Last
weekend I traveled to Cincinnati to race the CincyCx race and The Pan American
Championships. I was excited to finally travel to a cx race after only doing
local cx races or collegiate mountain bike races earlier in the season. I just
got back from collegiate mountain bike nationals that Monday but packed up on
Friday and headed to Cincinnati. It was an early flight and was a little out of
it, forgetting to empty my water bottles through security and then forgetting
myheadphones at home. It was a long flight with a layover and knew I wouldn’t
get through it with out my music so I picked up a pair of headphones in the
airport and was on my way to Cincinnati. Arrived in Cincinnati and met up with
Troy and we got a rental car and headed to our host house. After arriving we
met with our host Scott and he told us about a good ride we should do to spin
out our legs, we tried to load the file on my Garmin but it didn’t work so we
tried using a print out turn by turn direction of the route, we followed the
route for a little bit but realized it was going to get dark soon so we found a
bike path and rode that for a while till we headed home. It started to get dark
soon but luckily Myron had lights for us and Troy had his reflective capo kit,
so riding the roads at night we were visible and made it back to the house safe
and sound. The next day was the Cincy cx race, I had raced here before two
years ago and was excited to race in the pro field.
The race was in the evening
so most of the day was spent lying around and relaxing getting ready to race.
When race time finally came we headed to the venue. I got pinned up in the tent
and went our and warmed up with a quick pre-ride and then found my way into a
neighborhood to do some openers. After all that the race was off, I had a poor
call-up but was able to make up a few spots at the start but was playing catch
up for the race, slowly moved my way up until I found a rhythm and sat in at a
good pace. Slowed down towards the end of the race but finished with some power
in my legs feeling ready for tomorrows Pan American Championships. Post race me
and troy went to chipotle and got a burrito to help recover and get some
protein. After a goodnight sleep I was feeling rested and ready for Pan Ams.
This race was earlier than the last one so had to change up my eating habits
from the day earlier. Had a big thing of scrambled eggs for breakfast and then
some leftover pasta with meat sauce for lunch before heading to the venue,
where Myron drove me out there. Once again pinned up my skin-suit and got on
course for a pre-ride, unfortunately this time the UCI officials shut down the
course before I could finish the last part of the course. Luckily it didn’t
affect my race. After that I did some openers on the rode and then headed to
the start. Rode around the start for a little while after they postponed the
race. Then finally we started. I didn’t have my best start but was able to make
up a lot of places on an off-camber running section.
After that
I was able to hold my place only having a few people pass me. The legs felt
good and I was able to keep pushing hard until the last two laps. I was able to
ride the off-camber every lap and was feeling really good technically.
The race was hard and last lap I was toning down a little
bit and was holding on to 15th position last lap and was riding the
descent well trying to keep any competition off me because I could tell the
legs were slowing down after yesterdays full race and the start of the race
today.
On the last lap I had 15
th in the bag or so I
thought until a rider came up behind me. I knew I had a little punch left in my
legs so I put in the power and tried to hold him off, Luckily for me I was
putting some time into him and rode a very tricky off camber in front of him
and he ended up crashing, locking me into 15
th position and giving
me my first UCI point of my U23 racing carrier.
