Race Report: Lake Tahoe MTB Race
Lake Tahoe MTB Race - 4hr open/pro
Rider: Alex Rusoff
Result: 3rd
Date: 6/17/23
This race format involves completing somewhere from 4-6 laps on a 11 mile course. Riders try to complete as many laps as possible but can't start a new lap after the 4-hour mark. In the past two years only one rider managed to reach 6 laps.
My main goal was to practice adhering to a planned pacing strategy. The course was slightly modified from prior years due to the remaining snow so rather than targeting historical lap times I was going off of mph (13.5mph or sub 50 minute laps). On this pace I was planning on completing 5 laps just past the 4 hour mark.
The course only has 1,100 feet of climbing per 11 mile lap which is more comparable to a typical road course than mountain. As a result, there is a lot of flattish rolling miles with the exception of one ~12 minute climb in the middle of the lap. The trail was about equal parts passable double track and single track. There weren't any challenging features except for one brief rock garden, a few snow drifts to blast over and a couple shallow stream crossings.
6-8 riders slowly created a gap from me on the first climb. It wasn't clear which of these were racing the shorter 12 and 36 mile events (all distances mass started together). I resisted the temptation to chase wheels. The established power target felt very sustainable and I was a little bit surprised to see a ~47 minute first lap.
Over the first three laps my power drifted a little bit but I was managing to stay on pace because I was figuring out how to carry speed through the course. At the end of lap 3 I dropped my first hydro pack and grabbed my 2nd (both ~3 bottles). It was also around this time that I was noticing a lot of soreness in my right hip flexor.
By the start of the fourth lap my hip flexor was quite sore but not in an acute cramping kind of way. I figured I would just push through it. I wasn't really able to tap into my full pedaling power because of this weird limitation. I'm hoping this was a bike fit related issue, which I have since tweaked, but it will take a full gas event to test. My power dropped pretty markedly in laps 4-5 but not catastrophically.
As I started the 5th lap I passed someone stopped in the feed zone. This turned out to be the race winner, who was working on a mechanical. He passed me so powerfully ten minutes later that I thought it must have been one of the relay teams or something. I'm sure he got a ton of motivation when he briefly lost the lead. I figured that I had now dropped off my 6 lap pace just enough that I should go all in on 5 laps so I killed off what was left of my fuel and opened it up. I never caught second place and saw that he pretty much bonked on his 6th lap. If I had managed to pace fast enough to get a 6th lap maybe I would have caught him - who knows.
Successes
All laps at or under target pace
No dramatic fall off in power
Kept up on fueling and hydration strategy
No technical mistakes in course navigation, timing issues, or crashing
209w raw average for 4 hours is pretty high given amount of coasting and elevation
