US Nationals - 2009

I'm about a week late posting about this, but life just continues to rush by with no care that I need time to blog. Aargh.

The 2009 USA Mountain Biking National Championships were held last weekend at the Sol Vista resort in Granby, Colorado. It was a lovely 7 hour drive that Connie and I made after work on Thursday, arriving at our rented condo just after midnight. No, really, it was lovely!


See?


I was feeling high after frantically completing the Ellsworth Moment (mmm, delicious) as outlined in a previous post, and Connie was abuzz about leaving the next week for two World Cup races in Canada (Mt. St. Anne and Bromont). So the drive went quickly.

The next morning, we dragged ourselves out of bed at 6am and headed to the resort to register and get in line, after only a few hours of sleep, only to find that downhill practice had been moved from 8am, until 10am. Regretting the missed opportunity for more sleep, we took off to ride the Super D course on our downhill bikes, to kill time until DH practice.

By the way, at this point I had only registered for the Super D, planning on taking a run on the DH course to see how it felt. (Remember the earlier post about my quasi-retirement from downhilling for this season...I only wanted to race DH if it would be fun and not too risky.)
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Downhill:
After one run on the DH course, hah! There was NO WAY I was going to race it. It was super rocky, loose, slippery, and simply wasn't fun for me. Totally doable, but the consequences of just washing out in a steep loose rocky pile? Not worth it.

There was this sequence of jumps...
One:


Two:


Three:


Yes, that says the gap is 48 feet.

No, you didn't have to hit them and could take a go-around. Kind of a confusing maze:


I did feel sad about not getting to ride the bottom of the course - berms and small doubles and table tops.


Connie was racing DH, and having a good run of it, until a high speed section near the bottom. She was aiming her bike for a tiny berm in the trees, so she wouldn't need to slow down too much for the turn, and clipped her pedal.

So hard that while a normal steel crank arm looks like this (look at the arm, not the pedal):


Hers looked like this:


Amazingly, after a crash at such high speed, she had only tweaked her shoulder! And some bruises and scrapes, but she still felt capable of racing.

The entire ice bag helped:


And the beer I'm sure:


In the race, she looked pretty good.




Even injured, and expecting to finish last, she was not last, and made it down in one piece. Something to be proud of!
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Super D

Definitely felt a weight off my shoulders when I decided not to do the DH (even before Connie got hurt). Instead, I focused on the Super D. And was easy to focus, since....

The course is the MOST....
FUN....
COURSE....
EVER....
In the history of mountain biking.
I swear.
Truly.

It was the first weekend of lift-served biking I'd done since Angel Fire, and my body wasn't ready for what I threw at it. I rode that Super D course over and over, hour upon hour, because it was simply so much fun there was no way to stop! Blisters on my hands, shaking arms, exhaustion, wasn't enough to make me stop. In the condo, my gear was so sweaty it ALL had to lay out to dry.


I don't have any meaningful pictures of the course, unfortunately, but suffice it to say that I'll drive to Granby with anyone who'd like to go for a weekend, just to ride that trail. Berms, swoopy corners, in the trees, flowly.

I'm sure part (all?) of it was my bike. The Moment is amazing, in case you wondered. Even with the temporary parts (read: heavy and cumbersome) it is the lightest, poppiest, quickest, most responsive bike I've ever owned. It's not possible even to IMAGINE how awesome it will be when the other parts get here! (New Magura fork is on the way, Stans NoTubes wheels have arrived, derailleur/shifter here, Hammerschmidt coming soon.)

Honestly though, I was really worried at first, since this is the first bike I've built myself with NO ONE checking my work...but nothing fell off, nothing broke. Phew! After my only crash all weekend, all I had to do was straighten the bars:


The scariest part was when I had to hang it on the chairlift - they have a three-bike rack every other chair, but the fourth bike has to hang. Intuitively I know it's safe, but still, scary!




I did find time to bling out my shoes (this picture is on the lift):


For those not familiar with Super D races, a Super D includes aspects of both downhilling and cross country, thus some technical descents and also some burly climbs. Truthfully, I'm not a good pedal/climber. So I was just hoping for a non-last place finish, since there were some cross-country pro women, who would just kill me on the climb.

Also, let it be known that the starts are always funky. The start can be almost anything, such as:

• sitting backwards on your front tire, then at "go!" dragging your bike backwards to a certain line before allowed to mount
• laying your bike in a line, then a ways back, kneeling with one knee and one elbow on the same line, not allowed to move until "go!", then running to the bike
• starting in a line with your competitors, all holding your bikes, then running with them up a hill, only allowd to mount and pedal after a certain line

In our case, we laid our bikes in a line, then went around the corner and down a grassy hill, then had to do a mass sprint about 50 meters up the hill, around the corner, then another 20 meters to our bikes, then ride the bikes in a zig zag in the area by the start, then finally hit the course.

Finally, it was "go!" time, and up the hill we went. With all my skeleton training, I was the first woman to the bikes, but haven't practiced the running mount, and got passed by a couple women there. Then, I hadn't realized how much climbing the zig zag part entailed, and was in the wrong gear, and got passed by a couple women there too. Aargh! But still, in the top 6-7 or so, not bad.

Then, a couple others tried to cut me off on the inside and tangled in my handlebars, and I of course wasn't going to let them knock me over. Instead, I held my ground and just gritted my teeth, pedaling for all I was worth, and they went over instead. Then, swoop! We were on the singletrack, the fun part. I swooped, and searched for places to pass and failing that, kept as close to the women in front of me.

Then we hit the middle climb, and, being a slower climber, got passed by a couple more women, though fewer than I expected, and that completely made my day!

And accidently let a cross country rider get by me on the inside of the last turn, which was my downfall since she was NOT a technical rider and was super slow on the remainder of the singletrack. Since the rules forbid going more than 4 feet off the trail OR into the trees, and the trail was singletrack in the trees, there were no more opportunities to pass. I almost got her at the finish, but to do so would have entailed knocking her bike over, and that just wasn't in me. Maybe I'll be more ruthless in the future, but.....no, probably not.

Anyway, even with all those rookie mistakes, I was told at the finish that I had come in 10th. Whoopee! A top 10! Super excited, and I was riding well, so was quite happy.

(Then, after I got home I discovered that the results were amended, so I really ended up 11th, but even with that, my best Super D finish previously was one from last, so it's still a happy thing.)

And once again, isn't the Moment lovely? Here's where I could make a bad pun like "living in the Moment" but I'll spare you.