School, Sun & Snow

My fall semester ended last week, and I barely had time to check my grades and get packed before getting on a plane to Florida for my cousin’s wedding. Besides seeing family and doing all that “wedding stuff”, I got more riding in than I have for the last month.

And, Florida drivers aren’t as ignorant or intolerant as some of my riding buddies had led me to believe. It was between 60-75 degrees the whole time, and I even got sunburned a bit the first day I went out.
But now I’m back in Colorado and I woke up to find that it’s snowing again! I was supposed to go for a long ride with my teammate Trevor, but we might have to do a trainer session instead. Don’t get me wrong – I love the snow, but it definitely can take a toll on the amount of time I can spend on my bike.

An afternoon at the park

I spent my Friday afternoon checking out the latest craze on the Mesa State Cycling team. Credit is due to our president, Jeff, and the rest of the Ruby Canyon downhill guys for inventing a new way to have fun on bikes (as if we needed another excuse to ride!). They call it pin flag racing and it involves setting up a bunch of flags on a hill to see who can get through the course the fastest. The undisputed winner was Jeff, but we all got some valuable skills work along the way. It's all about cornering, and there's no shortcuts. We even got Chris, one of our sworn roadies, to get on a downhill bike and check it out. For the most part though, our roadies timed runs and took pictures of us wiping out on the grass.

Pink is in!

The spirit award is ours! The award itself is an old cowboy hat that once belonged to one of the original members of the Mesa State cycling team. It's passed from one school to another, and it takes a lot of hard work and determination to win it. Our boys got really into it, to the point where they started scaring us.

The cross country was a brutal race, but not as bad as we thought it might be. It was great to have so many people cheering for Mesa State and the "rocky mountain girls". The downhill was good too, except that I left my number on my cross country bike and I crashed at the very top and gashed my knee open. It was still a good race, and it made for a good end to the weekend.

In the official competition, we took sixth in the team omnium only 9 points away from a podium. Fort Lewis won the Division I omnium, and Western State took the Division II omnium. My friend Amy from UCDHSC won the the DII cross country race, and Amy from Western won the DII downhill race. Seeing our friends in the stars and stripes jerseys got us motivated for road nationals.


We want to win our own at collegiate road nationals!

It's only the beginning...

Nationals has treated us pretty well so far, minus a few of us crashing out of the mountain cross today. My hand is throbbing right now as I type, because I ate it hard coming off of the final feature in my last race run. I was glad I didn’t crash until the end of the day because it was a long one. It started at 6 this morning when someone’s breakfast set off the fire alarm in our building. The Short Track Cross Country was the first race for this year’s nationals, and it was a brutal climb that ended in a hike a bike. Mesa State rode in style all day, with our whole team decked out in stretchy red mini skirts and maroon striped softball socks.
After the short track we started practice on the mountain cross course. The Angelfire MX course is really burly, so I took it easy for a few runs. We took our qualifying runs, which cut out some of the slower riders and seed the rest of us for the finals. I switched bikes and went to check out the downhill course. As soon as we got back we had to go see who qualified, and we also checked the results for the morning’s short track. The short track results were screwed up pretty bad, so we still don’t know how we actually finished. Six out of eight of us qualified for the mountain cross, which was great. In order to go on to the next round in mountain cross you have to finish either first or second in your heat, and five of us managed to do that, which put us all in the top 16. The team atmosphere was great, especially with one of our XC boys dressed in a massive pink panther costume we picked up at a thrift store. My last run ended in the crash I mentioned earlier. Only one of our girls went on to the next round, and she finished seventh. Today’s finishes were an awesome start to this year’s nationals, and we’re on our way to winning the spirit award too.That’s about it for now, I’ll have to save the extended race reports for when I get home because I don’t have any cell service up here. No one with Verizon has any reception, so we only have 2 or 3 phones that work between the seventeen of us who are here with the team. I feel a little isolated from the rest of the world, but it’s good for the team atmosphere because it makes us depend on one another

Collegiate Mountain Bike Nationals!

Do I really have to say anything more? We're headed down to Angelfire, NM on Wednesday to compete against the top schools in the country. This is what we look forward to all year, and I can't wait. Unfortunately, right now I'm stuck trying to prepare for all the time I'll be missing at school for the next week. But it'll be worth it. I ride for Mesa State College, and we have two goals in going down there. The first one is what you'll hopefully be reading about in local papers, and that's to be on the Division I podium for team omnium. But the other goal is the one that will set the team atmosphere for the weekend - we want to take home the spirit award. This might prove to be even more of a challenge than the first one I mentioned, but our team's up for it. I'm not going to give any of our secrets away, but I can say that this is one weekend you shouldn't miss.
By the way, I created this blog to give a fuller picture of the time I spend on and around my bikes. I ride for Brown & Wills/ Western Slope Development Team, and we have a team blog. I'm starting this one to cover all the other stuff... like collegiate racing and the rest of my life. But check out our other site - http://www.wsdt.blogspot.com