A beauty day for a race, a sunny -2 deg.
I came into this race having zero idea of what to expect about the course or the competition but I was eager to race the fat bike and so I found myself toeing the line of the 2nd annual Fatty Frost Cross at Hardwood Hills.
And then the start. It was probably about 800m before of very hilly, wide XC ski trail before we turned into the "singletrack" down a portion of the well known Coffee Run. I had a good start and managed to squeak by the leader to get into the single track first. Once out of the single track I found myself with a hefty lead but couldn't decide what to do with it. The rest of the course was open and windy, but rarely flat. I came through the first lap with a time around 7 min (3k course) but figured that may be a little too hot and decided to ease off a bit and keep a fairly even pace as I'm accustomed to and not be too worried about staying ahead of the next rider back. I eventually let him catch me figuring the two of us could work better together in the open sections to develop a lead and then worry about racing each other later on. But it never really seemed to go the way I had planned. The course was too hilly to ever really get into a rhythm and work together, my mistake. We ended up trading places and paces for the next hour or so, when I finally had to let him go in the hills. My strength had been the single track and it was quickly deteriorating from people falling and skidding, and it was impossible to pass in the as that meant essentially asking the person in front of you to step off the trail into 3 feet of snow. So, in the end, he got away from me around the 1.5 hour mark and I never could reel him back in finishing about 3 min behind.
Overall, it was a blast and hopefully not my last fat bike race.
I came into this race having zero idea of what to expect about the course or the competition but I was eager to race the fat bike and so I found myself toeing the line of the 2nd annual Fatty Frost Cross at Hardwood Hills.
And then the start. It was probably about 800m before of very hilly, wide XC ski trail before we turned into the "singletrack" down a portion of the well known Coffee Run. I had a good start and managed to squeak by the leader to get into the single track first. Once out of the single track I found myself with a hefty lead but couldn't decide what to do with it. The rest of the course was open and windy, but rarely flat. I came through the first lap with a time around 7 min (3k course) but figured that may be a little too hot and decided to ease off a bit and keep a fairly even pace as I'm accustomed to and not be too worried about staying ahead of the next rider back. I eventually let him catch me figuring the two of us could work better together in the open sections to develop a lead and then worry about racing each other later on. But it never really seemed to go the way I had planned. The course was too hilly to ever really get into a rhythm and work together, my mistake. We ended up trading places and paces for the next hour or so, when I finally had to let him go in the hills. My strength had been the single track and it was quickly deteriorating from people falling and skidding, and it was impossible to pass in the as that meant essentially asking the person in front of you to step off the trail into 3 feet of snow. So, in the end, he got away from me around the 1.5 hour mark and I never could reel him back in finishing about 3 min behind.
Overall, it was a blast and hopefully not my last fat bike race.