Result: 4th place
Equipment: BMC Fourstroke with Maxxis Aspen 2.2" tires
Type of race: XCM, 65 kilometers
Lida Loop is the second race of the Swedish Marathon Cup (Svenska Långloppscupen). The first race was a couple of weeks back where I placed third.
I've always had mixed feelings about Lida Loop. The main part of the race that I don't like is all the stone slabs with the big gaps and drops between; If you take the correct line -> great. If you take the wrong line -> disaster. As this race is outside of Stockholm, far away, I only ever ride this kind of terrain once a year; One I partake in Lida Loop. I never quite get used to it and I never get to memorize the trails of this particular race. Last time, due to COVID, was in 2019. At that time I finished in 10th and had to take a trip to the emergency room afterwards (Lida Loop 2019). The good thing this year is that conditions were super dry.
I managed transportation a bit different this year; All previous years I had always stayed in a hotel in the area the night before the race. This time I decided that I didn't want to sacrifice a Saturday night alone in a hotel room so I drove up the morning of the race. It's a 620 kilometer drive so I got up at 4AM. Traffic was almost nonexistent so I was actually on location at 9 AM, 2 hours before race start. I had breakfast while driving; overnite oats, which is a favorite of mine. When I had arrived I could take it easy and do my race prep according to plan.
My Lida Loop results over the years:
2014 9th place
2017 DNF (mechanical issues)
2018 10th place
2019 10th palce
So, yeah, as you can see from the results not my favorite race.
Another thing that I don't like at all about Lida Loop is the starting climb. It's really short, really steep and on grass. The whole field gets bunched up and there's chaos. I love a good long starting climb, but these short ones really highlight my lack of explosiveness and I get passed by everyone.
This year it went as many times before: I got passed by everyone up the climb. Even worse; I got stuck behind a few guys who couldn't even make it all the way up and unclipped and started walking. That forced me to do the same. Disaster!
The whole rest of the first loop, which is on easy and quick jogging trails, I overtook what felt like a hundred riders. It was probably more like 50. After things had settled down I had caught up with a good group of riders. There were about 8 of us. We had another even bigger group ahead which I thought we might catch, but this never ever happened. At the end of the first loop we got to the first stone slab section and I lost most of my group.
The middle of the race went fine. Single track riding was good. I had lowered the air pressure in my tires a bit compared to normal. About 1.3-1.4 bars. This turned out to be a really good idea over all the roots. I had good power in my legs and the watts were good.
The third and last loop had the most stone slabs. Again lost my group here and was overtaken by a few riders, including a couple of M50 riders. At this point I suspected that I was just inside the top-10. However the trails got easier and I didn't feel very tired towards the end of the race. Legs had good power. I managed to overtake two M50 riders the last few kilometers and finished in fourth place.
In the total standings of the cup I'm now in second place.
Post race data
Average power: 256W
Average heart rate: 168bpm
Max H/R: 184bpm
Weighted average power: 285W
