’tis the Season

Can you believe it’s cross season already?
 

I am so excited. This past weekend my husband, son, and I drove to Portland, Oregon to spend the weekend with my brother-in-law and his family. He is an amazing free rider, so it is always a blast to ride with him. We went on some pretty spectacular rides.

We had made plans to drive to Seattle Monday morning to race in the Labor Day cross. I was pretty excited, because I haven’t raced since June. I was actually really nervous driving in, my stomach up in the air. When we got there I got signed up and took out to pre-ride. It was a fun course, really sandy. It had a 3 good run ups and 1 set of barriers. I got a couple of laps in and it was time to get to the start line.

When I got there I noticed there were some pretty fast girls there, Bridgette Stoick, Kelly Jones, Kristi Berg to name some. It was going to be brutal. I took out hard with the front pack. It felt good, I love the run ups. I come from a running background so I can usually do some damage.

We came around to the barriers and when I went to get back on my bike I hit a rut and bounced my chain out. It seemed like foreve and couldn’t get it back on. While bent over I saw 2 girls fly by through my legs. So I was sitting in 7th at this point. Furious I took off on my bike and started hammering. I passed one right away. The other is pretty strong so it took me about 1/2 lap to catch her and I passed her on the run up.

So back to hammering. It is so windy at South Sea Tac I never could see anyone in front of me. So I had no Idea where I was. I came around a corner the 4th lap and there was 4th place right in front of me. I got so excited that when we got to the barriers I set my bike down in the same rut and bounced my chain off again and off went 4th place. I pushed hard the last 1/4 lap but just didn’t have it.

It was fun. I finished 5th which I was pretty happy with. Plus I got to race cross in September which doesn’t happen on the other side of the state.

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