Its been a while since I have ridden my mtb, mainly I have been training on the road trying to increase my power/strength. Everything has been pretty slow lately.
A couple of weeks ago I hurt my knee again. Same knee that I hurt last year and around the same time, different reason though. I was talking with my coach and we think that it might have been from overworking it (I was on spring break the entire week before I hurt it) or form just not stretching enough. At first I was pretty upset because it started to hurt right before my last lap of a road race and I was scared that I would be set back pretty far. I worked on fixing it a lot though and it only ended up taking a week to heal itself.
The week off really helped me I think. After that I have been riding really strong and I have gotten a lot faster. Build and recover baby, build and recover.
So yesterday I went out and did some mountain biking at Swope to get the feeling back for my mtb. I did a couple laps, not too fast, and mainly stayed off of the technical stuff to prevent damage to my race wheels (Don't have a back up set). It feels so weird switching between my mountain bike and road bike. At first I was thinking that my seat was too low but after a while I got used to it. I'm a little surprised I was able to stay away from the mountain bike for that long though, I just can't help smiling when I ride it!
We get up this morning and we are kinda freaking out because a rain cell is about to hit Lawrence, Ks where we will be racing but we go out anyway. We get there and beginner class is just getting done but they are a little muddy. They were saying that the back section of the course was pretty slick. It was still like an hour and a half till race time though so we were hoping the trails would dry a little. The weather was perfect though, 60 with some cloud cover.
I get my gear on, water bottles ready, nutrition ready, and then run through my bike to make sure everything is working properly. I needed my siblings help but they had ran off somewhere so I had to ask the mom of one of my team mates to help out with my dad and my water bottles. Then I go off to do a warm up.
I line up around 5 minutes till start but everyone is all over the place and the categories aren't really split up so i'm a little confused as to where I am supposed to be. The race promoter tells us what the waves are going to be so I have to start asking where the 50+ cat 1 men are since I start with them. I line up but am disappointed because for once I was going to have another female cat 1 racer but she didn't show. When I see that I start marking which 50+ guys I think I will be able to keep up with and at the start jump on their wheel.
There wasn't really a sprint start so we didn't get spread and I ended up with a guy in between me and my marked rider but we were pretty close so I wasn't worried. I felt extremely good and by the time the first lap was over was ready to really light it up. My first lap ended up being 36 minutes which is crazy fast compared to my 40-45 minute laps on the same 9 mile loop last year.
On my second lap I was right on the wheel of the rider I wanted to be with and was still feeling really strong. I told him that I was going to see how long I couple stay with him and he said alright then sped up a little to try and catch another rider in his age group. We had a train going of around 7 riders through the whole back section and we were flowing super well. It was a pretty cool experience. The group got broken up a little when we came up on a lapped rider. I stayed on my guys wheel through the whole lap but we ended up falling a little ways back from some of the other 50+ riders since they were able to get around the rider in an open area. Also when we tried to pass the rider he would speed up then slow down.
The guy I was riding with told me that he needed to stop for a water bottle when we got close to the start finish for our last lap so I rode with him then took off around the idiot rider and another 50+ rider that had pulled away earlier on in the second lap. He jumped on my wheel and stayed with me until the guy I had marked caught back up. They both went around me half way through the lap but I managed to keep them in my sight. My marked rider pulled away and left the other guy behind which demoralized him enough so he slowed down. I took this as a chance to pull him back in and took off to attempt to gain back 10-15 second in the last 2 miles. I caught him around 200ft from the finish line.
I finished first in my category, 9th overall in cat 1 men and 5th or 6th in cat 2 men.
I have to say I'm really liking my new 29er. Okay, so maybe like doesn't cover it. I LOVE my new 29er. I got the new Fate Expert Carbon 29er from my new sponsor this year (Specialized). I feel so much faster on it than I did on the 26er.
Next race is Bone Bender in a 6 hour coed duo with my dad. Also I'm debating going to Tour of Hermann the weekend after that since It is going to be the last one and to get ready for my Canada trip.
I hope to be shredding it up even more further into the season as I get closer to my Canada race (Tour de la relève internationale de Rimouski) and MTB Nationals.
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