2012 season

This was my first season as a Category 1 / Expert mountain bike racer. I had quite a tough time with short races and did ok with endurance races when my bike stayed together. That's it, end of story.

Why are you still reading?

Fine.

The races

I had goals of completing Moab Furious3 in top 10%, complete a 12 hour solo race, and a top 5 at High Uintas. Unfortunately Moab Furious3 was cancelled so I couldn't do much about it, although I am hoping to compete in Furious3 in Fernie in the future.

High Uintas was a pretty fun road Masters 35+B race even though I didn't hang with the fast guys on the climb. I was pretty close but just couldn't hang, so I had a lot of fun gathering a group and flying downhill to try to catch the leaders. The group got together pretty well but very few had enough juice to pull. Jason Sparks and I had a good time pulling hard and attacking but it didn't work well enough. I expected the finish line to be different than the previous years based on reading the race bible, and the finish line wasn't marked well at all, so I messed up the final push and sprint and I got 12th place. I didn't reach my 5th place goal but it was a good day after all.

I had a difficult time at the Mt. Ogden 100k but was happy to finish it. I also had an annoyingly dramatic Point 2 Point experience yet felt really good about my performance.

I raced 11 hours and 28 minutes at 12 hours of Sundance, totalling just under 89 miles and yielding me a first place of 3 racers in the 40+ male group. Turns out I was 2nd overall of 16 solo competitors as well. One goal achieved.

The hardware

My new Jet9 RDO works and feels amazing when it stays together. It has not proven to be the most reliable. It is definitely a fickle race machine, not a reliable bullet proof bike like my 2008 Fuel Ex 9.8.

I upgraded to a Garmin Edge 800; a very nice training tool, because my Garmin Edge 705 disappeared. It's a bonus I guess. The 800 is smaller, faster, touch screen, has more room, and has nicer features.

Fine tuning

My 2012 season is over. 2013 is starting this week. I am making small changes in my training to improve my early season performance and hope to have the best East Canyon road race yet. Mastery of a craft takes 10 years. I'm nearly half way there.