Wednesday's at Wakefield starts in 1 week!

In the spirit of variety and adventure I’m going to be heading out to Wakefield Park next Wednesday for the first of the Wednesday’s at Wakefield mountain bike racing series. I wish I didn’t have to miss the Wednesday night training races at Greenbelt, but I think this will be completely worth it. For sure it is at least me, though Scott is planning on joining me for at least a few of these races. I signed up for the whole series so I will try and make it to all four of them.

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to spend a whole lot of time out on the mountain bike, though I’m hoping that if I get to the park early enough I can reacquaint myself with my mountain bike. After reading some of the weekend race reports from the Big Bear 12 hour race I am getting pretty excited about getting out and racing the trails. I know it will be completely different then road racing though I think I’ll probably love it just as much. It will be interesting to see how I react to the “pressure” (for lack of a better word) of racing on the mountain bike.

I’ll be in the beginner class so it will be a minimum of pressure, but I’ve never done much more then group rides or solo rides on the mountain bike so I have no idea what to expect. I’m guessing the experience will be more adrenaline along with the more physical excitement as opposed to the more observant and strategic mental aspects of road racing. I think more of balls to the wall riding when I think of mountain biking while with road racing it’s so much about conserving, watching, waiting and then of course being in the right place at the right time. Maybe that’s one problem with my road racing though in that I’m trying to use my head too much and conserve and not goings BttW enough for breakaways and hard drives.

Maybe I’m also underestimating the mental aspect of mountain racing as well, though the tactical stuff it would seem would be more picking the right line and sticking the jumps and stumps. There doesn’t appear to be a whole ton of drafting and attacking and conserving in mountain bike racing, but then I’m just an outside observer at this point. I’m sure the beginner races won’t offer me too much of an insight into the true elite racing tactics and strategies, but at least I’ll have a slightly better idea about. No matter what I’m going to have a blast and give it my best shot. DFL couldn’t be that bad could it?