The old competitive drive is starting to come back

I always like to start off a race with a good yawn, it always seems to make me feel better.

Last Friday was my 21st birthday. I celebrated by spending most of my day in a van driving up to Wisconsin for some collegiate mtn bike races. We were greeted at Kip's house with cake, so it was awesome!

Saturday was a 20 mile cross country race with a decent amount of climbing. The course was a on a small ski mtn and so it was a nice long climb with some cool descents. I started off strong and had a decent gap with a 29er crew guy and we were slowly putting in time on the field with some LWC teammates close behind. I was having shifting issues on the descents and ended up dropping my chain a few times and had to get off and fix it which made me lose contact with the leader. 4 people passed me while I was fixing it and I jumped back in a hot pursuit. I slowly reeled in each person until only the first place guy was left. He was sitting only 15 seconds in front of me by the end of the last lap but I couldn't close it in the last few technical spots. Oh well, I was glad that my technical skills were improving during the race and my climbing was feeling really good. After the XC I decided to do the downhill race for fun. I didn't come close to placing, but I used my XC bike and didn't have to unclip so I felt that it was a success.

Sunday was the short track. I usually look forward to short track since it suits my riding style more than cross country does. I was a bit upset when I found out that they changed the course from the previous year. They pretty much eliminated the climb and put in two dangerous turns on loose gravel. I started in pretty good position and was in a lead group of 5 people. The "climb" was too short to separate us but one of the loose gravel turns was really getting to me. I couldn't seem to get it right and I was going a little too slow to be safe and got gapped a couple of seconds every lap in the downhill which I had to waste energy to bridge back up on the flats/uphill. Near the end of the race I tried to put in an attack to get some ground on the climb but no luck. Everyone was right on me and passed by me in the downhill. I got gapped again before the final lap in the tricky spot and rolled in behind for 4th.

I am really excited about this mtn bike season. Originally I planned to just take it easy and race for fun and see how it went. Since I haven't put any pressure on myself, I have been able to enjoy the races and still be competitive. The lack of stress has been nice for bringing back my competitive drive. I now am looking forward to the next race to see if I will be able to do any better. We've been having practice short track races on Tuesdays and those have been painfully fun. This weekend is our home race so it will be nice to not have to be in a van all day. I haven't ridden our home XC course since the race last year and I don't intend to until the actual race. It's more fun that way.

p.s. noticing a lot more 29ers out there now. I think top 5 both days were 29ers and 3 of top 5 both days were LWC. Good stuff!