OMBC #3 the Grassman

Wow, what a super hard race this was. Not yet accustomed to the heat which was 85* and sunny, which was actually nice rather than 60 and rain. The course was mainly dry with a few mud sections, but nothing major. The laps were around 5 miles long with over 700' of climbing per lap with some very steep grades 16-17% for over a mile a.k.a Heart Attack Hill and some technical single track, a few rocky areas and some single track through jeep trails, actually all equaled alot of suffering. My legs felt good on the 10% grades but those nasty steep ones I had to walk my bike as did EVERYONE else, we could have ran the whole course much faster than we did racing it on our bikes, and I don't know if I would really call this one a race as it was more a death march.

I was at the the end of my three lap Master 40-49 race with about 500 meters to go on an uphill gravel road when the inside of my left quad decided it was going to knot up and not let me pedal anymore. I hopped off the bike and tried to run to the finish and the cramp was so excruciatingly painful I literally thought I was going to pass out, and believe me I can handle some pain. I froze dead in my tracks sitting 3rd overall at that point when one of my age group guys came by, I could not take a step forward, it was crazy. Lynn saw me and started to walk towards me and asked if I needed water but I had some, it eased up somewhat and I climbed back on my bike and rode to the finish. Not the finish I would have liked (5th)  and especially to see guys going past me and there was nothing I could do about it. I hydrated what I though was enough and took in gels and two packs of Clif Blocs, but evident-ally that wasn't enough. I know I wasn't the only one suffering out there as the race director said it was the most DNF's ever for an OMBC series race.

We definitely got our money's worth.