Castaic

Let's see, what to say about this. Lisa beat me by only 8 1/2 min, not 10, so that's good! And if you look at the expert times she actually would've won the expert catagory, so I don't feel so bad about loosing to her. I ended up with 2nd and am cool with that. I was told that I was looking pretty good out there--like I was actually having fun! I guess I didn't put myself through a complete suffer fest and paced myself pretty well the whole race.
Here's me looking retarded on the podium (I just had my hands in the air).

In the last downhill singletrack I was riding really smooth and fast and put up a good lead for a few guys racing behind me. One of them was pretty impressed and shouted to me that he wanted me to meet his son. Sorry, I'm taken! All the guy cyclists I know want to meet some cool mountain biker chick to date but the thing they're missing is that the cool mountain biker chick is usually created by the boyfriend/husband. The way to do it is just find a cool adventurous chick and then introduce them to mountain biking. I'm pretty sure that's how almost every chick you see at these races got into it in the first place.


It was pretty dusty as usual.

Lyle had some pretty fierce competition:

Manny (the little guy in the Sho-Air kit) would've placed 2nd in the pro field with the time he put out. I guess that makes one more who should be seriously thinking about upgrading today!

I had 3 people to feed today with a total of 8 feeds. It was pretty stressful trying to make sure not to miss a feed. Imagine how brutal it would be on a blisteringly hot lap at Castaic with no water.

Preparation

Well, tomorrow should be fun. I'll be racing Castaic Lake, an infamous course of extremely steep unending uphill. And hot too. If Lisa Crowe shows up, I'm sure she'll spank my time hard since she's been beating me by 10 min every race so far this year. I'll go for podiuming nevertheless. When I think about racing I wonder why I even do it at all. It's just unpleasant, hot, hard work that leaves you feeling sweaty and dirty, and feels like crap while you're actually doing it.

Fontucky

Well this race was interesting. For starters, I went out to my car in the morning to head to the race and it was covered in tree limbs.

There had been heavy winds the night before and the tree I was parked under decided to fall apart right on top of my car. We managed to get the way cleared quickly and I still made it to the race with plenty of time to warm up. But then the race itself was a disaster. I crashed three times in the first 15 minutes in that treacherously deep "Bisquick" powder despite pre-riding everything perfectly the day before. (Well, I'm no pro but it was the 2nd time I'd pre-ridden it, so I'd kinda gotten it figured out by then.) I guess I was a little over-enthusiastic during the race. Those crashes pretty much demoralized me completely and it was hard to muster up any effort to catch the girl in front of me. And with such a bad start it was hard to stay clipped in and ride on the technical stuff (which was a good chunk of the course). So, soon the girl just ahead went completely out of sight. After finishing the first lap, I decided I'd had enough wallowing in misery, and with another girl sneaking into sight from behind, I pulled it together and started riding like I should've been all along. All the technical stuff that had shamed me on the first lap I was able to get the best of on that last 1/2 lap. So, I managed a third place finish in the end. It's a finish I'm not proud of, but not terrible all in all.

One more thing I have to mention--just that morning before I left for the race, Lyle warned me about the terrible condition the course was in and told me specifically to ride slow so that I would stay upright on those technical sections while the other girls crashed around me, thereby giving me a big advantage. Unfortunately it's not that simple, learning from others. I guess you just have to experience it for yourself. Racing is the best way to learn how to race. (Another thing coach Lyle tells me again and again.)


Maybe one day I'll be wearing the leapord print too!