Angel Fire Racing

My new FABULOUS 303!!

So, we headed down to Angel Fire, NM last "weekend" (we were there for 5 days, so not really a weekend) for 2nd race of the MSC which was also a NMBS gravity National. It was raining like crazy when we got there which made getting our pits set up quite a challenge in the super mud and rain. Once we got our pits/condo/restaurant set up, though, it was pretty good. We cooked up a little steak for dinner and then went to bed. We woke up for 8:00 practice on Thursday morning, and it was pretty darn COLD! I was pretty slow to get moving, but it turned out to be okay since the track just kept drying out the longer I was lazy. :) DH practice on Thursday was pretty good for everyone, but I was really holding out for 4x practice which didn't start until Friday.

Hmmm, needing some better cornering skills. At least I'm looking through the turn!

Well, it was supposed to be on Friday at 3:00 after DH practice, but Mother Nature decided against that. As soon as we were all heading up for practice a huge storm rolled in and delivered a lot of rain, some hail, and too much moisture for us to even dream of practicing 4x on Friday! :( The promoters rearranged the schedule so we could have some practice on Saturday morning at 8:00, but the track didn't really dry up enough to ride too much till about 9:00. I had wanted to hit more jumps on the track than I ended up hitting, but I needed a little more practice than we got to work up to them, as it turns out. I ended up qualifying 0.06 seconds off of Lisa for 4th. I was pretty pleased with that considering that I made several pretty large mistakes in my qualy run.

I was pretty please with my qualifying placing.
Unfortunately the racing didn't pan out so well. :(

I was pretty pumped for racing, that was for sure! Unfortunately, my riding didn't show up for my racing. :( I got a good gate in the semi finals but then rode the corners like I've never ridden a corner before and Jacquie ended up passing me in one of the corners. I rode very patiently behind her knowing I could pass her in one section that I was jumping and she wasn't. Sure enough, she rolled a double that I jumped, and I thought I was going to pull off a fabulous pass, in the air. Unfortunately, there was a damn turn after the jump, and I've already mentioned that I clearly don't know how to do those, so I ended up crashing and not making it to the finals. :( In the small final for 5th-8th, I was pretty far ahead and had to navigate one of those darn corners again, and well...the rest is history. I crashed for no good reason and let all of the rest of the field go riding by. Needless to say, I was really disappointed with placing 8th after qualifying 4th, and pretty frustrated with my riding and poor cornering. :( Melissa Buhl ended up winning with Lisa Myklak, Jo Jo, and Jacquie Harmony rounding out the final 4.

Just about to make a sweet pass...

And then waste it all by crashing in the next corner. Dumb, dumb, dumb!!!

On to DH. Well, my energy tank was pretty well spent after MX and I couldn't get excited at all about DH. We had some more practice on Sunday and then raced on Monday. My qualifyer was pretty slow with some issues in the upper rocky/wooded section of the course, but I was just happy not to have crashed considering how little energy I had to hang on for such a long DH course. It's got a lot of rocks, several very high speed sections, and many tight turns in the woods to navigate.

First technical section on the track

Through this section, I never really felt like I was going where I wanted to go, unlike TJ, who rides this section like there aren't any dumb rocks in it at all!

I took 15 seconds off of my qualifying run and moved up 2 spots to end up 11th. I would have liked to have gotten a top 10, but all in all 11th was pretty good considering my bad attitude and tiredness. :) Melissa Buhl ended up taking the W with Lisa, Abby Hippley, and Jo Jo in hot pursuit. On the boys side of things, my friends Cole and TJ had awesome days with Cole making the podium in 4th and TJ getting a top 15 at a National (14th!). They both had awesome qualifiers to set them up with confidence for the actual race!! Also, my friend Phil pulled out a top 25 in his first Pro race at a National! I think he was pretty psyched, especially considering that his finger is probably broken! All in all, the weekend was pretty good. All of my teammates made it out without a major injury, which a lot of people weren't able to say. As much as I love Angel Fire, I'm glad the weekend is over! Good job to everyone that rode well on the huge, demanding courses!

Back to reality...Tons of work to do at school. :)

Inspiration

A couple of years ago I was cycle touring in New Zealand and I met this guy named Don. He has his PhD in Astrophysics and now just plans his next bike riding adventure while still in the midst of the current one. I ended up riding with him for a couple of days and thoroughly enjoyed his company while only having to slow my pace down ever so slightly. Don is now in his early 70s and has ridden his bike in more countries than I can even begin to think of. He keeps everyone updated about this travels with witty, dry humored "track" reports. I hadn't gotten an email from him in nearly 1.5 years, and I became very worried that maybe his health had failed him or something like that. Much to my delight, a couple of weeks ago, I got the newest installment of emails from him chronicling his cycle touring trip in Germany and Czecho. He has a newly installed titanium hip that's helping him get around the country side over there. I only hope to still be in love with and able to ride my bike when I am his age!

The other thing that getting his email reminded me of is how little importance I place on people's ages. I have friends whose ages span nearly 3/4 of a century, apparently. I think that if you get a long with someone and they make you smile, who cares how old they are?!? Sorry, I think I'm just having issues with turning 30 this Sunday. Most of my friends are younger than me and the "old" comments have been out in full force lately. Normally I don't really care, but lately it's started to bug me. Oh well. When I was 20 I was too busy trying to act all grown up and 30. Now that I'm almost 30, I'd rather not act "all grown" up but just enjoy life for what it is and have fun with my friends, however old they might be. :)

Chalk Creek Stampede

Not a bad start to the season! DS podium (Jess Vogt, me, Joanna Petterson, Jacquie Harmony)

So, this past weekend was the first race of the Mountain States Cup series, and it was all gated racing!! Yea! :) We started off with 4x on Saturday and had DS on Sunday. We raced on the newly improved "Extra Crispy" 4x track. The track got bigger, and maybe a little better, not sure. The jump on the "pro line" at the bottom was the most fun jump I have ever hit, though, I know that for sure! Qualifying went well, I was just about a second behind Joanna, and then the next closest girl was over 3 seconds behind me, so I felt pretty good about that. I had a bye the first round and the next round went well to get to the finals. I was really excited to try to give Jo Jo a run for her money, but my chances were cut very short in the first "S" turn on the course. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but my rear wheel washed out big time and I went sliding down the course on my back after whipping my head into the ground pretty good. A bit of a bummer, but still a paycheck for the 4th place finish. Thanks Kieth!

My teammates Nate and Cody making sure they both advance out of this round!
This is the only picture that anyone got of me riding this weekend. :( I guess it's a good thing that you can't see the rest of the competition behind me! :)

My good buddies Jordan (1) and Justin (2) (I think they're both sandbagging Expert 19-29)

Early Sunday morning saw the start of a long, long day of dual slalom. There were at least 250 competitors so the event was going to take all day, no matter what! We only qualified on one course, and I had a good but fairly conservative qualifying run. I ended up just about 0.3 seconds behind Joanna, and again over a second ahead of the next girl. I was hoping for a Jo Jo/Neven showdown in the finals. After two rounds of remembering what the course felt like (we didn't race until about 7 hours after we qualified!!), Joanna and I raced in the finals. I had some shining moments in each of the runs, but she was flawless and rode really well. She definitely deserved two "W"s this weekend! It was a lot of fun. On the boys side of things, my good friend TJ KILLED it! He was riding so well all day. He qualified 4th in a huge men's field (~55, I think), and with some very stiff competition. At the end of the day he rode well in every round and ended up 3rd, just behind his teammate Ross Milan and just ahead of our friend Rudy Unrau (who also had a great day, qualifiying 2nd and riding well all day! Not bad for a 17 year old!!). The Yeti boys (2nd, 3rd, and 4th) somehow let a speedy Kiwi in the backdoor for the win. Cameron Cole was there this weekend and reminded us all why he was the Junior World Champ last year. The kids got some skills!

TJ's first Pro Podium, CONGRATS!!

TJ on his way to the podium in an earlier round against Matt Fisher

Cody looking good through one of the super tight slalom berms

Hands down the biggest sandbagger of the weekend! Yeti wrench Nate Espy killing the competition in the Sport 19-29 category and throwing in steez to add insult to injury!

I passed!!

Well, I guess pulling several all nighters and getting sick for the past 5 days was worth it in the end. I found out today that I passed my prelim exam for grad school!! Yea!! What a relief. I guess my committee had several compliments about my paper, presentation, and preparedness. I'm not sure what presentation they were at, because the one I gave seemed a little unprepared and my answers to their questions didn't seem like the right ones in too many instances, but I'm not complaining, that's for sure!! That is a HUGE stress lifted from my shoulders. Now I just have to get well, and hopefully my racing season will be off to a good start! :) Thanks to everyone for all of their well wishes and thoughts during this stupid, stressful time. Getting to work last Thursday and having several emails from people wishing me luck really meant a lot to me!! Having to tell everyone who called to see how it went that I didn't think it went very well was a little rough (glad they liked it better than I did!!). The support of my friends and family really helped me stay sane throughout this all, so thanks again for believing in me even when I sometimes doubted myself!!

Done, Thankfully!

Well, my prelim exam is finally done. Some parts went really well, others not so good. :( Oh, well, there's nothing I can do about it now. I just hope my committee thinks I did well enough to pass, we're not going for perfection here, just passing!

Unfortunately, the several nights with less then 4 hours of sleep that I've gotten in the past week combined with a lot of stress and probably some poor nutrition thrown in for good measure have made me sick. I woke up at 5:00 this morning burning up with a wicked sore throat thinking it was hot in my room. The window was wide open and it was 40º outside. That's when I realized that I was getting sick! :(

I guess my weekend will be filled with lots of rest and building my 303, as I can't afford to get really sick before next weekend!!