Ouachita Race Report

5 a.m...Have I mentioned how much I hate waking up early???

I woke up, ate pancakes, and had my usual pre-race bottle of sustained energy. I was pretty tired because I had a hard time sleeping in our cabin. It was clean, but the people who ran the place looked and talked like they literally walked off the set of "The Hills have Eyes." I had a hard time keeping my imagination from going overboard the night before.

I didn't have a good position during the rolling start but started to pick off women during the 7 mile dirt climb. My legs didn't feel as tired as I expected them to from my week of training, but they also didn't have any of the race "oomph" that I usually feel when I'm more rested. I had no clue how many girls were in front of me was told at the first checkpoint that I was in second place and that the first place women (Sydney) was a few minutes ahead of me.

I tried to keep up with the guys in front of me in the singletrack because they had a pretty good pace going. We dumped out onto a road and I followed them...the wrong way. We figured it out when we saw other racers (who had done the same thing) riding back towards us. We had to backtrack a bit back down to the road. I wasn't sure if any other women had passed me during that time, but that was the least of my worries because all of a sudden I started to cramp all over.

It was really hot out, but normally heat doesn't bother me. If I tried to push myself at all, my toes and hands immediately started to curl up. I was kicking myself for not buying Eload before the trip, because I was drinking a mixture of half water and half gatorade. That's all that I used last year though, and I never had a problem. I'm perplexed at what caused the cramping. If anything, I've been super good about taking vitamins this year to keep everything balanced. The only thing that I can think of is that my body was drained from working out all week??????

I started slamming endurolyte pills, and ended up taking fifteen throughout the race. Fifteen!!!! By this time temps were in the mid-80's. At the third checkpoint I was told that I was still in second place. I decided to just ride the race at the pace that I was going. The cramping didn't give me much of a choice anyways. I started to feel a bit better at the end. I guess ALL FIFTEEN of the pills started to kick in. In fact, I actually started to feel like I was racing. I caught up to a few guys and road "tactics" started happening. By the end, it was just me and two other guys racing up the hill.


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This is my second time getting second place at this race. Even though I trained through it, I still dropped ten minutes off of my time from last year. It was awesome seeing everyone again and congrats to Sydney for winning (again!) I'll be back next year for sure. Isn't the third time always the charm? Ouachita is an awesome training race and incredibly well run. The only bummer is coming back to this weather. We were racing in 80 degree weather and now there's a forecast for snow. Uggghh!!

Here I am happy to be done!

Congrats to Bonnie for getting fifth place. I betcha she's going to be Slingshot's future endurance racer...just watch. Unfortunately, the guys had a rougher time. Dan Jansen was kicking butt in second place. He had a stomach virus thing all week though, and things got pretty rough stomach wise towards the end of the race. My hubby had a double flat and had to walk for an hour out of the trail. Joe P. took a wrong turn, and had to backtrack for a really long time. And Barry...had three flats. He had a really long, hot day out there.


Hanging out with Dan Jansen. It probably would have been ok to take off my helmet, don't you think?

Bonnie finishing!

Barry showing how happy he was about the race...

We went to Sonic for the first time. It think that it was the best cheeseburger that I ever had!