Tuesday, August 30, 2011

The Winter Park MTB Series Wrap Up

I couldn't have been more excited for the final race of the WP series as all I heard was how fun it is. Since Bryce was doing an epic day on the dirt bikes with the boys on Saturday, I drove up with Shelby Friday afternoon for a relaxing evening and good night's rest. Race morning brought perfect weather and at 10:16am, we were off.

I was able to stick with the top girls for the first few miles but when we hit the first big climb, I settled in 6th and was focused on my race. I knew it was going to be a long day so I paced myself well until I hit the first descent where I was ready to rip! Wrong...within seconds of bombing downhill, I got a bit of ''chainsuck'' and the cage on the rear derailleur pulley ripped right off :( I jumped off my bike to figure out what was wrong but realized quickly there wasn't much I could do. The above pic is how I road about 17 miles of trail to the finish! It was not pretty, nor did it sound good and my gear selection was very limited (i.e. non-existent). Needless to say, I didn't finish all that great but still had a blast and can't wait to ride those trails again.

The highlight of the day came about a half hour after the race when I found out that I had placed 3rd in the pro women's class for the series! We all got sweet Epic Singletrack jerseys and had a great time celebrating :) Big congrats to Shelby for winning her class as well. This was her first season racing mountain bikes and she rocked it!

After a fun evening of chatting, eating delicious pizza and watching Kingpin, we woke up on Sunday ready to rip it up on the dirt bikes. We had a huge group ride planned in Rand with a great route. I've never ridden in the area before and couldn't believe how fun the trails were.

Everything was going great until I tagged a tree with my handguard and it slingshot me off the trail into a rock ravine. I tried to bail but unfortunately smashed my finger so badly that I'm pretty sure it's broken. My day was over as pulling in the clutch was pretty much impossible but luckily it began raining right as we got back to the truck. I'm thinking a few weeks in the splint and I'll be good to go for the first cyclocross race on September 9th. Fingers crossed :)

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