Round 2

So, I took the day off of work, legitimately, yesterday because the knife in my back was really hurting. The chiropractor cracked my rib back into place, or so I thought. When I woke up at 2 and 3 and 4 and 5 this morning, I decided that it really wasn't back in place yet. Round 2 at the chiropractor...pop!! Well, this time, it actually felt a lot better right after the lovely cracking noise. It's still pretty sore, but at least I can move my head side to side and up and down. That's always a plus!

I'm still trying to figure out how doing pushups can cause one to displace their rib!?!? wtf? I don't get it. Well, it has put a serious cramp in my riding plans for the week. I'm going DHing in the morning, though, whether my rib wants to or not! I'm not getting any younger and the season is moving on without me!

Displaced Rib :(

Upon reading today's title, one might think, hmmm..., I bet Neven crashed riding her bike. Nope. In the morning, I generally do 100 pushups to get my day going, and this morning was no different. I hit pushup #85 and stopped, and that is when the problem arrived! I don't know what happened, but it suddenly felt like I had been stabbed in the back just above my left shoulder blade. I tried some stretches and even finished out the rest of my pushups hoping to "work through it." When things seemed worse after my hot shower, I knew something was wrong. I called my chiropractor and got an appt for this morning. Well, three of my vertebrae were not too happy, and my 3rd rib on the left was out of place. Nice! He got everything put back into place, but the muscles and what not still really hurt! Dumb. I don't have time for stupid crap like this! haha :) So, I guess that means no gate practice for me tonight, as he said light walking was all he'd be happy with for today since the rib could easily pop back out. He didn't say anything about tomorrow, though... :)

Awesome Weekend, Great People, OK Finish

Crested Butte is a truly amazing place! The mountains around there are so rugged and grandiose, and the general scenery is just plain beautiful. This year the wildflowers were even more amazing than they have been in the past years that I have raced in CB! I can't wait until I get the chance to go there and just ride.

I have met some of the most amazing people while racing my bikes! This weekend I had the luxury of getting to spend time with my friend Alison and her son Mike. He has become an awesome XC racer. Also, I got to spend the weekend with the Wilderman's who are some of my favorite people ever! They have pretty much adopted me onto their team, even though I'm not on it! I even got an honorary team jersey!

So, Cody had an awesome race coming in 3rd in the Pro men. Sage KILLED it and won her category. Okay, she didn't have too much competition, but her time was awesome and would have placed her in 3rd in Expert women! Nate got 4th with a solid run. I ended up in 5th both pleased and disappointed. I took 30 seconds off of my time from last year, so that was good. I pedaled my ass off on the uphills, so that was good. I blew pretty much all of the switchbacks in the middle section, not so good. 5th place, also not so good. Oh well. It was a good learning weekend, and I almost puked at the finish, so I guess I gave it all I had on those damn uphill sections!

Cody and Nate have a Post Race do-si-do session

Apparently Cody Is Thinking of Trying Out Underware Modeling in the Off Season Next Year

Sage should be a Volcom Model

Crested Butte

So, practice has been going fairly well. I got some really good runs in yesterday and was psyched that I was riding the lower berm-ie moon dust corners a lot more aggressively than I have before. Today I decided to stop being a wuss on the top section and try to get off the brakes as much as I can. Well, it was fast, but I was a little OOC and ended up way off course. Hopefully tomorrow I can put a good lower section together with peddling my ass off on the uphills and finding the happy medium of fast but still on course at the top. I really like this course, even though it has uphill sections and tons of people bitch and moan about it! It should be fun tomorrow there's a pretty good sized pro women's field here, I think, 9-10 or so. Although we are missing the two top pros who normally frequent the MSC races: Jo Jo and Lisa!!

Strange

So, today I decided to head up and do a couple laps on an XC trail that's not too far away. I've been a little bummed that it feels like my fitness has really dropped off since April or so. The combo of traveling, finishing school, being a generally lazy person, and being really tired has done a number on my training. So, anyway, I wasn't expecting much on my ride. I started my heart rate monitor, acting like I've been paying attention at all to the data it collects, and started my ride. Some guy was coming around for another loop right when I started, so I was on a mission to drop him fast on the downhill, should have picked a bigger challenge. Oh well. After a quick descent, I started climbing, and I couldn't remember which gear I usually do the climb in, so I just picked one that seemed a little challenging. To be honest, I felt like crap on most of the climb, even thought it's not very long. It seemed like I wasn't moving at all, and I remembered that I hadn't eaten much more than Edamame and some hummus since 7:30 this morning. I rolled back to the start of the loop and looked down at my watch and almost fell over: 19:00. That is 2.5 minutes faster than I have ever done that loop before. So, I pretty much decided that something must have been wrong with my watch because, clearly, I couldn't have ridden the loop that fast, especially with how crappy I felt and how out of shape I have been feeling. On to the second lap. I felt a bit better since I was warmed up. The downhill flowed nicely, and the uphill didn't seem quite as painful since I shifted down a gear or two. When I got done with the lap, I looked down expecting to see a lap time more similar to what I normally see, 21:30, but to my surprise, it was 19:11. Hmmmm, very strange, good, but strange. Hopefully it means that I'm not as out of shape as I thought I was!! Good thing, since the "pedaliest" course of the year is this weekend in Crested Butte!! I am leading the Pro Women's Gravity series right now, so I hope to get a good DH placing this weekend to make up for my sub par DH performance in Angel Fire!!

Sucky Way to Start the Week Off

So, I drove up to campus to drop off my bikes and a few other things this morning (my office is currently serving as my part time storage unit). As I was driving back down Folsom from campus, my front right tire exploded. Nice! I'm lazy, so AAA is on their way to change the flat. I guess I'm just lucky that it happened going 20 mph in Boulder rather than going 75 mph on I-70 coming home from WP last night!

HAPPY MONDAY!

The Ideal Weekend Getaway...

Downhilling, Dirt Jumping, Slalom Turns, a Mountain Cross Track, Great Coffee, and who could forget, Cute Boys!

Which Bike to Ride?? Let's Take 'em All!

I packed up my car with all of my bikes on Friday after work and headed up to Winter Park to ride with Cody and Nate for the weekend. First stop: Petr's pumptrack. So, I get there, and the first thing that I think is, wow, it's got a significant uphill section. Needless to say, it was hard. It was good for practicing cornering and maintaining momentum, though! Then we headed to Cody's house where his mom, Beth, had steak dinner with asparagus and berry pie waiting for us. Ummm, can you say, we were spoiled!

Cody Driving the Yeti Shuttle Truck

The next morning, I went downhilling with Nate until he had to go to work, which conveniently was the same time that Cody got off of work! Then Cody, Forrest, and I headed up to some land that Forrest's dad owns that they call the Hut. Cody, Forrest, and Skyler have put a ton of man hours in up at the Hut to build a slalom track, a rhythm section, a mountain cross track, and AWESOME dirt jumps!! It doesn't hurt that they have a full time bobcat up there at their disposal to move the dirt around! Petr, the Watts and Lee showed up later in the afternoon, and we rode til 7:00. I was wiped out!

The Winter Park Crew Minus Nate

Hard to See Through the Trees, but There is an Awesome MX Track as Well

The Crew From the Fix

I Know It's Little, But It's Pretty Big For Me

Sleep Saturday night, wake up Sunday morning and repeat! Coffee stop to say hi to Cody working hard at Rocky Mountain Roastery and then DHing with Nate in the morning, the clock strikes 12:00, Nate goes to work and Cody gets off. We headed back up to the Hut with a little larger of a crew for another awesome afternoon of dirt jumping and doing laps on the DS and MX tracks!

Take Off for the New Big Line: 17 foot Gap

The Big Line Coming to Life

The Boys Gettin' It Done

Bobcat Style DJ Building Sponsored by Totally Wired Cyclery and Fox Racing

Ahhh, Beautiful Flowy Dirt Jumps

MSC Stop #2-Nathrop, CO

Chalk Creek Stampede MX Podium

So, I forgot my camera for the weekend = LAME! MX and DS racing in Nathrop, CO = NOT LAME!

We are truly spoiled rotten here in CO having 2 of the best MX courses and now an amazing DS course in our backyards. The weekend kicked off on Friday with Kevin, Matt, and I getting to Nathrop round 11:00 in time for 7, count 'em, hours of practice on Friday. Uhh, ya, we all rode way too much on Friday (including Kevin, who came out of retirement and gave up his NORBA boycott to join in the fun), but you can't help it when the courses are that fun, the people to ride with are that great, and the weather and scenery are down right amazing! Most of us spent most of our time on the DS track on Friday, as we've all ridden the MX course several times.

The courses were well built. Keith and co. have spent countless manhours and a lot of money getting the courses built and into good shape for racing. The course starts out with a small roller to LH berm into two sets of tight tricky doubles. Then you dive into a RH berm with a small exit roller and drop down into a funny pit with a tight uphill LH berm to exit. Next is a set of rollers before a step-up/step-down combo leading into some crazy tight almost 180 degree RH berms. Then you're out into the flat turns followed by a small double, short straight, and the final small triple. Even with all of those features, the courses were nearly identical in times. Amazing, if you ask me!

I had a really good time working on the course. Bobbi and I were the only girls jumping the doubles at the top, and it was fun to be getting riding compliments from the guys, especially the ones that don't hand them out very often (Matty T!). I felt pretty comfortable on the doubles when practice ended on Friday and in the morning on Saturday. Unfortunately qualifying and racing were a different story for me. My qualifying runs went super poorly with me coming out of both of the pedals after the second double (I guess I cased it. :) oops) and flying off course. This isn't the recommended method for obtaining a fast qualifying time!! As a result of qualifying poorly, I had to race BK in the semi-finals. Bummer. Then in the consolation finals, I decided that I needed to see how well my helmet would hold up if I landed on my head, so I ended up in 4th. Oh well, still in the money, enough to cover entry fee for the race and gas to Fisher for the trip!

Sunday found us racing MX on the Extra-Crispy course. There is a straight away that has a set of 3 doubles on it that I've been looking at for awhile. I did the first set a couple of times at the 2nd spring series race, but I was bound and determined to do all of them at this race. We only had an hour and 15 for practice, so I did the top section once and then just focused on the doubles. I hit the first set a couple of times and then just decided to go for it. Well, I knew that you didn't need much speed for the second one, but I found out really quickly just how little speed you need. I cased the first jump a little and still landed flat in the transition between the second and third! Luckily, I've gotten pretty good at riding out the not so fabulous landings and I didn't crash, but I think I made quite a few people pretty nervous! haha After that I knew I could get all three so I just went for it! I'm kicking myself for not having done them before because they're way easier than the doubles on the DS course, and they are pretty damn fun! Anyway, my qualifying run was pretty sloppy but I qualifyed in 2nd, behind Bobbi, of course. The first round of racing was an easy round, as Shannon got squirrelly out of the gate, and I wasn't really worried about the other two girls. The final had Bobbi in gate 1, me in gate 2. I knew that I wasn't going to snap her out of the gate, but I wanted to be close to her at least. For some reason I had a terrible start and she was off to the races without me. Oh well, I just rode conservatively after that to maintain 2nd. I was pretty happy with my riding overall. I learned a lot, and hopefully some equipment modifications suggested by Matty T and Kevin will help my cornering so BK isn't putting so much time on my in the corners! I do have to say that checks for $185 made the weekend that much better!

I also have to mention that there were 3 pretty stand out performances for the weekend in my mind, 2 will probably go unmentioned anywhere. Matt Fisher was riding out of his mind on the DS course and qualified 4th on Saturday. He was riding the course like he owned it! Nice work Fishie and Happy B-Day tomorrow. Also, Cody Wilderman had an awesome qualifier, 6th, and then had about the worse luck you can get. Ross had a major mechanical in his qualifying run and ended up qualifying 27th, the position that the fast 6th place qualifier goes against! Bummer for Cody. However, Cody did put the hurt on Ross in the first round and almost pulled it off for the advance, but Ross pulled through by the skin of his teeth. He did however, mention that Cody rode super strong and that he had him really worried! Ross ended up in 3rd. And for the one that won't go unmentioned, but was still amazing. Petr Hanak qualified first in both DS and MX. He was giving an 11 out of 10 into one of the berms in DS and blew through it, causing MT to crash and getting DQ'ed. The energy that he saved from not making the finals in DS was evident in MX as he absolutely CRUSHED the field (Milan, Watt, and Zigman) in the finals. It was pretty cool to watch! Nice work Petr, and I can't wait for the WP training session this weekend. I'm heading up to spend the weekend with Nate, Cody, Wade, Petr, Jon, and Bobbi riding trails, DJs, and pump tracks!! It's gonna be an awesome weekend of great riding and cool people!