Mark Gibson's Blog – April 2017 Archive (4)

Just as I did last week, I rode out to the venue from Novato with some of the Novato/San Marin High School team, providing a nice warm up.  This weekend sees the final NorCal league HS race, so the race would be a great opportunity to add some intensity before a couple days rest going into that race.

No middle school race this week (every other week for the middle schoolers), and so we did not see the crowds of last week.  Some of the High School racers from last week were not in…

The Summit Shorty is back for its 10th year, and a big thanks to Jim for all the work he puts in organizing this event. For the third time this season, I got to check off another race that I've never done before.  I had been a spectator at last year's series, there to support the Novato/San Marin High School team that my kids are on, and on which I'm one of the assistant coaches.  It's a great event, and excellent mid-week intensity training for the High School teams and anyone else.  Me and…

I headed up to this race not knowing exactly what to expect as I'd never raced it before.  The area had received a lot of rain over the prior week, so I was thinking there would be some mud, but otherwise I'd just have to figure it out on race day.  

Getting there with not quite enough time to pre-ride the course, I did a brief warm up and took my place at the start line. The racers were sent out in waves: pros, then singlespeed (never really understand why the ss go out ahead of all…

I’m only 20 miles in to this 35 mile race and I’m cramping up so badly I’m not sure I’ll make it to the finish.  I had a flash back to the pre-race start-line warnings given by Bike Monkey director Carlos about how tough the race is, and there being no shame in using one of the bailout options along the way.  I didn't take those warnings very seriously and they were now coming back to slap me in the face with a big dose of “I told you so”.

Not being quite race fit yet, I had planned…