kelso Pre-pre-ride

I used today's work free day wisely and drove up to Kelso for some pre riding. Via Appleby line, the drive is only 45mins for me, and if I took the 407 to avoid the lights, it could be even faster. Not bad.

I did 6 laps with the closest point to the upper parking lot being my start/finish. I found the course to be very similar to last years, but with a different, longer trail after the top climb. You also only go part way down the escarpment later, thus only climbing part way back up. This made for a stupid slow off camber turn to start the climb, which adds a nice technical element. Some other trails seemed a bit different and there may be a new technical rock descent, but nothing crazy.

The big climb at the start seemed shorter to me and I was able to keep it in my 40t the first 4 times. I remember finding it tough to climb in 32/32 last year, so flying up in 40/32 was exciting. The hot muggy air was catching up to me though and I was feeling like poo on the trail up top. I gave into my 27t for the final 2 climbs, just to prevent fainting and so that I could hammer the upper trail. My current plan for the race is to only go as hard as I have to (avoid slipping back) up the opening climb, because there is a long fairly wide trail at the top were I hope to make some passes and then set a really high pace on the long single track section. I figure that if I hammer up the climb, My pace will suffer for about 5 minutes after. If I take that extra 10-20 seconds to get up, then I will recover much quicker and make that time up as well as gain some shortly after the summit.

It took me a couple looks at the rock gardens to figure out my lines. The rocks are not like the flowy ones at Buckwallow, that you can ride like dirt. These are pointy and random. I tried to find some crazy jump this, drop that lines to bring serious speed though, but nothing came of it and I stuck to smooth and safe. Besides a bail on pointy rocks is not worth trying to safe 2 seconds. I will stick to the safer way of saving time by buying the lightest parts for my bike ;)

On the news this evening they said that the air quality was so poor that an hour of out-door exercise was equivalent to smoking a pack of cigs. So that means that if I sat on my couch and smoked 3 packs today, that would have been better for my lungs than the 3:15hr ride I did. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger though, right?

I'm going to go up again Saturday for a few more laps. Its soo close, so why not? Looking forward to this race, and am confident that I can get a top 10, no matter who shows up.

See ya there