Last Minute Road Trip

These past few days have been a bit nuts because I made a last minute decision to drive to CO for a Mountain States Cup race in Snowmass. I had raced at a MSC in Fruita this past April and I knew it would be worth the trip if I motivated to go. The series is excellent. Mike and his crew have it dialed and I think racers should go the extra mile to support well-run events with positives vibes, great courses and good payouts. Plus, my Racer-X was ready to roll for the Super D.

Nate knew that I was feeling really down that we couldn't afford to send me to the east coast for the NMBS at Windham, the National Championships at Mt. Snow and to Kenda Fest like the rest of my teammates. Then, when our pal Tim called on Wednesday night to tell us that he and his wife, Chellie, were not coming up to visit for the week as they planned, Nate urged me to take advantage of my good health (rib is almost healed!) and race. So off I went.

I started packing the car Thursday afternoon and after chain of unfortunate events (one being that at 11:00pm we discovered that the front wheel to my hardtail was still at the shop), I went to bed at 2am and woke up at 5:30am. I was so tired during the drive, a triple sized Rockstar with lunch had no effect on me whatsoever. I made it to Snowmass at 4:00 after a trip to Starbucks and the grocery store and checked into the camping area. "Camping" was $20 for the weekend and was in a paved parking lot adjacent to the Snowmass Recreation Center. I scoped out a great little spot in a corner with some nice grass nearby and went up to pre-ride the course.

The ride went well enough considering I drove 9 hours on 3.5 hours of sleep. I returned to my campsite that evening to discover that it wasn't my campsite anymore. Some guy had taken my spot that had already been marked with my #, told me that I could go somewhere else and that he wasn't going to move. Then he made fun of my t-shirt. What a dork.

I was too tired to care, so I found a spot in another area, ate some dinner and rolled out my sleeping bag on the sidewalk next to my car. We weren't allowed to pitch tents in the parking lot. (You had to haul your gear far away to the softball field to do so and I was way too lazy for that.) Well, the spot I ended up with was directly in front of check in and I had headlights in my face until 1am. I finally got to sleep after the traffic toned down, and then at around 2am the spinklers turned on. I woke up abruptly to a drenched down sleeping bag and a very wet head and moved my operation to the pavement next to the shelter of my car. Then, at 5am, kid you not, a hot air balloon company arrived with a throng of tourists and spent an hour filling the massive balloon to a chorus of "ooohhhs and aahhhhs". They finally took off after an hour of "woooooossshhhhh"ing so loud from the propane tanks, I thought my brain was going to bounce out of my skull. By 6am, I gave up. I got roughly 5.5 hours of sleep in the last 2 nights. Oh well. If I'm ever going to try a 24-hour race, this can be chocked up to training!

The race went as well as could be expected considering the past 2 nights. It was a high-quality course with a lot of steep climbing on singletrack and tons of technical, twisty, rooty and rocky descents. Too bad my fork was blown, something I discovered on my pre-ride the day before. Front suspension certainly would have helped my cause in this race as I felt like I was going as slow as ice-cold molassas on the descents. Then, with about 15 min. left to race I pulled over to let some singlespeeders go by and managed to get a 18 in long, skinny stick intertwined between my derailleur, chain and multiple spokes. It was so snarled up that it took me a couple minutes and a lot of care to set it free. Miraculously, nothing was bent and off I went.

The eventual 3rd place gal caught up to me on the last steep climb and sadly, the fumes I was running on were long gone and I couldn't respond. I felt terribly defeated when I saw her gap me on the final crest, knowing that although I am a pretty good descender, I had no chance of catching her with a blown fork on the rocky and rough downhill to the finish. I was 4th by 8 seconds.

Oh well, there's always the next race. Athough I didn't get a chance to pre-ride the Super D, I stuck with my plan to race the Racer-X the next morning. I found a better campsite for the night (though we were once again greeted with the 5am balloon crew) and woke up at 5:45 so I could be on my bike at 7:30 to ride up to the summit for the 8:45 Super D. Consistent with the theme of the weekend (budget) and the fact that paying $30 for a ride up a chairlift is against everything I believe in, I chose to ride up the cross country course to the start of the race instead of paying for a ticket. No one told me it wasn't at the tippity-top, so I rode all the way up there anyway and then descended a bunch to get back down. Good thing, because I was hella-warmed up for the race. I nailed the lemans-style run to the bike, got on and away first and never looked back. The Racer-X performed beautifully and I crossed the line first, 10 or 12 seconds ahead of the next gal. The course was essentially the start of the xc backwards-mostly downhill with only a few short sections of pedaling. It was perfect for my tired legs and it made me giggle, a much needed experience after my rough weekend.

After watching some downhill, it was off to Breckenridge for a long afternoon ride. I decided to take a look at the opening loop of the Breckenridge 100, 29-miles of incredible terrain with 4000 feet of climbing. I was doing course recon to figure out if I am crazy enough to race this Saturday, even though I haven't done a dirt ride longer than 50 miles all year. I soon realized that my "mellow" ride wasn't as mellow as planned, especially after a bee stung me in the neck, resulting in a slow-motion endo that gave me significant road rash on my shoulder. I finished with a celebratory burrito from Rasta Pasta, drove an hour to my sister's house in Kremmling, knocked on the door at 9:30pm and realized that she and her husband thought I was coming next, not this, weekend. They let me sleep over anyway. Thanks, guys.

Good times, good times. I'm happy I went, very happy with the 2 podium appearances and most of all happy to be home in one piece!