Last week the mountain bike nationals were held at Mt Snow in Vermont.  Thankfully we didn't have to drive to get out there - we took a plane out of Durango and even got to watch Blades of Glory on the flight.  I flew out with my little brother Ben and our parents, and we stayed with a bunch of riders from the Devo Team.  I have never been to Vermont before, but from what I saw it seems a lot like Colorado.  Just less mountains, lots of rolling hills and green everywhere. 
     We did a couple prerides of the cross country course in the pouring rain.  It was so wet and muddy, I was slipping all over the place.  I had a couple of sweet crashes on the gnarly roots on the descent, and was covered in mud. 
    The day before our cross country race it rained and kept on pouring through the night.   The course was so slick we had to run most of the climb becuase there was no way you could get traction.  Despite the mud, I had a good race against the other U23 women and took 5th!  It is always fun to be on the podium with people like Chloe Forsman (who is only 19 years old and rides for Luna Chicks), especially at the National Championship.  I was also stoked that they had a U23 category, becuase usually I have to race against ALL of the Pro women.  Racing against people your own age is much more exciting and a whole lot less intimidating. 
    It was a good weekend, I am a little sad that we are almost done with summer racing.  It's been fun. . .

    Since I last blogged, our FLC collegiate road team took 3rd at Nationals, which were in Lawrence, Kansas.  What a place to have a road race.  It was extremely flat, with a couple small hills.  Both our men and women's team time trial teams took 1st place, which we were pretty stoked about.  It was close - us girls only won by 8 seconds.  The road race went well, there was a section of dirt road that we had to do becuase the regular road was flooded.  At the end of the road race, our team was about tied with Stanford University.  In the crit the nest day, Kristen McGrath took 2nd!  However, two of our guys went down in a crash.  The road rash was pretty bad, and we were all bummed becuase we didn't win the team overall. 

The Iron Horse road race was this past weekend.  Thankfully it wasn't snowing, and the race was pretty fun.  All the women started out as a pack going up the valley, and then it got broken up on Shalona.  I was suffering pretty badly, but it gradually got better as the race went on.  I was feeling pretty good going up Molas.  In the end, I beat my time from last year by 23 minutes with a time of 3:04.  Next year hopefully I can break 3 hours! 

Later that day we had a little fiesta at Zia's to meet all the sponsors and hang out.   It was fun to meet everybody - thanks to all the sponsors for supporting our team!

I didn't do the crit the next day, instead I did a running race with my friends Molly and Onawa.  It was ten miles long!  I ran to mile 7 and then decided to walk down the nature trail to my house.  My legs were done for.  I was sore for days.  Spent the rest of the afternoon watching the racing downtown.  The cruiser crit was especially fun!  Some of my middle school Devo girls that I am coaching rode in costume. 

This weekend I am going to do my first Xterra Triathalon! It's in Show Low, AZ.  I'm excited, I'll keep you all posted

I thought I'd write a blog about crashing, because from my experiences, it is a fundemental aspect of bike racing.  Bike racing is a sport that is based on a couple things:  skill, athletic ability, determination, will power, work ethic, positve thinking. . . and luck.  You can do everything right - the training, preparation, visualizing yourself crossing the finish line first, having a bike that works flawlessly - and get a flat tire right before your race or crash into the first corner.  It is unlike anything else becuase it is so important to be lucky.  Maybe it's having bad karma the day of your race, or maybe it's that split second of doubt as you are descending a rocky technichal trail that makes you faceplant into the bushes.  Who knows. 

But that is also part of the beauty of racing bikes.  It's a grand adventure, you have to play your cards right and the rest is up to fate.  Road racing is especially interesting, becuase you can have one person make a slight mistake and take out an entire peleton of riders.  There is absolutely nothing so exhilarating as racing a road criterium with 80 riders, all desiring the win.  You go out hard, and the entrire race you are suffering trying to move up in the pack and cover anybody who attacks.  There are people beside you, inches in front of you, behind you, all trying to do the same thing.  You hear the constant sound of tires spinning and people breathing, and you must be so alert becuase if you make one tiny mistake you could go down.  And you are going so fast, it would be bad to crash.  The worst sound is when you hear the cracking of bike on pavement, followed by more cracking and snapping as people behind go down or struggle to get around the crash.  If it's behind you, you feel relieved that you were not part of it, and keep racing.  And if you go down . . . well thats just bad luck. [:|]

Then somebody crosses the finish line first, throws up their arms, celebrates their victory.  The poor racers who went down go home to nurse their injuries and heal, all the more determined to have a better race next time. You just have to take it as comes, enjoy the excitement of battling it out on your bike, love the adrenaline rushes and pity the person who never goes out and takes a risk.   

Right now I am sitting in a hotel room in San Bernardino, CA.  The drive out from Durango this time wasn't that bad - I watched movies on my friend's ipod and created some of our own techno music on garage band (a sweet computer program).  I am stoked for this weekend, lotsa mountain bike racing.

Our Fort Lewis girl's road team had an absolutely awesome race last weekend in Grand Juction!  I was our best race as a team so far this season.  There were about 20 girls that started out the road race, which had a steep climb at first and then a false flat with some fun downhill.  We dropped some girls on the first climb, and then they slowly kept dropping off.  Our Fort Lewis Team consisted of me, Christi Roberts, Molly Hummel and Kristen McGrath.  I really have very little experience road racing, so I pretty much let Molly tell me exacatly what to do.  We took turns pulling and were setting a pretty good pace for the first part of the race.  Then Kristen flatted on a thumb tack that somebody had put in the road (our boy's team got about 6 flats!) and luckily she was right near the feed zone, so she picked up a new wheel.  Molly went back and got her, and it was my job to not pull or basically do anything until they caught back up.  Sweet.

So the teammates caught back on, and we started sending off attacks.  I was still a bit confused as to what was going on.  I actually chased down Molly after she attacked once, hhhmmmm I think this road racing strategy is a bit hard to learn at first.  I should let the OTHER teams chase her down, I found out the hard way.  Soon it was just us 4 FLC girls and one other girl from Mesa, who was definitely holding her own.  We kept trying to drop her, but she hung on.  Then she decided to attack on the last descent, which ended up in her crashing in one of the corners.  None of us were involved in the crash, I'm glad to say.  So I took second, and our team took 1st through 4th.  Perfect! 

We also won the team time trial by a minute and a half!  FLC cleaned up. 

Now it's summertime!  I finished up this semester and realized that I am going to change my major, so the Anatomy and Statistics classes I just took really don't matter very much.  I am switching from Exercise Science to Graphic Design, I cannot wait to take a bunch of art classes next semester.  Yay! 

I am getting tired, I think I should go to bed.  Tomarrow I'm going to go pre-ride the Fontana NMBS course, I hope it is really technical and has some good climbs.  Thanks for reading. . .  

So this is my first blog for Team HealthFx! Last week I competed in the Sea Otter in California. I think that's the longest drive I've ever done, almost 17 hours each way. My brother Ben, Teal and my parents came as well, so we made a trip out of it.

Sea Otter is a sweet event, and this was my first time racing it. They have such a HUGE venue and tons and tons of people. The word on the street was that there were 800 people trying to race the beginner men's downhill. HHmmmm, I guess I find this extremely hard to believe. . . but hey, maybe mountain biking is not a dying sport! 

I was stoked on my races, I took 26th in the short track. Katie Compton and I were the last to be called up, and she passed the entire field and won the race. I would have taken 2nd in U23, but for some reason they didn't have the category. It was all muddy too, which made the race all the more epic. I got kicked in the face once by a girl who slipped in the mud and fell off her bike and nailed me as she was jumping back on. Good times.

Congrats to the Teal Stetson-Lee who took 3rd in her Expert ST race!

Also congrats to Alisha Gibson, who took 2nd in the Expert Dual Slalom and won the Expert Downhill. Very nice.

The XC was so fun. It was the longest MTB race I've ever done at 38 miles. This was my first Pro XC race that I finished! My hardtail Trek 9.8 worked like a champ, I didn't even drop a chain.  I came in around midpack, which I was stoked about, considering that I was racing against former world champions and people like Georgia Gould, who won our race by 4 minutes.

Good weekend, good people. Now I'm finishing up finals up at Fort Lewis and getting ready for a summer full of racing!  The next Norba National MTB race is in Fontana, CA, in two weeks, and right after that I am going with the Fort Lewis team to Road Nationals in Kansas.  We have a sweet girl's time trial team and hopefully will kick some butt.  The FLC cycling team even threw down and bought us all new Jamis time trial bikes to use at nationals.  They are sweet! 

Check out my photos, I just posted a couple from Sea Otter.

Also, good luck to Alex Hagman and any other Durangatans who are competing in the Tour of Virginia starting today!