So this weekend was the mountain bike national championships in Sonoma California which went really well for me.  After the Deer Valley NORBA National in Utah we packed up and headed to Sonoma.  When we got there it was like we entered a whole new world.  First of all the race was held at a race car track so we pull in on thursday to pre ride and its prolly 100 degrees and theres all theses crazy race cars everywhere speeding around.  Super odd thing to see at a mountain bike race.  And to make matters even worse the cross country course was by far the lamest course EVER!  It wasn't even mountain biking.  It started out on a road climb and then turned into hard packed dirt road.  The loop was seven miles and most of it was on some type of road and the small amount of single track in the course wasn't smooth or fun at all.  It was straight up torture and was sooooooo rough.  I was sooo relieved to get to our campsite at the crazy KOA.  When I say crazy i mean CRAZY!!!  Even weirder than the race track.  Seriously a milion RV's and and about a billion yelling, screaming, crying kids.  At one point this little punk 8 year old on his little bike rolls up and starts talkin trash to me and Evan and Tad.  He straight up started throwing rocks at us and even tried to steal Evans downhill bike.  And one of the weirdest things that happened at the KOA was out of no where this limo pulls up into the parking lot.  Who takes a limo to a KOA?

So we watched some racing on Friday and on Saturday I raced.  I was super stoked that I raced early in the morning at 8 cuz im not a huge fan of racing in the heat.  So me and the rest of the Jr Expert 15-16  field rolled up to the line.  It was the perfect tempature and it was actually kinda foggy.  Right off the start me and this Trek VW kid Brandon Lee were off the front and we put a pretty big gap on the rest of the field.  for the first 2 laps or our 3 lap race we worked together and shared pulls to increase our gap.

By the 3rd lap we had a large gap on the field and we started slowing down trying to conserve energy for te finish.  I was going to try to attack on the second feed zone climb which was on this steep dirt road but when we got there I thought that we were still too far out on the course.  We stayed together for almost the entire last lap until almost the very end before we entered the race track.  I finally attacked on this small climb maybe 2 minutes from the finish.  I was able to hold him off till the end but I only won by maybe10 seconds.  It was by far one of the closest races I've ever been in.  After the race I just chilled and cooled down and went to the awards where I recieved my second start and stripes jersey.

On Sunday was my short track race.  It was a sweet course that was about a mile each lap.  It defintally wasn't very short.  I was super stoked for the race and was hoping for a good result but it didn't help that I was called up almost dead last to the line.  I started 3rd row back and up the first climb I was in about 25th place and dead last.  I though hat it was all over cuz of my bad start but I kept pushin hard and about half way through I was sitting in about 9th place.  There was a lead pack of riders and our little chase group of about 4.  At one point we came super close to catching the lead pack but then they pulled away.  By the end I ended up getting an 8th place which was ok considering my horrible start.

Well so that wraps up another exciting weekend of racing.  Im super stoked to have won another national championship.  Well im gonna go cuz im tried.  Peace

Ben