it was almost 07:00 by the time we had all the required, volunteers, water & food present. I needed all of this in order to head out by jeep to drop off the 7 pairs of course marshals for the 23km sport course. The 2 pairs on the 8km family course would be dropped off by GMC van.
After dropping off the first pair, we got onto the road that passes by the base. We were stopped by a soldier who told me that we couldn’t pass because they were shooting again accross the road. Last night was one thing, but Friday morning???? This could throw a really interesting new dimension into mountain bike racing. The soldier volunteered the fact that he knew about the race, but that it was not until 09:00. I felt really stupid…someone at the municipality really screwed up. So I began to think creatively, and asked him if they could stop shooting for a minute to let us pass. He pondered this, and finally agreed. We moved on, but I was left feeling that the situation was even sillier than last night. It was just such an absurd situation. The rest of the volunteer marshalls were placed on the course without incident, and I returned at about 08:55 to the park.
The start of the ride was planned for 09:00, but since they wanted me to lead the pack, I told them I needed some time to get ready. I grabbed the bike out of the car, swapped clothes, checked my pack and turned on the radio. The radio batteries were dead, and we had no spares. Doh! On top of that, I was being rushed to get to the start line, and I didn’t consider the fact that I hadn’t eaten in a long time and hadn’t been drinking much either. I would come to regret that.
I kept ahead of the pack as we rode the first 3-4km, past the downhills. One or two people passed me, but I’d already decided I wasn’t going to push a sprint pace. We made it onto the now-famous road by the base where nobody was shooting at us. One of the riders complained about repeated problems with his chain coming off, so I stopped to help him. I had to adjust the low stop on his front derailleur, a process that now left us trailing behind the pack.
About 1km later, I recognized the onset of bonking. Damnit! I hadn’t eaten or drank enough since I was too busy thinking about the organization and not enough about me, and now I was going to make an ass of myself. If only it had been that simple. 2km later I busted my chain, and fixed it. 8km after that I had to fix another racer’s flat (using one of my own spares), followed about 1km by yet another busted chain link on my bike. That left me feeling like the ride was more of a mechanic’s run AND I had to pedal the last ~7km on my granny ring.
But the point wasn’t to race, it was to have fun. In spite of organizational problems, technical failures, and some thing I wished I could have influenced to do differently, it was overall a great success. The most important thing I want to change the next time is to make sure that the organizers treat their volunteer marshals a bit better. They had local youth out, and could have done a better job to make them feel more involved/connected to the event.
[tags]mtb,arad,israel,itamarilya[/tags]
