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The subtitle of this post is "20 miles of mud-choked smiles." It was a tough day one for TransRockies, especially for those of us competitors who don't really know how to ride a mountain bike. That didn't stop it from being 30 kilometers of giggly fun, but, yes, Keith and I did take four hours and 32 minutes to wrap it up, and yes, if I knew what the conditions were going to be like and I was given the choice of whether to ride my bike or leave the bike at the starting line and run the time trial instead, I would have picked the latter option. I would have definitely moved faster on foot without the slippy wheels/mud-clogged anchor.
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This is my partner, Keith, and my friends Sierra and Jenn from Whitehorse, Yukon. Sierra and Jenn are racing in the Women's Open category. Keith and I are in Mixed Open. It rained most of the night and all morning, and by our 11:34 a.m. start time, the trail had been thoroughly soaked and torn to shreds by the nearly 400 competitors who started before us.
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These girls started just a few minutes before we did. I like their strategy - if you can't be the fastest, you should be the most stylish.
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This guy finished the race before we even started. The look on his face gave us an idea of what we were in for.
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The route gained more than 1,600 feet right out of the gate, in less than six kilometers (like how I'm mixing my distance/metric measurements? Expect that from me a lot in TransRockies.) It was a super fun climb; definitely my favorite part of the day, and I'm not joking about that. It was mostly rideable and incredibly scenic, and I have decided that gravity is not my friend. Yes, I would rather just ride uphill and skip the descent. As I said to a guy climbing in front of me earlier today, "I like riding uphill because at least then, I own gravity. Once I turn my wheels downhill, gravity owns me."
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A few too many times I shouted to Keith in a rush of glee, "It looks just like Juneau! Oh, Keith, I miss Juneau." (And I promise, this was said without an ounce of sarcasm.)
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Another picture from the climb. After "trail amnesia" sets in, I can always tell which parts of the ride I was in a great mood and which parts I was grumpy, because the good-mood stretches are saturated with pictures, and the bad-mood stretches have no visual documentation.
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Top of the first climb. Keith endo'd just a few hundred meters down the trail and we both picked our way down after that, mostly on foot. The surface was cheek-clenching steep, covered in sticky mud with veins of wet roots flowing across the width and length of the narrow, switchbacking trail. It was much more technical than anything I have ever attempted to ride, and I wasn't about to start on day one of a seven-day stage race that I'd like to finish.
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This was part of a five-kilometer downhill section that we were able to ride. This is only my and Keith's second time riding mountain bikes together, and we found we're both well-suited to each other as partners. Both of us prefer self-preservation to taking big chances for a small boost of overall speed. As he said to me earlier today, "I'm a trail runner, and after this race, you probably will be, too."
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About midway through a long, rolling descent called the Coal Discovery Trail, I was pretty much ready to chuck my wheels in the woods. The tires got so clogged with gummy mud that they were worse than slicks, fishtailing down the chewed-peanut-butter trail even when I didn't hit the front brake, and I was side-slipping off the slope on a regular basis. I finally got frustrated enough with it that I announced to Keith I was just going to jog the rest of the way, and I hoped he didn't care. I did jog a good most of it, and my mood improved again pretty quickly. By the time we were freed from our self-renamed "Mud Hell Discovery Trail," I was singing at the top of my lungs, a song that Keith had running through his head all day thanks to our friend Dave and a clever shirt, the "867-5309" song.
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Keith and I at the finish line, giving our best defiant sneer to stage one. One of the advantages to not riding much of a 30-kilometer stage is that you don't really get tired at all. I can't even feel it in my legs or head, so I'll chalk this one up as a free day and hope we get a fresh start tomorrow.