Rob Ballou

2009 Lost Valley Luau Recap

Sunday (3/22) was my 1st mountain bike race of 2009 and my 3rd ever. LV is a pretty fast course with barely any thing technical on it — which isn’t to say it isn’t a hard race for a beginner with plenty of hills and loose gravel roads! So my class of beginners had a whopping 3 people in it, which meant guaranteed placing, but not a whole spectrum of competitors. While I appreciated my first race in a while not being crowded with other riders, I was looking forward to have someone else’s wheel to rest on once and a while!

So my starting “sprint” placed me second down the road and I was feeling the burn so I was content to let the other riders smoke into the downhill, especially because I was confident that I would catch them on the gravel hill. I caught one and began to pull up the hill towards the guy in first, but he was staying a ways out. Until we got to the new singletrack (which we just finished building the day before!), which started a small bottleneck as we all bounced our way down the new trail. Unfortunately, trail work made my arms feel like steel through this segment and so my turning was slow.

By the time we joined the new trail, I had a few of the next beginner’s division riders around, watched a few go down on one technical turn and tried to keep going, but lost my pedals in trying to get around the mayhem. After reseting I soon found myself redlining on the hill to the cedars, so I stopped to breath and realize that the #1 rider was no where in sight and #3 hadn’t passed me. With the quick rest, I took off down hill to the next fire road segment and was happy to find the first place rider. I gained considerable ground on him during this stage and by the time we hit singletrack I was in striking distance. We then came across the kids race which slowed us both down and because he got the pass sooner, I was a bit behind crossing the creek. As we approached the finish, I was hoping we wouldn’t need a second lap, but I was happy to finish in easy striking distance of first place so I didn’t push it.

Except we were under the hour cut off (~52 minutes), so it was back up the gravel hill. My legs were cooked and I fumbled around trying to fuel for another lap and by the time I got to the top of the hill, the first place rider was not in sight. I suffered through the new downhill almost taking a turn down the hill on the off-camber turns. I got passed by a couple guys on the single track. There was still no sign of the 3rd place rider, so I was content to just finish the ride. On the double track though, I found the 1st place rider out changing a flat.

I was not toast, but sitting in a de facto first place. At the waterfall in the second stretch of single track, I found the first place rider had caught me (yes, this is how slow I was at this point), so I let him pass on down to the creek. It was still a good race, even with only three of us out there!

So there is some work to be done to really get the results I want (mainly faster lap times), but it was a blast to race. Even if I felt more like collapsing after this two hour race than after my 6 hour solo at Burnin’ at the Bluffs.

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