Anyway, Scratchgravel XC is a mountain bike race out in Helena. It takes place down in the valley so it can happen earlier than most other races in the state. The downside is that you aren't really climbing up anything long or steep (or is that an upside?), and a big portion of the course is pretty smooth double track. That does make it a good start to mtb season though.
This was the first MTB race I ever signed up for, back in 2014. I raced as a cat 3, and it was pretty close between me and another guy but I did win. I remember getting lapped by Landon Beckner, who won cat 1 as like a 15 year old, and then being amazed by his time on the strava segments when I looked at the ride later. I upgraded after that, but since our wed series are non-categorized and I always miss the Missoula XC for one reason or another, I actually hadn't done another usac sanctioned MTB race since then. So still cat 2 (although I can upgrade to 1 if I want).
Last time, the start was up a really steep and loose bit, so I was concerned about getting a good start from the front. Turned out they moved the start up to the top of that bit so it was less of an issue. There were 12 guys in cat 2 combined with the masters 40+ for 3 laps (cat 1 does 5) so it was a decent sized pack
Ira, a local Helena racer, took off from the start and it was all I could do to stick on his wheel. We crested the short start climb with some space on the field and I was breathing pretty hard and my legs were already feeling it. I spent Saturday morning doing trail work and then went on a "openers" mtb ride that turned kind of long, and didn't get quite as much pre-race warm up as I would have liked. About 3 minutes in I was beginning to worry about being able to hold that kind of a pace for much longer, but then the course flattens out and descends a bit. He eased up on the flat, too much actually, so some of the group caught back up and a few went past into the next short climb and singletrack section. By the time we hit the next doubletrack climb, he had let a little bit of space develop in front of him and I went by to catch the new leader.
I followed him most of the rest of the lap, which descends some doubletrack, hits some rolling single track, decends more doubletrack, and then starts a gradual climb on doubletrack. The new leader was riding pretty quickly, especially on the downhill sections, but I was pretty comfortable following and we had about 5-6 more guys just behind us. Once we hit the climb back to the start/finish Eric Greenberg went by and the leader didn't follow. I didn't hesitate long and got up on Greenberg's wheel, then suddenly we were alone with quite a bit of space.
We traded off a bit and rode the next two laps pretty comfortably to win our respective categories. So it turned out to be a pretty uneventful race for me. I won some beer and they had nice etched wood medals.
Here's the strava
https://www.strava.com/activities/1554708934/overview
Looks like I've improved a bit in the last few years, as I put myself in the top 10 of a few segments including the "power 2" segment where I had been so impressed at Landon's time in 2014 (which I went faster than). Not sure about upgrading to cat 1 though. Being fast in MT is different from being fast in other places, and I still don't really consider myself very close to the level of the top mtb racers in the state like Toby, Joel, Butterfield, Foster, etc. I guess we'll see how the wed night races go, and the Philipsburg 46 at the end of June. Goal is to keep up what I've been doing for another month, and not crash or hurt myself.
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