The Monkey gets Cranky again!

The second race in the Cranky Monkey MTB series was at Wakefield (again) this past Sunday. Fortunately, the crazy heat we've been having had broken and it was quite pleasant racing weather. This race was in the style of a crit (short for criterium), which for non-cycling fans, is a fancy way of saying "going around in circles over and over again". The course is a 1.5 mile loop, and my class had 30 minutes to complete as many laps as we could, plus one lap after. Positioning is SO important in a race like this, and I blew it from the start. But I settled in and sat back on the wheel of a girl I race against a lot. With one lap left to go, I knew that if I wanted to get in front of her, I would have to do it before the two big climbs. She was getting me on the downhills, but climbing is my strength, and I knew the only place I could try to lose her was on the climb. There was a long section of jeep trail in the middle of the loop, and that was only chance I was going to get to pass her. I red-lined it for about 3 minutes (red-line: go as hard as you can), got passed her, and tried to put as much space in between us as possible. MTBing is as much about the mental game as it is about positioning. If you can get far enough in front of your competitor so that you're actually out of sight, you have a better chance at staying out in front of them. Being able to see the person you're trying to chase down is a HUGE motivator. I was able to hold my position to complete the lap, and finish in 4th. I was very happy with this result.