The weekend startEd in the pouring rain on Friday afternoon. We drove out to Vail Lake where we camped for the night, trying to sleep with rain pounding on the roof of our RV and the dogs freaking out. After the long night I woke up early on Saturday morning to an incredibly sore throat, an achy body, and mud outside that sunk past your ankles of you even tried to step in it. I knew it was going to be a difficult race. Luckily, they pushed back the start times due to the rain and I tried to stay warm in the freezing cold. When it was time to warm up, I was frantically trying to get everything together as my dad changed my tires last minute and my clip in shoes decided to brake. Once I got everything situated I only had about 5-10 minutes to warm up and then I rushed over to the starting line. I was excited to finally be racing alongside my SoCal DEVO teammates, but was nervous because I wasn’t feeling so great.
As soon as the race started the girls took off and I was surprised as the fast pace because we still had a ways to go, and I wasn‘t used to racing at this high of a level. I tried to stay with them as each girl passed me one by one and I was giving everything to stay on their wheel. When we reached ambulance climb, I was giving as much as I could but I found myself not being able to breathe, which was extremely frustrating because I could feel that my legs had more in them than I was able to give. I wasn’t able to hang onto their wheel any longer as the pack dropped me and created an increasing gap between me and 3rd place. By that time I was getting really mad because I had trained so hard and I knew I still had more in me but I just couldn’t breathe. I let my head get out of the game as 5th place began to catch me, with still another lap to go.
Eventually I realized that I couldn’t let myself give up and I gave everything I could on the last lap and ended with a sprint finish for 4th place that I just barely managed to win. I finsihed absolutely dead and was sucking in air as hard as I could all the way to the finish line, with my other teammates cheering me on. Honestly, if I wasn’t for them I might have given up. I was happy that I won the sprint finish but was still frustrated with myself that I had almost let myself give up. Although I wasn’t exactly happy with my finish, I think that it was good for me because I needed to be reminded that you can’t always win. Not every race is a good race and things can always go wrong. But there are no excuses, I need to learn from my mistakes and do everything I can to make the next race different. The rest of the day I hung out with my teammates and had lots of fun. We even watched supercross outside in the pouring rain around the campfire. Sunday morning came quickly and I woke up early again to prepare for the enduro race. I had a great day and the course was absolutely perfect from all the rain. I especially loved the new trails that were recently added for this race.
With a just few mistakes made, I placed 6th out of 7th in pro women with lots of room to improve. I Finished the weekend off on a good note after a fantastic day. I’m anxious for the next race so that I can come back hopefully even stronger.
