Freewheel Frozen Folic

This past Sunday I competed in my first fat bike snow race.  Freewheel is sponsoring a race series at Murphy Hanrehan park that was supposed to take place every weekend in January.  Since Mother Nature is hybernating this winter all previous races have been canceled because the weather has been too warm.  Sunday that all changed and there was even a fresh 1.5" of snow to really make things interesting.

I was a little more nervous than usual for this race for a few reasons.  1) This would be my first fat bike race and I have only ridden the Mukluk on snowy singletrack one other time 2)  There were going to be plenty of really fast riders 3) I am out of shape.   All that said though, I was really looking forward to the race because it was another way to test myself and there is only one way to become a better rider, ride and suffer a little.

Overall the race went pretty good.  I definately went through some stages throughout the race.  The first part I would rate as a C.  As I typically do at the start of races I was too worried about the people around me and not riding my own race/line enough.  This resulted in my first crash of the day within a mile of the start. I was watching a rider in front of me spinning his rear wheel looking for traction and I lost focus, drifted to the outside of the trail and found myself on the deck after my wheels washed out.  I settled in for the middle half of the race and would grade that as a B.  I managed to stay on my bike for the most part, maintained a solid rhythm ,caught and even passed a few riders. 

Towards the end of the race I started falling apart.  I passed a couple more riders and instead of focusing on riding like I had been I started worrying about where they were behind me.  This once again resulted in loss of focus which caused me to wander to the edges of the trail and get sucked into loose snow.  A couple riders re-passed me and I suffered my worst crash of the day when I rounded a corner at a pretty good clip and lost it on ice.  I was still feeling that crash yesterday.  I would rate the last 1/4 of the race as a D.  The best part was still to come as Freewheel caps every event with free beer, burgers, and dogs.  Freewheel knows how to put on an event!  Can't wait to do it again!

A few pictures from the day*:

 Start chute

 Pack rolls out.  I am rider 31.

 Early leaders

 Freewheel Owner Kevin.  He is one of the really fast guys.

 Another fast guy.  Freewheel GM Jake.

Not so fast accountant.

And last but not least, a video trailer of the race.

* Pictures from 45NRTH and Freewheel