Race Report: Lake Sonoma MTB Hopper M30-39
Race: Lake Sonoma MTB Hopper - Men’s 30-39
Date: April 15th 2023
AVRT racers: Alex Rusoff 1st / 81
Course: 26mi / 5200ft. Road start into almost all singletrack with brief fire roads.
Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/8897010895/overview
Nutrition: Skratch spiked with malto
This year the course was modified to account for the heightened water levels in the reservoir. I had raced the original course once prior in 2021 and took 3rd that time. By comparison this course featured what felt like longer climbs and longer descents. Certain parts of the descent were properly chunky and gnarly with rain ruts that exposed rocks and created interesting obstacles.
I started off about 20 rows back because I didn’t expect how early others would stage. Oops. Fortunately the course started with a 12 minute road climb before pinching off into the single track. I moved through the field over the course of the road climb and felt extremely comfortable above threshold.
In the first 20 minutes of the single track I set off aggressively passing others until I found myself in a nice open space. It is helpful to have someone to chase but I was much faster to ride on my own because I wasn’t limited by the speed of a rider in front of me. The single-speeders were also out there racing in the mass start. Those guys and gals are rad but if they unclip on the climb then so will you (and hence the urgency in passing).
The course was mostly dry except for a few shallow stream crossings and one surprise mud bog in which I sank to my bottom bracket. The wet didn’t really change the racing, except for the 2nd time through the mud in which I did a slip-and-slide. A lesson I learned is that if you end up with a handful of mud during a race it is best to clear the thick greasy mud from the hand somehow before slapping it straight on your grip.
Last year I became a hydration pack convert and that was proving to be a good choice for facilitating drinking/fueling on a course with no natural recoveries. I had all of my fuel (skratch + malto) in my ~1600ml bladder. The tricky thing with a pack is that it can be hard to monitor your drinking rate. I started to feel some pretty concerning cramps coming on about 6 miles from the finish and decided to kill the rest of the fuel as a hail mary. It turned out I had way more water left than I had expected meaning I had under fueled the first lap.
It was brutal to try to hold pace near the end. There was a guy in stars and stripes kit about 20-30s ahead of me but I couldn’t close in on him. I did, however, manage to keep from getting passed by anyone for the entire 2nd lap. On my tail about 30s back was Chris Flynn. I was especially motivated to fend him off as he passed me in the final 200m in 2021, putting me in 3rd. I wound up winning the 30-39 and my position translated to the equivalent of 6th in the pro men.
Next up - Sea Otter. If you are mtb-curious I encourage you to go give it a shot.