I am not much of a fan of cold weather racing, but being that I had missed most of my race season due to an iron deficiency, I entered Erie40 on a whim. My teammates were doing the race and it was a new event with brand spanking new trails, just built this year. The township had embraced mountain biking and building trails to help bring tourism into their town. This sounded like a great idea and I wanted to support the town for it's effort by entering the event. My intensions were more to support the event than to actually race. I chose the shorter 25 mile distance because it seemed like a realistic ride length for me.
When I got there in the morning it was freezing! The freezing part was not that much fun, but it was only a few hours until we were all on course and defrosting in the single track. For some reason, I misinterpreted some local knowledge and thought the course would be mellow. Much to my surprise, the trails were pretty rugged and full of sharp, shale-like, tire cutting rocks. So what I thought would be a mellow sub 3 hour ride turned into 3 hours and 45 minutes of me feeling like my arms were going to fall off. Normally this would not be a problem on my trusty Pivot, but I brought a steel hard tail.
As I rode, it seemed like everyone was getting flat tires. I rode as light as I could and placed my tires as cleanly in the sharp rocks as possible, trying not to flat. It was slow going, but my teammates pledged to hang together when possible. I ended up riding most the race with Marianne. She waited for me a few time, but casual riding was our thing that day. We were out to enjoy the day, and check out the new trails. It was a nice spot with numerous views and while the trails did not seem finished, they were fun to ride.
We were the first two ladies to roll in to the finish line. Shortly after, Stef and Jen rolled in to join us. I was pretty wiped out afterwards as it was more demanding than I was prepared for that day. However it was a great way to close out the season. I am really glad to have gone and really enjoyed hanging and riding with my awesome local ladies.
