Mad Dash 4 hr Race

Mad Dash 4 hour Race, Farragut State Park, ID
June 5, 2010
The past few weekends have been filled with racing, 2 weeks ago the Wenatchee road race and last weekend the 24 hour race. So to say the least we have been a little busy. I am training for XTERRA's also so I have been slipping a bit of running and swimming into the program, well Thursday night I got into a competition with the treadmil in my basement and Friday morning I was pretty sure the treadmill won. Going into Saturdays race my quads were toast, so I was a little apprehensive. It was kind of like old times because Kris's mom came and watched the kids and we headed to the race alone. It was a quiet trip. We didn't time it quite right so we got to the race about 25 min before the start. We managed to make it to the start on time. The gun went off and we headed out. It is a fairly fun course, pretty mellow double track with a switch back here and a couple of roots there. Not to technical in any way. We have had a very unusual amount of rain and very cold weather so the course was actually muddy. I decided to ride my Ibis Mojo, which I was very thankful for later. It is such a smooth ride and descending so much fun on it. Knowing I was going to be on my bike for at least 4 hours meant I needed the nice ride. So I took my Ibis Mojo, my sweet Vanderkitten kit, clear lens Tifosi glasses, and my camel back and headed for the start.

I probably started a little fast for no warm up, but didn't really want to be behind going into the first double/single track. I definately felt my run on Thursday, so that worried me a little. I still charged the climb out of the start and took the lead. Probably not the right thing to do with my legs. The laps were 7 mile laps and I think I was averaging about 38ish min laps. The end of the lap was about 5 min of a technical section if you could call it that, but I looked forward to it each lap. Last year Erika (my Transrockies partner) and I had done this race together. So after about 3 laps I was getting bored. I had started lapping other racers and was pretty sure I had a good lead. My legs weren't as bad as when I started, just a little sore at this point. By 3 hours I decided I needed to set some goals or I was going to lose my race vibe. My husband hadn't laped me yet so I decided to push to stay ahead of him. It didn't work but I managed to creep up on the men in front of me. I saw them on a straight away on my 6th lap and decided they were my target. So I started to hammer, I also wanted to see if I could pull of a fast lap my last lap. Well I must have gone hard because I made it all but 1/2 mile into the last lap and I cought them. So my thought was, now what. Well I supose I am a little demented at times so I decided to see how much time I can put on these guys in the last lap. So off I went. I think in the end I managed to put about 4 min on them, and equaled the time of my first lap. Not bad, another win in the books.

Knowing that the next week we would be doing the XTERRA in this same place, we decided to head down to the water to check it out. Well Lake Pend Oreille is probably the coldest lake in Idaho. Well I couldn't get it, I was actually doubting racing the XTERRA. Good part was my legs got Iced in the 48 degree water.