Stoney Marathon has been one of the Tail-Wind races that I have avoided in the last 3 years of racing. It used to be a double points race and, that I did not need the points. The race just does not look that enticing from the outside…and I found that it is equally hard from the inside.
Sport 50 to 59 does 4 laps of a 10 mile circuit that features just about everything you get from all the other races (sans big climb, but we even had a couple water ‘crossings’ today due to some run off). There are technical sections and board walk and stone gardens. The start temperature was a cool 53 degrees, but forecast was an accurate 70ish degrees at noon, so the weather was nice for a race. I used this longer race to continue to tune up for the LumberJack 100 in just 3 weeks. Working on race-time nutrition, hydration and the mental aspects of LumberJack are pretty key to me…I am actually not looking too forward to this race as of today. Last weekend I did an 83 mile ride on the MTB and covered a couple of the area’s mtb courses. My lower back seems to give out before my legs…I need to work on that (core every night, stretching, nutrition.)
Willy did a great job getting my bike back together on Saturday. I took it out for a spin at the Fort and after the Red loop, noticed my front tire was low on air, pumped it up and did the Blue loop. Again, when complete the tire was low, but Stands takes a while to settle in on a new tire, so not worried. Pumped up the tire, and put it away until Sunday morning.
Race day came and the tire pressure was low again, but I did not want to mess with pulling off the tire and ‘re-standsing’ it, figured-during the race the stands would firm up along one of the 4 laps, but I put my tire pump near the lap chute so I could check between laps. Somehow, I only felt that the pressure was low in the last 100 yards of the race and, when I checked, the tire was too low to register the pressure gage, so I pumped up the front tire each time…good to go. Lost some time, but I missed the podium by 3 minutes, not sure that I spent more than 20 seconds in the pit each lap…so whether I had to pump it up or not, probably did not make a difference. Another race in the books. Adam Cefai did his usual great job and finished 2nd for sport single speeds. I took 6th-just missing hardware two races in a row.
All good. Cheers. Jack Miner.