Solavaca Race Report

This past weekend was the Solavaca Cat Claw Classic, round 4 of the TMBRA spring series. I'd never been to this course, but heard good things about it so I was looking forward to the weekend. Raine was hostessing a baby shower for a friend Sunday so she and Ben stayed home. Raine's mom came down to stay for the weekend while I was gone, so that was helpful and I was thankful she wouldn't be home by herself. Richard and I pulled out Saturday morning headed to Glen Rose. We arrived about noon and kitted up, then headed out for a pre-ride with my teammates Adam & Clare. We did two laps, trying to learn the course well as we were both hoping for good results on Sunday. The course was really fun, mostly fast singletrack, some rocks, some really tight sections, and a mile or so of technical riding in and out of a creek. We finished up and headed back to town to our shady hotel, then grabbed some dinner and turned in relatively early. My race was at 8:30 so it was going to be an early morning.

I woke up and drove around to find some breakfast, I ended up at a little donut shop with some breakfast tacos and my usual orange juice. Decent breakfast, then it was off to the ranch. I warmed up a bit, then headed to the line. There were 13 of us this week, I got a call-up to the front row with the top 10 as I'm currently in 10th overall in the series. I tried to start more reasonably this week, hanging about 2/3rds of the way back through the group. I felt comfortable with the pace, but I eventually started to fade. This was disappointing, but thankfully it wasn't a huge blow-up like at Mellow Johnny's, just a more gradual fade. I fell back to nearly last place in my group through the rest of the lap. Normally my glasses are fine throughout the race, but about 2/3rds of the way through lap 1 they started getting sweat on the lenses and I couldn't see anything. I had to take them off and then every time I went through a creek or muddy spot I got something in my eye. This was pretty unfortunate and annoying, but I'm sure it didn't really cost me the race or anything. As the race went on I started feeling a little better and was able to pick the pace back up. Through the second half of the race I passed 3 or 4 guys in my class to make my way back up to 8th at the finish.

There was one big climb on the course with a few nice ledges at the top. I only cleared it on the second lap, I'm still figuring out steep, loose climbing on the BMC.

I ripped the big downhill on the last lap, nearly a minute faster than lap 1 when I was with a group.

The full lap segment times on Strava don't seem to correspond with what actually happened, could be due to the really twisty course and the fact that it passed very close to the start point a few minutes later. I made a segment of the last 1.3 miles through the technical section along the creek that gives a good indicator of how I was going at the end of each lap: 1. 8:17, 2. 8:20, 3. 8:04. On the last lap I was riding strong and that was my best effort on the day.

I was happy with the way I finished the race, but still have to get my starts figured out better. I think maybe I need more warm-up? I seem to roll pretty well once I get going, just takes me a while to get there and over that slump after the start. Like a big diesel. There is a positive side though, with my big race coming up in two weeks, the Ouachita Challenge, I'm feeling like my endurance is good as I seem to be riding strong through the race. Hopefully I can slow things down a little and stretch it out for 6 hours and have a good race.