The first half

So just a bit about the Iron Mountain 100K

July 20, 2011 by scarkinsmel

Starting out, I and the people behind me still hopeful for a good race

Last year I had a much better early day and much worse later and this year it was much the opposite. As the race began I felt as if my heart, legs and lungs were all arguing with each other. While my legs felt a bit heavy and just a bit weak the lungs felt really good, and the heart, that thing was just racing from the second I woke up. My heart just didn’t seem to want to get down to a resting rate instead it seemed to racing constantly, and that made for some really hard riding.

After the warmup out to the trail we hit the first climb…. It was more a walk for a mile for me and most of the others at the race, but a few guys insisted of riding and falling over and causing a whole bunch of stop and go walking, which is almost as bad as stop and go traffic. Anyway we get to the top of the hill and I remember this really sketchy descent, but as it had rained the day before, it turned out to be a very fast and very fun descent, until I came up behind a rider who just wasn’t going as fast as I felt I could have. Now I could have been all angry and forced my way by, but we had a long race to go. I just wish everybody had been on the same page about the long race still coming up. Anyway, we all safely got to the bottom then this came up…..

A road

I drafted these guys for a few minutes and then my heart just seemed to start beating at 220 beats per minute, so I had to pull back and slow down just a bit, which was not cool. After a few minutes I turned onto a trail and started to climb. By this time my heart and legs just felt really bad and me riding just turned into me walking and wondering what was wrong. I still don’t know, but at this time in the race I wanted to quit. I told myself at Aid 2 I would quit if my legs didn’t start to feel better and on I trudged.

It was easy, last year!

So I arrived at Aid 2 and grab a couple of bottles ate a whole bag of Twizzlers and took off and was sure that by Aid 3 I would stop if I didn’t start to feel better. So tomorrow I will continue with the saga of my mid pack finish.

My terrible leg