Oh boy my first blog along with my first race of the season.  I just returned from the Nova Desert Classic down in Arizona.  What a relief to excape this cold weather and ride in the warm desert.  It was an exciting weekend and a good way to start the season.  We drove down on Thursday and on Friday we watched the Marathon.  It looked pretty brutal as it always does.  For me this race consisted of three events.  The first event was the TT.  Unfortunately I was under the impressoin that I was the only Junior Expert racing because it only showed me on the start list.  Well I guess there was another junior who had just registered before the race.  Its hard to get motivated to go 100 percent when you think that you are the only one in your catagory so he ended up winning the TT.

The next event was the Super D later on that day.  Usually Super D races are suppose to consist of mostly downhill with a few small climbs.  That was not the case at nova.  This Super D had almost the same amount of climbing if not more climbing than the TT.  It was pretty fast and since we started in 15 second intervals I thought thought that it was going to get all bottled up but suprisingly it didn't.  my only competition started 15 seconds in front of me but I stayed on his wheel the whole time and ended up beating him by around 10 seconds.  Despite this win he was still leading the GC by about one minute.  My third and most important event was the cross country on the next day.  This was one of the tought races I've done.  It consisted of three 11 mile loops with only small climbs.  it was really hot and Im used to races with long sustained climbs with a pretty long decent to rest on.  The Nova xc course had few spots to rest and no long climbs.  They started us with the semi pros which was fun.  I went pretty easy the first lap to save energy but on the second lap I went out hard and put about a minute on the other junior.  The third lap was the toughest and I had absolutly no energy by the end but I pust another minute on second place.  Since I won the xc by around 2 minutes I also won the overall.  I was happy but I wish that there would have been more Juniors.  I remember in the past even before Nova was a NORBA national, the Junior Expert field was almost 30 deep.  Alot has changed.  Overall it was a spectuclar weekend of racing.  It got me even more stoked for the upcoming season and events to come.

Oh ya we saw a fat rattle snake curled up under our car which was exciting. 

I couldnt figure out how to put pictures in my blog but i have a picture of the snake along with race photos under my section of pictures so check them out.  well im tired so im gonna go hit the sack. peace