Well this was my last race before mountain bike nationals and I was pumped for the mid-west championships. We drove up on Friday and prerode, it turned out I rode to hard on Friday and was a little bit tired for my race on Saturday evening and didn't have great legs. There were some super fast boys from Colorado and Utah who ended up getting on the podium at nationals. But it was a hard race and I was in 6th for most of the race and lost 6th place because I crashed twice in two dumb spots which was very unfortunate. I lost time and the person in front of me got away. I ended up 7th which was pretty good and I was 3rd in the mid-west. We then went back to our rental cabin and swam in the beautiful lake there and rested up. The next day I had the super-D race. I was excited because I got to race my new scott scale. I had a great start and was in 4th place, right on 3rd places wheel but I slid out on a tricky corner and got passed by 5th I lost the two in front of me and ended up winning a sprint against my friend Nate which is shown in the video. I ended up sixth because a junior in a different wave had a better time. It was a good weekend of racing and was fairly happy but was not pleased about the crashes.
Well road racing is not really my thing but I still had a good time, did pretty well, and didn't crash. This year Road Nationals were Madison Wisconsin which was very convenient. The time trial was first. I started at 4:22 on Thursday. I was the first starter on the course for my age group which was unfortunate because I had nobody to chase. I took off out of the starting ramp and put the power down, it was only 5.6 miles so I could go hard the whole time. There were only a couple of small hills and it was completely straight except for the turn to the start/finish. I ended up 37th out of over 70 kids. On Saturday I had the road race. It was a very hot day but I was well hydrated so that wasn't a problem. The start was just chaos with all the racers crammed into the starting grid, there were multiple crashes in the first 5 minutes of the race. One was right in front of me and almost took me out, I got a little freaked out and dropped back a bit to avoid crashes and I lost the front group. But I stayed with the third group the whole race and hung tough. For the finish you did a 80 degree turn, the sprinted up a hill and then had 70 yards of slight downhill to the finish. I was third wheel going into the last turn with about 10 people right behind me. The two guys in front of me took off too early going as hard as they could, I stayed on there wheels easily and about half was up the hill I put on the gas and blasted past them and crested the hill with a twenty foot gap over every one else. I then flew down the hill to the finish and got 32 out of over 80 people. Unfortunately my friend Andy Schmidt crashed and fractured his wrist and my friend Sam Spende got a flat. On the plus side my friend Simon Jones got on the podium with 5th place. The next day was the criterium on the square which is about 5 minutes from my house. I stayed with second group the whole race and made up a lot of time up on the hill. I ended up 37 out of over 75 and Simon got third! It was a fun week of races and I am looking forward to it next year.
