8 Hours of Cannonsburg
Each summer, I head home to Michigan to visit family, race an XC event, and to do some road riding with a local team, Leadout Racing. This year, I was able time my trip back for the 8 Hours of Cannonsburg, where I raced solo.
In the days leading up to the race, good ol’ Michigan weather was on my mind. The typical pattern was in effect: rain forecasted for the weekend. Luckily, rain came in on Friday, and got the course good and tacky for race day. Saturday’s temps were forecasted to be in the mid 90′s with high humidity… great.
The course was a single track dream come true: 5.5 miles tree covered joy. There were only two wide sections that were pretty short, but the rest was pure single track through tight trees – a far cry from SoCal’s dessert style of riding.
The race got started at 10:01 for the solos. I quickly got out towards the front and began stretching out the lead with the faster guys. After a few miles, we had opened up a bit of a gap. Because of the course layout, I thought that the idea of “out of site – out of mind” would come into play so an good effort up front would pay off later. About at the 1/2 point of our first lap, we rolled down a “steep” short descent and then immediately up a “steep” climb. It wasnt that bad, but steep enough to dump it into my small chainring and easiest gear in the back. As luck had it, I dumped the chain up and over my cassette and wedged it into my spokes. I pulled over and struggled to dislodge it and watched every single solo rider pass me. Great.
I got back on and re-established my pace. At this point, I was going just hard enough to slowly reel in some of the riders who had passed. No sense in sprinting at this point. I figured I would catch them during the day.
Around lap 4, my back began to tighten. I stopped at my pit and do some quick stretching, but the pain was getting unbearable. I even started running up some of the climbs just to give my back a break which helped a lot.
Nutrition was spot on for this race. After pre-riding, it was clear that there was no place or time to take my hands off the bars to drink. I wore a small Camelbak of water. Each lap, I altered between a small bottle of HEED or Perpetuem. HEED for electrolytes and easy H20, and Perpetuem for some solid calories and protein to help keep hunger down. My pit crew (my dad – running the pit for his first time!) made sure to have a cold bottle of each mixed up for each lap. I also alternated 2 endurolytes and 1 Anti-Fatigue cap each lap. I was sweating buckets, and was paying close attention to how much water was coming in. I also made sure to take in a good size shot of Hammer gel at a selected spot on each lap – one of the only fire road sections.
Shortly into it the last lap, a rider in another group caught and passed me. He and I had gone back/forth throughout the day and he was setting a good pace. I got on his wheel and we were rollin’ along. At one point he asked me if I wanted to pass, and I told him that I needed a rider to chase to keep up the pace. I was able to stay on his wheel till just about the last mile. Nothin’ quite like two Santa Cruz bikes flowin’ through the forest…
Overall, it was a really fun event. I finished 7th in the solo 30-39. Maybe I didn’t have the miles needed for this one. For sure, I had the climbing legs and my ability to ride what little downhill there was fast worked to my advantage. My fueling strategy worked very well: a total of 8:26 hours and not a single cramp and my legs actually felt great.
