1 Wet one and 1 Muddy one

One road race and one MTB race, back to back days plus getting to see my best friend = AWESOME WEEKEND!

First I had the Independence Valley Road Race, my first road race of the season and one of the toughest courses on the calendar. First off I want to thank Eric for putting on an awesome race. It was a short lived race for me, after making it over the first climb with relative ease coming down the sketchy decent we hit the flats and Chipchase comes along side me and then promptly flats. Being optimistic I fell back to help only to find a crazy slow fix! Bummer! We chased as hard as we could for about 20 min worked back though a couple of groups but never made it back to the main group. It's really hard to chase something you can't see. We finished up the lap and I made it up Michigan hill again, then bagged it and saved it for the MTB race the next day. It was still a great workout, hindsight is 20/20 I should have stayed in the pack but I'd rather help out a teammate and give them the chance to finish the race then sit in the pack any day!

Day 2! Sandy Ridge Super D! I was pretty stoked for this one! It was the first time I hadn't ridden at Sandy Ridge before but heard great things about it and it didn't disappoint. It was an awesome course and crazy muddy! We made the 2.5 hr trek down south and it rained harder and harder all the way down we made it to the race and it was just pouring! Registered and headed up for a preride. We made the 30 min trip to the top and headed down the race course, two things came to mind straight away, wow what a cool trail and wow how slow I am I riding this cool trail... I was hoping the fact that I had a number plate on and someone said "GO" would make me go faster... Well it did... sorta, in some places. The gun went off and within the first 3 corners I had already blown one of them really bad. Not to long after that I managed to hit one root wrong which sent me into hitting the next 3 roots wrong and launching myself off the front of my bike. After getting up and trying to get back into the race I was clean for the next while and at times felt really fast and really good, other times it was like: Rock.... Front Wheel.... Rear Wheel... Turn... slowly. Other times I felt like I was super smooth, so I guess that's a start I have maybe one or two true descents since the first of the year so I can't really expect to much.

That's the weekend! Thanks for reading!

Killer Ride!

Training for a 24 hour solo race really hurts! Especially when your out of shape! I had the option of doing a couple races today yet thought better of it after thinking about the fact that I have very little training since the last race and racing without training just leads to dissapointment. So I did a 4 hour ride today and rode hard for most of it. I started from my house and rode to the forest all the way up to the new trail and hit that (Awesome!). Then down to the fall creek trailhead and up Mima 8 across 50 and down 6, then back home. Why when I say that is sounds so easy... Anyway 4 hours in the saddle and I was back, totally exhausted! It was an awesome ride though, got spinkled on just once, it was windy up there but not bad, and the trails were in mint condition! As long as you stay low, 50 had snow piles off the side of the trail.

OK really tired today was short but better than nothing.

Rider Profile!

Thurston Talk did a profile of me for their web site. Thanks Stacee! It turned out great!

http://www.thurstontalk.com/2011/03/18/local-mountain-bike-rider-finds-balance-between-work-and-play/

First Race of the Year!!!

Oh man it feels good to strap a number on the front of my bike and get back on the race course! Not only that but I am on a rad new bike and that always gives a little extra motivation. The race was out at Black Diamond, which is the most twisty, bumpy and technical race we do all year and I was glad for all 5 inches of travel on the Shinobi.

Not sure what the thought process was on the start... but the fastest guys started at the back of the feild... about 2 min behind the SS and all the other age catagories and there is very little passing on this course to say the least. Can anyone say passing clinic! To all of those who let us get by without hesitation I'd like to send out a big THANK YOU! There weren't many of us racing in my cat. but those who showed up were quick, I was able to stay with Spencer while we were trying to work our way through the group but once we hit open trail he was gone. Spencer's a world class rider so I definetly didn't feel too bad when he was gone, at that point I was in second and was just hoping to stay there. Tim started to bring me back lap 2 and I was getting a little worried becasue my back started to bug me. At the end of lap 2 on the only road section I opened it up a little bit and streched out my back, I must have been going pretty fast becasue there was a train of guys behind me that I was passing on the road and they all looked to be hurting... sweet! We hit the singletrack and opened up the gap. The cool part about this course is that it twists back on itself a lot! So you can see where the guys are behind and in front of you, sometimes its hard to tell how far back they are but at least you can see them. I had opened the gap on third to about 45 sec to a min and felt pretty comfortable with that knowing I was going faster in the technical stuff. Towards the end I could definetly feel myself getting tired and making more mistakes, I dumped it once but was able to hold off a charging Tim and take 2nd! Sweet if that's not motivaiton for the coming year I am not sure what is.

Thats all for now! Late!