Woods Landing

This was my first race of the season. It's been an exceptionally busy summer for me -- lots of extra work and lots of travel haven't been conducive to training. Anyway, I spent the better part of three weeks trying to get in reasonable shape for this event. Woods Landing is a gas station/small grocery/bar and post office on Wyoming highway 230, about 30 miles southwest of Laramie on the Laramie River. They put on a fine event on a beautiful day. The morning featured a 10 or 20 mile circuit race depending on your category, and in the afternoon a 6 mile hill climb up Jelm Mountain -- a 2000 foot vertical gain on a gravel road.

I picked up a one day NORBA license and raced as a veteran. For the Fox Creek Descent Circuit Race, everyone went off together (about 50 racers total). It was more-or-less a 4 mile climb, 2 miles of flat on top, then a 4 mile descent. They started us up an extremely rough jeep trail that went up a ridge on the south side of highway 230 -- initially a carry/push your bike climb, then a real grunt in the small and middle chain ring. I got pretty trashed chasing everyone up the hill, but ultimately managed to catch a few people as we neared the top. I hopped on the wheel of a junior rider and we traded pulls through the forest on top of the hills -- the two of us managed to pull back a number of people who had climbed a bit faster than we did. Well, the people we pulled back passed me on the descent (as usual) -- a screaming double track with some tricky off-camber turns and water-bars. Just moments before I got to a particularly nasty set of water-bars, someone went down hard -- serious bruises if not broken bones. I went even slower. The very last part of the descent was done on highway 230 -- here I cut it loose. As an ex-road racer, I actually feel more at home on the road then on the trail. I wound it up and caught one rider and topped my speedometer out at 48.5 mph -- my fastest speed ever on a mountain bike. (I once topped out at 58.5 on my road bike coming down from Estes Park -- serious fun). All-in-all, I was pleased with my effort, although I only finished third out of four veteran riders. It took me about an hour and 10 minutes to complete the 10 mile loop. The two in front of me beat me by 8 minutes and 2 minutes. Yow!

I was pretty leery of the Jelm Mountain hill climb. Jelm Mountain has a UW associated observatory on top, so the road is well traveled, if a bit steep and loose. Apparently, others were leery too as there were fewer racers on the starting line for the second half of the event. I took it easy at the beginning which was actually quite flat -- most of the climbing is done in the last 4 miles. I settled in behind the faster looking of the two women doing the climb -- I should have picked the slower one as the fast one quickly road away from me. There is a magnificent view of the Laramie River valley and it served as a good distraction as we wound our way up the mountain. I held my own pace and for the most part rode the climb alone. Just meters from the summit, I pulled in three riders that I had been slowly gaining on for the second half of the race. One of them was one of the veterans, Gary Werhonig, who had beaten me in the first race. He bonked really bad in the last half mile -- that's the only reason I caught him. I beat him across the line by no more than a few seconds so I ended up third overall in the veterans category. It took me about 55 minutes to climb those few miles! It turns out that the winner of the hill climb overall was also the first placed Veterans rider. I was impressed as we was a big guy, not some little skinny climber type. (I used to be a little skinny climber type, but I'm about 35 pounds and 15 years past that build).