Well I’ve returned from national championships in Granby Colorado. It was a typical national event which I used to take part in so much in the past. This was the first big race I have entered in all year, let alone the first xc event as well. I’ve been racing short track at the local Wednesday night boulder races and entered in the smith Lyons out door games about a month ago. I have been feeling stronger and stronger on the bike as the summer has progressed. I won the Lyons games and have been consistently placing well against some of the fastest racers in the area at the short track races. But……short track is not cross country. I started in the last row at nationals, not something I have done in quite a while. Not only did the start position hurt my moral but the longer race proved to be difficult on my fitness. I have been training hard to prepare, but training does not simulate racing. I found myself feeling fairly strong in the race passing lots of guys on the first couple laps. The last lap I didn’t lose any positions, but could feel that my short race fitness was proving to be my downfall. I ended up in 20th place in the race. I’m not incredibly disappointed but nor impressed. I am planning on making it to a bunch of Colorado xc events that remain on the calendar and hope to post up some more impressive results. Besides the nationals my roommate, the girlfriends and I headed the long rout back to boulder and stopped off in rocky mountain national park for the night on a pretty deep back road atop a mountain where we heard there was a bunch of great rock climbing. We rolled out of our tents in the morning with beer filled guts and made the much longer than expected trek to the climbs. Once we arrived I could tell it was well worth it. There was a large alley way of quality climbs. We spent the whole day out there climbing and hiking around some beautiful Colorado backcountry. I’m feeling like I will only get stronger and stronger as the season progresses, but am not forgetting to take part in other activities that take me to new places like cycling does. Mountain biking is cooler than anything in the world if you haven’t noticed yet.
