Lory Challenge

Shortly after Howl at the Moon last August I mixed things up with a mountain bike race at Lory State Park. It had been years since my only two previous mountain bike races, and I had never raced in, you know, actual mountains. This should be fun. I certainly didn’t expect it to be my only bike race of the year, but whatever.

The race started super fast before filing onto single track. Of course I was badly positioned, very far back. This was unfortunate because the part of the course that suited me, the uphill, came at the beginning. So during the nine minutes of climbing I wasn’t going the speed I was capable of going, I was going in slow motion, at times completely stopping to avoid running into the long train of slower riders ahead of me. Super frustrating.

AJ racing at Lory

But the tables quickly turned. A super fast technical downhill came next and I quickly realized I was way out of my league. I held on for dear life and somehow managed to make it to the bottom in one piece, but it was really, really scary.

The last several miles were on the rolling, twisty-turny valley trails. I passed a few people. A few people passed me. The end.

Lessons learned:

  1. Mountain bikers suck at going uphill.
  2. I suck at going downhill.