return to racing and my first as a Cat 1...recovering from knee surgery is not how I had planned that!

[Ryan Gibson]

This past weekend was a great homecoming to racing, as I competed with 699 other racers in the Annadel XC.

 

If you have read my prior blog posts and/or know me, you know I had a massive knee injury on Father's Day weekend in mid-June, which resulted in two surgeries and a month off the bike. While I resumed road riding gently after about four weeks, it has been a process to rebuild my atrophied leg muscles and recondition my lungs and heart. I am still not fully recovered, but the knee is rock solid, my legs/lungs/heart feel pretty good (maybe 85%), and my head is getting screwed back on the more and more I ride. Having a day job with lots of responsibility and a wife with two small children has probably slowed me down on the descents a bit thinking about another injury.

 

I only recently began riding mountain again-in fact, my first mtb ride since the accident over 8 weeks ago was last Monday, I got one other light ride in, and the Annadel race was my third mtb ride since mid-June! It was not without a little anxiety that I decided to go ahead and race, having registered Cat 1 long course back in May. While I won a few Cat 2 races earlier this year (including Sea Otter), and an open two person 8 hr (Boggs), I did not feel like I was in any shape to race Cat 1, but decided to just ride for fun and not think about racing too much.

 

Without a doubt Annadel is one of my favorites, although I dont get to ride there much. What a great place, perfect race day weather, and excellent race organization by Bike Monkey. The rolling mass start was interesting, although there was a pucker moment when many wheels locked up and I was in the middle of a big rolling peleton. Apparently there was a road sign in the middle of the road and it caught those at the front by surprise-I heard rumors of someone hitting the sign. Given that all racers started together and the road section was 2.5 miles, I pushed hard to stay right at the front, hitting the dirt in the top ~25 overall. That turned out to be good strategy, as I had little traffic to pass as the trail tightened into singletrack.

 

The course was long, fun, and hard! Having had the knee problem, less training, little time one the mtb, about 10 extra pounds of body weight, and a much heavier bike (I rode a ~26lb Tallboy instead of my 19lb Highball that was stolen recently) had me feeling heavy and slow. Despite feeling out of shape, I had a blast. Fun technical rocky climbs, screaming downhill and everything in between.

 

I pushed hard the entire race and rolled across the line on the verge of cramps, finishing in 2 hours 28 minutes. This was good for 11th (of 13 :) in under 35 Cat 1, but would have been 22/50 in open Cat 1 and even ahead of a few pros. Looking at Cat 2, it would have landed me in 2nd in either open or under 35, classes that had over 100. All in all I am really happy with this result and look forward to continuing the recovery. The race experience was one of my best, especially that many good friends participated as well.

 

Up next: Tamarancho Classic 9/30. Maybe a few others depending on whats going on and free time. Also hope to do the Sugarpine 50 in October.

[Jim Hewett]

Welcome back, Ryan!

[Ryan Gibson]

Thanks Jim! Good to be back :)