my first Salty Dog challenge

I have known about the race for a while but never succeded in talking myself into doing one. Well, this year I have decided to do it as a part of my endurance training for IMC this year. I like being in the mountains so moutain biking has been one of my favorite sport for about 8 years now. Now I am spending more time on road for triathlon training, I get this little urge to hit trails and doing the Salty Dog this month seems to give me a good excuse to build endurance and figure out my nutrition needs under stress. I am glad that my friend, Courtney decided to do it, too. It was quite overwhelming to see so many racers on bikes at start.

We put ourselves pretty close to the end of the pack. It was quite congested for a while. There was a long line up of riders walking up hill, so I had to be quite patient for a while. The second lap was much less congested but on my third lap, fast riders were catching up to me, so I had to pull to the side to let them pass by me. Most the riders were appreciative of my effort but I got annoyed with some who think they own the trail and no thanking from them.

I have hardly mountain biked this year. I managed to squeeze 3 days of easy rides last week and 2 days a few months ago. I felt pretty rusty going downhill and I didn't have much of energy for sprinting up hills. However, I'm not sure it is related with me spending lots of time on road bike this year but I felt pretty comfortable going up the fire road. I usually hate long fire roads. When I look up and see a long straight line of wide open uphill road, the sight makes me feel tired. But this time, that's where I pass riders or catching up to a group. I had this steady comfortable pace and I tried to keep my HR down to recover for a next lap. My average HR was 147 throughout which is under my LBP. My guess is doing some climbs on roads in Mallorca helped me pace myself going up steady gradual uphills.

I was going to stop at lap 5 but as soon as I got to the bottom, Ginny said to me "Unfortunately your have time for one more lap.", so off I went. I am glad she encouraged me because completing 6 laps was beyond my goal and I did it. And I also want to thank her for helping me for fueling and words of encouragement.

Regarding fueling, I was good at keeping up hydration until 4th lap, then I noticed I was consuming less & less fluid and food. I did manage to pee once during the race, so I wasn't too bad but there is defintely some room for improvement. Boost and peanutbutter& jelly sandwich was good choice for me that day. I also consumed 4 salt sticks during the race and 1 prior. Even though it was cloudy and not so hot day, I still lost lots of salt and it was all over my skin. Yikes. I can't imagine how much supplement I need on hot days but I need to figure out before IMC for sure.

I also had some cramping issues, too. On my 4th lap, I noticed a few riders standing beside the uphill tack and I didn't really figure out why. Then on my 5th lap, as I was going uphill at the beginning of the race course, I stared having cramp in my left inner thigh. Never had cramp in the area before but it was painful enough to make me stop and strech & massage. Then I figured I need to peddal on granniest gear to avoid it. I also experienced some cramp on my left arm while going downhill after the fire road.

I was pretty tired by the last lap. I was very careful going downhill since I figure that's when you are most likey to hurt yourself. I made it to the finish line in 6:10 and I was tired but felt very accomplished. We stopped by at Macdonald for MacNuggets & MacFlurry before going back to Revelstoke.