Day 3 - XC stage
Today was a different kind of stage than what was presented to us as a cross country stage. The program said 5 laps around a 7 km loop and we didn't have to ride together. Both Trever and I were still tired from from yesterday - very tired.
We decided to ride by feel. I wanted to do well but wasn't sure how the legs would react. I decided to start fast and see how I felt. Trever was going to do the opposite. Start slow and increase the pace if he felt good.
We started at 10 am. The start was crazy with 300 racers trying to get the hole shot. The course was a true mountain bike course with fun twisty singletrack, double track, one hellish 50 yard hike-a-bike, a treacherous singletrack downhill and a section of pave on steroids. I had a decent start and did the first lap in about 25-26 minutes, then slowly started slowing down after each lap.
I lost one of my water bottles on the first lap so I had to stop after each lap to fill up so I wasted a little time. I started to get lapped by the pros halfway through my 3rd lap and I started to struggle a bit so I decided to stop "racing" and just ride it out. At the end of my fourth lap I was told that was it. I was a bit confused. Apparently everyone finishes on the same lap as the winner.
Trever managed to pull in 3 laps so we did ok. Not sure how they calculated times but we moved from 20th to 13th. Not bad for a short stage when both of us took it "easy".
Tomorrow is a 80km day so we hope to be done in about 5 hrs. We hope!! :-)
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