12 People, 4 Races, 1 Hot Tub

we had 12 people sleeping in a 4 bedroom house for MTB Nationals. (Nice). one of the rooms was filled with bikes, tools, repair stands, Stans sealant spilling all over the place.

i went in the the race with no expectations, and keeping my chin up high. it was a 5 mile lap with about 3 miles of climbing, WIDE open climbing. mostly grass climbs and dirt road, with a small bit of tech climbing. the decent was awesome, pretty technical, steep and a lot of room for hurting. (more—>)

first lap: off the start into the hardest, longest climb of the lap. the whole lap i choose not to chase on the climbs and wait for guys to blow-up. into the tech singletrack i watched all the roadies and west coasters fall all over the place and then it was down to business for me. i rode everything, which gave me a bit of an upper hand. rode the decent as hard and fast as i could, passing tons of people. it was a little tricky because of the huge volume of racers on the course (about 300). there was never a time when i wasn’t behind someone, which made it harder to pass.

well…my other lap were about the same as the first, with the exception of giving the climbs more of an effort on the last lap. i tried to catch the guy in position in front of me but it just didn’t happen and i ended up 6 sec. behind him for a 7th place finish.

after all the races on Saturday, James, Johanna, Ryan and I hit the hot tub with beers and turned on the party lights.

If anyone would like to donate a hot tub the CRC for post races “recovery” i’m sure we could find a great home for it!!

Thanks to all the friends on the Vermont trip. You guys are the BEST!

-kyle