TwoWheeledWorld

Saturday:

Cross Country - 26 miles, 5600ft of climbing total, race time 3 hours flat

The Pro and Semi-Pro race started at 1pm, which is prime time for afternoon thunderstorms. As we staged in the starting area the clouds were starting to organize themselves and after a lap and a half it began to pour.

Start/Finish area- the rain begins.

The course was already muddy from recent rains and this just added insult to injury. Imagine trying to pedal uphill through 3-inches of extra chunky peanut butter as hard as you can....and that was before the rain started. By lap 2 of 4 the drenching rain had turned the singletrack sections in the forest into babbling brooks and made the tree-root-laden course a slippery challenge just to stay upright. It was guh-narly. Two separate waves of storms rolled through and left their mark on the course and the racers. By lap 3 the rear dereilluer wouldn't move.

Post-Cross-Country race. No brakey brakey...

Typically, when it rains and gets chilly (the course topped out at 10,260ft elev.) my muscles turn in to whimpering twigs ready to limp home--but not this day. A steady training regimen of Barr Trail in recent months dictated that. Feeling strong throughout, I managed to finish with a grueling 3-hour-flat time and passed more than a few people in the process. Saturday I overcame a number of personal challenges and ended up in 5th place, only a minute 45 seconds out of the top-three. That's among my top finishes in Semi-Pro, EVER...........................well, until Sunday's hillclimb that is.

In a mud-filled, wet and chilled daze, elated from my 5th place finish...

Sunday:

HillClimb - 3+ miles from the bottom to the top of the ski resort asfastasyoucanpossiblygoandthenfaster

If I'm going to go for broke, it's going to be in a hillclimb. I'm light, I'm strong, and I can put up with the pain for the relatively short heart-exploding races. The skies cleared overnight and let the course firm up a little (there was no "drying out" for the course though as I even had to put on cold and soggy Sidi shoes at 7am to warm up.) The Pro's and Semi-Pro's started together and I already knew who my target was: the current win-every-race-he-enter's Pro Jay Henry. Jay and I go way back when we raced as Juniors together. We used to duke it out in the Colorado Off-Road Points Series for a number of seasons in the early 90's, each of us getting our share of Junior victories. These days, Jay is racing as a full-time professional and is the newly crowned Elite Men's Marathon National Champion (mountain bike races over 3 hours.)

I managed a decent starting position at the gun sitting in about 6th or 7th place, and then methodically climbed up in to second place, which is ultimately where I ended up, only 18 seconds behind Jay. That is to say, 2nd place in the PRO MEN's field.....that is also to say I beat all the Semi-Pro's......that is also to say, second person to cross the finish line out of however many hundreds of competitors who showed up.......!

Yes I am tooting my own horn a bit here, but it's tough to be modest after racing mountain bikes for over a decade-and-a-half and reaching a new milestone at such a level. I was ecstatic to be on the podium with Jay again after 13 or so years, and he was equally as excited (maybe not equally, but you get the idea).

I've been on my share of podiums over the years, but I've never been on the Pro podium before.....

I've never gotten a paycheck for racing my bike.............................This weekend, I did both.