Fun-tana

The Fontana City National is always a fun way to start the year. It's the first opportunity to reconnect with my racing pals and with sponsors, to see what's new in the industry and of course to see who is going fast. As my plan for the weekend was "you have no plan" I was pleased with my results: 11th in both the XC and the short track and 5th in the Super D. The only downer was the lack of pro women. Only 22 of us in the XC! Where IS everyone?? It seems our field is getting smaller but stronger. A mixed blessing really, but a topic for another day.

The XC course was great. Very hard but a blast to rip around on. The 30mph sustained winds and gusts to 50 made it even more interesting. Spectators were sporting goggles to keep the dust out of their eyes and I am still flushing dirt out of my sinuses with my netti pot 3 days later. I had a good day and felt surprisingly spry considering my recent training focus and load. The Nine 29er wooed me even further as I think I gained a ton of free speed on the flats and had the braking bumps smoothed out for me nicely.

The short track was...well...short and even more painful than the XC as the 88 deg. heat and dust made it feel like I was breathing in glass shards. This year, Tom S. decided that short track should be even shorter to make it more exciting. 15min plus one lap. Yikes. Seeing as the XC distance feels like a short track for me, it was even more painful than usual. I had to get off my bike on the 3rd steep corner as a gal in front of me came off her bike and that meant adios to the chase group. I kept up the good fight, battled with a few gals on the last few laps and felt like I got in a good interval.

I went straight from the short track to the kids race. I LOVE the kids races. These little buggers are so stoked to be out there strutting their stuff and they really hammer with gumption. No matter how they do they get a medal. After nearly an hour of baking in the sun and picking kids up out of the sand I went of to preride the super D course. We always have to do something ridiculous to start super Ds. This time was actually pretty tame: run to your bike with one hand on the ground to start and get on and go. Except my legs did not get up and they did not want to go. It was really a lot to ask of them especially because I was a total bonehead and didn't eat anything or drink enough between my short track and the Super D start. I actually got to the first climb in 2nd but then got passed by almost everyone immediately...I caught back on to 4th pretty quickly on the downhill but then the gal in front of me dropped her chain in a dip, leaving me in my big chain ring at the bottom of a climb. Oops. I had to get off and push and by the time I was back on the race was gone. No worries-sometimes racing well means having good legs and good luck. Clearly, I had neither.

Then it was a late night of washing bikes, doing laundry and attending a fun team dinner. We kept the fun alive with a 5:30am wake up call Monday morning for our team photo shoot. Nice weather, awesome teammates and a photographer who has scouted the area and knows what he wanted made it a smooth and enjoyable experience. I think the highlight of my weekend was once again realizing that there is nothing I'd rather be doing than racing my bike. No matter the distance or the course I am just psyched to be out there going hard enough to bleed out my eyeballs. I hadn't felt that since my last cross race in December. I missed it!