Garret Gerchar - Pan American Championships

  

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 15^th 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.