10 tips for your first Mountain Bike Race

So you want to enter a mountain bike race but you are not sure if you are ready or what to expect. Here is some information to help you .

Let me start by saying that everyone who is serious about riding should do at least one race.

Why? It makes you a stronger rider by pushing you in a way that other rides wont.

What should you expect and what should you do to prepare for your first race?

1) Pick a race far out enough to prepare for - now is a good time The H2H series has 8 races slated for 2009.

2) Get Fit - Start with a month or two of long rides of 2 or more hours 3 times a week other rides can be recovery rides. After you get a base add intervals to build intensity. Two weeks before your race do a practice run at near race pace. The week of the race perform a taper decreasing ride lengths but still having some short intense efforts to keep legs fresh.

3) Get Skilled - Practice the skills necessary to confidently ride the race of your choice. Expect to encounter logs, rock gardens, quick transitions, switchbacks, and steep descents.

4) Make sure your bike is race ready - Ensure that your bike is in proper working order especially shifting (a finicky derailleur can ruin your day), braking, and tires.

5) Get the right Gear - Baggy shorts and a loose fitting tee may be okay for a quick trail ride and some beers with your buds but, on race day you will be better off with Lycra shorts (preferably bib shorts) and a form fitting bike shirt with three back pockets for stuff and a 3/4 front zipper. You can use a camelback but I would suggest traveling as light as possible an extra five pounds on you back can get pretty heavy after an hour and 1/2 of hard pedaling.

6) Get your race routine ready - Try out and know what you will eat on race day from breakfast to post race. Too much and you will feel sick. Too little and you may bonk. Know what you will eat and drink during the race and pick points on the course where you will eat and drink. Have a post race recovery drink and sandwich waiting as well. Make sure you get your bike ready the night before: Lube the chain and cables, pump your tires, check shock pressure. Then put your pumps, tools, and lube in your car in case you need anything on race day. Lay out your race kit the night before and pack post race clothes as well as something to cleanup with. (I find that wintergreen alcohol a towel and a gallon jug of water to do the trick)
Fill your water bottles the night before. The less you have to worry about on race day the better. Being organized and prepared will help you to feel more confident and calm your race day jitters.

7) You will need a one day license and money for the entry fee this will run you between 25-40 for both. If you know that you will be doing a series or more than a few races apply for a license at USA Cycling for $60 you can race any Domestic event (race fee not included) and you receive quite a few discounts with USA Cycling affiliate partners as well.

8) Expect race time to be between 45-2 hours in duration depending on your class. The Beginner is races are usually around 5-8 miles where sport races are about 10-15 miles.

9) Get to the race venue about an 1-1/2 to 2 hours before. Register online to save some time. You will still need to fill out a waiver at the race and you will want to be warmed up before you go off. You should be on the start line with a light sweat but feeling energized. Despite what some people may say do not ride the entire course on a race day. Ride 5-10 minutes of the beginning of the course and the end. This should be enough time to warm-up without fatiguing yourself up and enable you to review your start and finish strategy.

10) Unless you are injured or you bike is broken do not quit. If you are pushing yourself hard you will probably want to but, dig deep and finish strong. Oh and remember to have fun it's "only a race".
When done You should feel good about yourself you just competed in your first mountain bike race - Well done.

Warning: Racing can be addictive!

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Jeff Lenosky at The 2008 Jorba Mountain Bike Festival

Finally I got around to piecing together some video of Jeff from the 2008 JORBA Mountain Bike Festival that took place at Stephens State Park in New Jersey this past September. Jeff is an icon in the world of professional mountain biking and has built a reputation as one of the best riders in the world. Jeff is the current world record holder for the bunnyhop at 45.5 inches and has won a NORBA National Championship Medal every year since turning Pro in 1993.

Video:



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Article about Jeff Lenosky from Mountain Bike Magazine: http://mbword.mountainbike.com/2008/12/freeridin-the-w.html

Take a Trip to the Indoor Mountain Biking Mecca

About 500 Miles away in Cleveland Ohio lies 103,000 square feet of indoor riding at Rays indoor MTB park. People come from six surrounding states to ride the indoor park that has among other things rock gardens, logs, North Shore style teeter-totters a foam pit, and of course jumps, rhythm sections, and a pump track. March host a series of Demo days from bike Manufacturers like Jamis and Giant. check out the site for full details and videos.

Where to Stay:
Holiday Inn rooms are 1/2 PRICE for Ray’s customers. Please call them directly to book your room. Tell them you are going to Ray’s and give them our code number: Code# 5MTB - Rooms are $69 per night (INCLUDES ALL TAXES). If you fly into Cleveland, they offer a free shuttle from Hopkins Airport to the Holiday Inn AND will take you TO and FROM Holiday Inn and Ray’s FREE OF CHARGE!
Holiday Inn - Cleveland Airport
(216) 252-7700
4181 W. 150th Street
Cleveland, OH 44135

Online GPS Content Management Systems - A Head2Head Comparision

I received my Garmin Forerunner 305 as a gift a few years back and used it on most of my rides. I would then post those rides on motionbased to share with my friends, until I reached the dreaded limit of 10 viewable rides that motion based imposes on it’s free subscription customers. I combined some rides and deleted others. I even found a URL hack that motionbased soon fixed.
I had the motion base client on my PC and was familiar and happy with the service so I decided to plunk down the $95 for a year of premium service which included view of unlimited rides and their analyzer tool.
Shortly after that I came across Mapmyride.com and around the same time read about trimbleoutdoors.com (previously All-Sport) in Bicycling magazine.

I decided to compare the three services against one another to see if I was getting my monies worth from motion based.
I measured them against a set of metrics including: Cost, Storage, Reporting, Ease of use, product performance and response time (Screen refresh, upload of files and from device)
and Formats supported (Import/Export).

After review of the services I found the motion based product to be an okay choice with a clear GUI, intuitive menu, and a quick but sometimes fickle upload from device. Motionbased uses a client for communication between the device and your computer that you need to install on your PC or Mac. The other two services use the Garmin communicator plug-in to provide support for upload from the device directly from the web application.
With all of these services performance for upload from device is greatly improved if you purge the history from your device (after backing it up of course) I am currently keeping the past 30 days on the device. If you need to you can upload events back to the device from Garmin's Training Center.
I could not upload from the device to Mapmyride but was able to upload a GPX file. I exported the GPX file from trimbleoutdoors.com export function.

One of the features I liked best about the trimbleoutdoors.com (TO) site was the ability to add pictures, movies, and narratives about the ride. This enables you to bring others right into your ride and provides a great way to share your favorite trails. The performance of TO was also the most consistent and learning curve was extremely short thanks to an intuitive interfaces.

The winner of the GPS Head-to-Head Showdown was trimbleoutdoors.com which was free had good performance, a clean intuitive interface and provided a method of incorporating other media into your GPS map.

Motionbased came in second for providing good analytical data

MapMyRide came in 3rd mainly due to the performance of service which made it frustrating to use MapmyRide provides the ability to print quality maps something that the other sites are lacking.

For Complete Test results goto: GPS Head2Head

Lance Armstrong's one-of-a-kind bike stolen after race

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- A one-of-a-kind bicycle belonging to U.S. cycling legend Lance Armstrong was stolen from a team truck in California just hours after he rode it Saturday on the first day of a nine-day race.