Friday after some fun leg openers on some trails in the woods, I spun home, finished packing, made dinner and scooted on over to the airport. Flying out of Madison can be expensive but luckily we got our tickets super early and cheap. My mom dropped off my dad and me, and we worked our way through the very short security line. Thankfully we found someone driving back to Colorado from CXC Cup so we didn't have to fly with my bikes. This makes everything easier and cheaper. After the two-hour flight we hopped in the rental car and drove over to the home of Eric and Carrie, our Boulder friends. The next morning we woke up, ate, and built my bikes. Being the wonderful bike friendly city that Boulder is, I spun the 4.5 miles over to the course all on bike paths and rode the course. It was very dusty and dry with lots difficult features like the long climb after the run up and the 5280 stair set.
After my warm up I spun over to the start. Once again I sat around a little too long (race started behind schedule) and my legs cooled down too much. Thanks to good luck in the random drawing for people with no UCI points I was front row. When the gun went off I was quick off the line but people were going by me on both sides down the start straight and up the stiff climb. I was about 14th into the first sandpit out of 16 riders and was seriously worried about the next 40 min of the race. Going through the start straight into the second lap my legs started to open up and I hit the climb hard and started to move up. Going into the start of the third lap I drilled it up the climb and latched onto Jack Tanner and Cassidy Bailey with Cade Bickmore a little bit ahead. I got around them and lead for the rest of that lap. At the start of the fourth lap I again hit the climb as hard as I could and made contact with Cade who was in 5th. Going through some of the off camber sections I lost a few seconds to him and Cassidy got around and blocked a little bit. Cade started to slip away and Jack caught back up to Cassidy and me right before the start straight. I sat up and let the two of them pull me into the start of the fifth and final lap letting myself recover. Right as we hit the climb I attacked as hard as I could and opened up the gap on the two of them, Cassidy was gone but Jack chased hard. We stayed together until right before the second time past the pit where I gave it everything I had and managed to ride Jack off my wheel and finish 6th with five seconds on Jack. It was a super hard race and the elevation made my whole body feel like lead but I was happy to have ridden a clean race, and raced well tactically. It was a little bittersweet to finish one spot away from getting my first UCI points but the great improvement over my races in Providence made up for that.
I watched the rest of the pro races with my friends who I had raced against that day and had also attended the Montana cyclocross camp with me this summer. After that most of us went over to race winner Eric Brunner's house for a barbecue.
The next morning I met Jack, Cassidy, Eric, Jordan and Denzel at Denzel's house and we headed out for a ride. We climbed for two hours up through the mountains before descending for forty minutes back into town after a snack break at a Cafe in the middle of no where. It was super fun to ride in the mountains and with such good company.
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| Can't beat the views! |
Monday morning we packed up the bikes said farewell and thanks to the Stonebrakers and drove to the Denver airport. We got home around eight and I cranked out as much home work as I could before crashing.
It was a fantastic weekend of racing, riding and hanging out in one of my favorite places and I am very happy with my results. Huge thanks to my parents as well as Trek Cyclocross Collective for all
the support and opportunities to go to these races and ride the best
equipment available! This coming weekend I have some local races and then in two weeks it time for the continental championships in Cincinnati!!!
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| The Trek Boone is the best cyclocross bike on the market. Hands down! |
Friday after some fun leg openers on some trails in the woods, I spun home, finished packing, made dinner and scooted on over to the airport. Flying out of Madison can be expensive but luckily we got our tickets super early and cheap. My mom dropped off my dad and me, and we worked our way through the very short security line. Thankfully we found someone driving back to Colorado from CXC Cup so we didn't have to fly with my bikes. This makes everything easier and cheaper. After the two-hour flight we hopped in the rental car and drove over to the home of Eric and Carrie, our Boulder friends. The next morning we woke up, ate, and built my bikes. Being the wonderful bike friendly city that Boulder is, I spun the 4.5 miles over to the course all on bike paths and rode the course. It was very dusty and dry with lots difficult features like the long climb after the run up and the 5280 stair set.
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