FM:Race at SERC#3 at Tsali

This past weekend I was part of the Faster Mustache Race Team's contingent to #3 of the South-Eastern Regional Championship series. We drove up Saturday morning, set up camp, and pre-rode the full race course:

I'd ridden at Tsali before, but only on the Western half, and while similar, the Eastern side seems to cover a lot more distance. 18.6 miles later, we had a good idea of what we were in store for on Sunday, but for some reason Adrian and I kept on riding and did a loop on Thompson Loop:

This added in another 7.7 miles for the day and the 26.3 miles at 9.3mph turned out to be a bit much for a pre-ride. I downed my OJ+Protein recovery drink (quite foul tasting) and some PowerBar Recovery (delicious!) and we drove back to the campsite. The 20 or so of us were quite the crowd with mtb racers, little kids, and dogs running around everywhere, but there was plenty of food and everyone seemed to have a blast. I squeezed a ~30 minute nap in and felt a lot better, and we all sat around the fire passing around a guitar and making smores as the sun went down.

I rolled out pretty early Sunday morning to catch my 9:30am start time (Most people didn't start until 11:30), and rode my race. The first mile or two felt great, but on the first big climb the mileage from Saturday quickly caught up with me. I was 5.5% faster during the race than on the pre-ride and my heart rate was up from 159 to 166, so I was working harder and going faster, but not as fast as I could have been without the Saturday riding. Official results aren't up yet, but I know I stayed in front of at least 2 other people in my category and passed at least 2 people. Here's a map with all 3 loops from the weekend on it:

After a little cooling off, I set out to take photos, not just of Faster Mustache (Faster Mustache SERC#3 photos), but of everyone in the yellow wave. Hopefully some people will want to buy some of these SERC#3 Photos this go around. Below is Eric and Alex at the start of their single speed category, which they won 1st and 3rd place in:

And a closing shot of FM:Race's temporary world headquarters next to the start line, where we waited on everyone to finish up and for awards to be given out:

I had a pretty good time, but it's definitely a lot of trouble "just" for an hour long race. Plenty more races to go this summer, and in theory my first race at the velodrome will be tomorrow evening.