Just one week after the Fortress Challenge there
was the last Qatar Chain Reaction MTB race, The Inland Sea Traverse. 40k though
desert on hard salt plains, soft sand and with several dune crossings where you
have to push your bike up and down a dune! When I’m now thinking about it, it
looks even tougher than the Fortress Challenge itself!
It was a one way race with start at the Sealine
Beach resort, close to where the paved road ends and the race finish was on the
shore of Inland Sea at the end of the desert highway. We saved some morning
driving and camped on the finish line on Thursday. We didn’t save much, because
that 40k drive is almost an hour anyway, but at least we kept company to the race
organizers Davy and Ondrej who were setting up the flags and the marking the
track.
The race morning was calm and quiet with clouds running
across the sky threatening to put some rainy twist to the race! I put the same
secret tech as last year and put on sand gaiters and clip-on aero bars and was thinking
about easy race. I was terribly mistaken! Sometimes I don’t understand
myself…one day I load all the possible gear for all possible or even impossible
scenarios and sometimes I skip some little thing that I think can get somewhere
else and no need to pack it now. This time I didn’t bring my pump.
“Yeah…everyone is going to have one there. I’ll borrow!” They had, but without
gauge, so in the pre-start rush I put too much air in the tires. And hard tires
in the sand slow you down ten times more that aero bars can gain you on the
flat!
When the race started, I got quite fast to the lead. Only
Ondrej was stuck on my wheel and drafting. “ No helping this time my friend. The race is on as always!” I said
to myself and tried to shake him off using roadie techniques of sudden changing
of lanes and sprinting. Didn’t work! “Let’s try at the first dune crossing” I
planned. It worked there and I gained around 100 meters lead. But the problem
was that even when clenched in aero bars on the hard salt plain pedaling full
speed, my lead was not increasing! And the first worries crawled into my mind.
After the second dune the gap remained the same,
but after some sand patch crossings I he started slowly getting closer. And I
felt I was running out of gas! He caught me on the third and fourth dune which
were connected into one long sand stretch! I picked the car driven track and
tried to get on the bike and ride a bit, as I remembered I successfully did
last year, but it didn’t work! Ondrej came first out of the dune, but I quickly
caught him up and this time it was me who was drafting.
I ate a gel and tried to recover some strength
for the last six flat kilometers coming after the last two dunes. But when we
got there, it was obvious that somehow I didn’t have the strength to fight with
Ondrej pedaling with ease. Nice gesture from him was that he waited for me
couple of times…probably as a payback for the Challenge. But same as there,
here also was nobody behind us for several minutes, so even if we didn’t help
each other, we would have taken first two places J But it is nice the help and
also been helped!
Last sand patch 500m before the start ensured me that I had
my tires too hard seeing Ondrej glide though and me getting drowned after ten
meters! We crossed the finish together, in the standings we had the same time,
but true winner is him!
I finished the race in 1:31 hours and when sitting in
the shade, sipping cold water and waiting for the others, I realized that this
was a first MTB race in the last year or two that I didn’t win! Warning
buddy…you are not invincible as you might have thought J
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