Down and Dirty: Truman Lake Mountain Bike Park

This past weekend kicked off my summer of mountain bike races. The Down and Dirty Race Series, held at the new Truman Lake Mountain Bike Park in Warsaw, MO, is a 3 race series that takes place on some fresh new trails about 2 hours from Columbia, where I am residing for the summer. Word did not spread too far, but lucky for me there was plenty of literature advertising the race at the shop that I work at, and once I saw the brochure I asked off for all 3 of the race days.

I had a feeling this was going to be a really small race, considering it wasn’t part of the Midwest Fat Tire MTB Series, so after driving a couple hours early Sunday morning I was surprised to see 30-40 racers turn up for it. There were Beginner, Sport, and Expert classes, but nothing separate for the singlespeeders, therefore I would be racing the geared fellas. The Kids, Women, and Beginner classes all together had about 30 riders, and the Sport and Expert classes had only 6 racers each. Once the women and children were cleared from the course, Expert took off on the 7 mile loop, 3 laps, and the Sport guys started a few minutes after, same course, 2 laps. I headed into the single track in 3^rd, and within the first couple minutes the race jitters got the best of the leader as he overshot a turn and headed into the brush, and me and a rider from Warrensburg on a carbon Specialized were pulling with the other 4 in tow. After making him uncomfortable on a few climbs(he relaxed on them, but my 1 gear means I have to go fast up hills), he told me to pass, and me and my Monocog racer were off. After a while I no longer heard cracking twigs or rubber on rocks behind me, and just tried to maintain a good pace, crank hard on the flats, and reserve as much energy as possible for the second lap.

The course was off camber and really rocky, and not loose ones, but the kinds that are halfway dug in the ground that are pretty jarring on a rigid bike, baby heads as I heard them called by many. Is this because they resemble a partially birthed baby, or because they are about the size of a newborn’s head, or both perhaps?. The laps were longer than I expected and the anticipation of hitting the end of that first lap started to get to me a bit. Coming around to the start again I heard the time keeper shout “Leader” as I rode by, before calling out my time, and got a bit of a mental boost heading into lap 2. A couple miles into lap 2 I thought I heard my rear rim getting dinged a bit while running over all those babies, and noticed on quite a few turns that my rear end would sort of roll out a bit through the turn. I was hesitant to stop, fearing that second place wasn’t far behind me, but I stopped and shot some co2 into my tubeless wheel, and got passed by a couple guys, one of whom I was convinced was the second place rider. Got back on, and tried to bridge the gap between us, but he was fast and too far out so I just focused keeping the oncoming cramps that I felt at bay. Coming into the final turn I saw the 3^rd place rider about 10 seconds behind me, so I used the last bit I had in my tank to get up the steep grassy hill before the finish. Timekeeper yelled “Sport Winner” and I rode straight to my car and got a bottle of water, thinking that he must have messed the results up somehow. I sat in my car with the AC on for a few minutes, changed, and then made my way back to the scoring table to check my final position. He said I did actually win it, and the man in the blue jersey that passed me when I was airing my tire was the 2^nd place expert rider. Cool. I won by almost a minute, got a medal, podium picture and everything. Rewarded myself with a hearty 8 dollar meal at McDonalds(it was the happenin place in Warsaw), and enjoyed the drive back to Columbia. Race #2 is on Father’s Day, so unless I can find a plane to take me directly from the race to wherever the delicious Father’s Day meal is in St. Louis, I probably will not be attending. Race #3 coincides with the OMBA Caramba, as well as the last day of Stitz family vacation. It is likely that MTB United will be represented by The Brothers Stitz that day at the SAC River trails that most of you have such fond memories of. This weekend is Rhett’s Run in my hometown, just down the street in fact. It’ll be the first big race since the shitshow that was Smithville Lake, should be interesting. Stay tuned for the dual race report from Christian Bernard and I.