15 Dec, 2024
When I have started training in May with a coach, my first was supposed to be at the beginning of September in familiar surroundings of the city where I live. 90km of roads and terrain I know pretty well.
On one hand I was really unsure about myself and racing, because I did not have such experience in any sport I have undertaken so far. This didn't stop me from looking what Polish racing scene has to offer...
There's a whole series of races in Great Silesia called Mały Tour Szutrowy. You can either ride 50km or 100km and regardless of the place you will get a handmade steel medal made by the organiser himself who is a blacksmith. If you participate in all races, these medals will be joined together.
It's not a bad idea to have some test run, right?
My cycling pal also planned to race for the first time with me in September. Plans are creatures of change and we raced for the first time in July.
The closer we were to the race venue the more stressed I was becoming. One of my tires were acting up - it didn't hold air as long as the other one, but after adding more milk it got a bit worse. I asked repair guy before the start to take a look. He said I should manage and fortunately I did, but this wasn't the end of Front Tire Issues.
I'm going to say something obvious - it's so different to start the ride in the exact point I want to. No traffic, no pedestrians, just gravel roads. You have no idea how bored and tired do I get when I go for the training ride through whole city to reach its outskirts and nice forests. I was fully focused on the task, there were no distractions. The only moment when I can feel like that in the city is in the middle of the night. But forest will always win with the city anyway.
You can checkout .gpx and see for yourself how much fun did I have - MTS: Tarngórskie Szutry (trasa długa)
The plan was simple - maintain steady tempo and eat SIS energy gels (they're awful) with bunch of gummy bears and rice waffles every 45min.I set up alarms for eating, packed gels into the back pocket and snacks into the handlebar bag.
We managed to maintain 30km/h speed in the first hour (and I was super proud of myself) and then the rain came. I didn't mind it, I like Summer rain, even on the bike, but it impacted our speed of course. I had to come off my bike when we reached rocky road going down a bit. At least two or three people's bikes were affected by it which is not suprising at all. We were lucky.
Next memorable stop is: very narrow paths in the forest. Some parts of them hidden in quite tall grass (I actually fell off the bike there, because I didn't see the path went sharply down in one point). We were not able to ride fast there and every 1km felt like 5km. However, I'm not saying this is route design flaw. It's just I don't have much experience with something like that and I didn't know how to handle it properly. It was really nice to ride trough the forest for quite long time (even less distractions!).
Let's come back to rain - it didn't last long, but it was heavy enough to change nice wide road into rain puddles slalom. By that time, I was tired and such conditions didn't help. The puddles were pretty large, there were other riders as well and I found myself in the point that either I will ride a little bit too slow behind someone else or buckle up and increase speed significantly. I decided to take some time for regeneration, I already knew we will reach finish line in time. However, slaloming between puddles like that was too boring and I couldn't stand that. We had a nice chat with a fellow rider, but I wanted to reach less boring grounds event if it means I might strain too much.
At some point going uphill a bit was greatly impacting my energy reserves, but we were close.
Before we went off, organiser told us that the last kilometers are particularly difficult to beat and we were asked to not fight for the place there. If we want to, we should do it earlier.
I didn't know what does it mean exactly except that there's no express way leading to the finish line.
It did mean muddy bumpy road which later turned out into narrow singletrack with occasional rocks and tree roots. Doesnt't sound bad, when you put it like that, but believe me, after almost 90kms I felt every bump twice or thrice as hard as I should under normal circumstances. I couldn't imaginesomeone trying to pass another rider quickly there, but I bet there were people who did that.
After 4 hours, 11 minutes and 34 seconds I reached the finish line with average speed of 21,49 km/h. Too bad by that time there were no bread for us, just small amount of soup. It's not a big race, but I expected a little bit more. We made a mistake of leaving clothes in the car 1km away. It was cloudy and not warm enough to stay in the wet clothes.
I didn't exactly know what to do after we finished eating. We got obligatory medals after reaching finish line, so there was no point in staying for the closing ceremony, but we did anyway. I guess we were brain fogged and couldn't make a decision of what to do next.
So we watched people staying on the podium who finished the 100km race in just 2 hours 38 minutes and then someone called me. I got third place in Women 30 category. You can check how many women participated and what is the finish time of people from the 1st and 2nd place, but... It's still nice and counts as an achievement. Unfortunately, my friend didn't get another medal.
The only thing left to do was finding gas station with washing station, because our bikes were extremely dirty and it would be easier to clean them properly once we reach home.
I had lots of fun and I wanted more. My main key takeaways were that I don't have enough experience going fast in tight spots and food placement in the handlebar bag wasn't ideal, but at this point I didn't know how to improve it. Besides, I have no experience at all in riding fast and grabing food. Lessons learnt, I was proud myself and fully confident that my next race will go even better (spoiler: yes, but actually no).