Snowmass MSC race

Getting the scoop on the fast lines from Jared

I headed down to the Snowmass MSC race on Friday morning. On the way out of town, I managed to meet up with my friends Michael and James Ontiveros and ended up "kidnapping" Michael for the ride to Aspen. I haven't seen him in way too long, as he's been solving crazy math problems at NYU for his final year of school! :) It was really good to catch up with him!

I got to the mountain in time to get in a DH run before 4x practice started. I felt really good on the bumpy loose course! 4x practice was awesome on my new hard tail!! I LOVE it! I spent a lot of time just doing gates and getting my snap timing back. It's felt a bit sluggish at the World Cups lately, but I think I got it all sorted on Friday!

Saturday morning saw a couple of good DH runs before 4x practice and qualies. The beginning of practice was great. I was hitting all of the lines that I wanted and getting all of the jumps very smoothly...it deteriorated as the two hours went on. :( Needless to say the end of practice was much more representative of my qualy run than the beginning, unfortunately. I qualified 3rd.

We had a little bit more practice time before racing that evening, and I got everything dialed in again and was ready to go! I really wanted the Colorado State Championships jersey! First round was me, Darian and Marty Renn, straight outta retirement! :) I was in lane 2 and got a pretty crappy gate, but I was still in the lead. Apparently I hit the double at the end of the 2nd straight with more speed than I had in practice, and I overshot it a bit (or so I'm told) and didn't quite make the miniature berm that I needed to be in. I guess I tried to turn anyway and ended up knifing my front wheel and planting my head firmly into the ground. I guess I got up and finished the race and then started walking back up the hill before I "came to". I don't remember all of that, it's just what everyone has told he happened. :( End of the night and weekend for me. 2nd concussion in as many weeks = not so good. Chris convinced me that it would probably be a good idea to go get checked out, since it is my brain we're talking about. Everything checked out ok, so that's good. I still have a headache today, but hopefully it'll all be ok soon!

In much better news, Chris is the Cat 1 19-29 Colorado State XC Champion, and James is the 19-29 Super D Colorado State Champion. I would've really liked to have made it 3 for 3 for State Champs jerseys at our house, but...I guess it wasn't in the cards. Oh well. I felt like I was riding really well all weekend, which I haven't felt for quite a while, so that's good for something, I suppose. Gonna take some time to relax and just train hard for the next couple of weeks before Australia! :)