Double Race Weekend

This weekend was insanely fast and filled with a lot of new experiences that I'm happy to have done. On Friday I drove down to Bonelli where the UCI International race was going to be the next day to pre-ride. when I got there my tire was flat. Luckily, my good friend Rodger with Kenda was able to get it fixed for me to pre-ride the course. I've raced here twice in the past but it has been a year since I've ridden it so I couldn't remember everything. I'm happy I did the pre-ride because they changed the course from the year before in a few different areas adding 2 more steep climbs and got rid of an out and back section near the water. On the ride I ran into a few friends from out of state that I haven't seen in years. After I finished my pre-ride, I went by my girlfriend, Ally's, to spend some time with her because I wasn't able to see her during the week and I had races on both Saturday and Sunday. I spent about and hour there and then I went home to get washed up and go to bed. The next morning I woke up at around 5 a.m. and got in our RV for the long weekend, starting with Bonelli. When we got there, I got kitted up and jumped on my bike to warm up. On my warm up I look down at my bars and I saw a sticker that said "Come and take it" which is from a flag from the Revolutionary War where we stole a cannon from the British. I love this saying because I think of it as if you are racing and you want to pass me you have to come and take it from me, but not without a fight. Also about 3 minutes later I saw another sticker but this time it is a picture of the cougar, Karen, from Talladega Nights. Which put the biggest smile on my face and I just laughed. It was a funny surprise from my dad. As I rode around, I ran into a few more friends that I hadn't seen the day before. After warming up for about 30 minutes I went over the staging where I was in the last three rows. The first 8 call ups were for people from Canada, Mexico, Netherlands and Denmark. It was kinda crazy to hear that at a race. People from all over flew all the way out here to race for UCI points and a chance to qualify for the Olympics, keep in mind this is a group of kids from 16-18 year old. Our group was about 70 kids and I was starting in the second to last row which isn't the best place to be to begin with and to top it off,  right off the start I slipped my pedal and when I looked up I was literally the last person. I was a little upset but I said to myself "well I can't get any worse" and kept pushing. Since the girls were starting 2 minutes after us we weren't able to do the parade loop, so we went into the first climb as a huge clump. I was able to move up on the outside and get into the top 50ish. We pushed up the climb down to the most technical decent on the whole course which I thought there was going to be a pile up for sure because someone was going to try and make a dumb pass but we all stayed clean through that section. For the next mile or so it is straight single track so there was little to no passing. When we finally hit some fire road it was for about a minute then back onto single track so it was hard to move up. Once that first lap was over the gap from the top 15/20ish to the rest of the pack was pretty big. I stayed in the 50s range. Sadly, I was only able to finish three laps before being pulled. Then the leader came past looking like he was hardly trying, having a solid gap on 2nd and 3rd. This was very eye opening, seeing how the International competition is on a whole different level. You can be a big name locally doing well at Cat 1 races but then go into UCI and its just a completely different animal. These racers gained a huge amount of respect from me and just racing with them is something I will never forget. After the race was over I hung out with the DeBruhl's in our RV until we left for Vail,  the next race of the weekend. It took us about and hour and forty minutes to get there and I rested on the way down. When we got there I went over and said hi to coach Jason. Then I visited with Nate Miller the owner of Tasco. I'm part of the Tasco tribe this year and I have been riding their gloves ever since they came out and have loved them all. This weekend he gave me a pair of gloves to test that will be coming out at Sea Otter. Let's just say, you will definitely want to grab a pair. That evening I pre-rode the NICA course with my dad. It was a very sprint heavy course, my type of course, none of the climbs are very long and you just have to push, plus there is a lot of flow and it's just a fun course in general. After I finished my ride I went over with my SoCal Devo team to Jason's camper and we got our new kits for the year.  They are super cool,  very tight, clean looking and comfortable. I'm stoked to be wearing these throughout the season. We ate dinner with Aidan Chapin and watched movies till about 9/9:30 and then I went to bed. The next morning I got rudely woken up by the sun,  then by Brandon's music and request for Volunteers to come to the meeting at 7:30 in the morning. I had my breakfast, rolled out my legs  and watch another movie waiting for the afternoon for my race to go off. I went out and about talked to Jason and Nate again basically trying to get my mind off the nerves. About 12:30 I started warming up. Yet again I got on my bike and found 2 more stickers with one being "IF YOU AIN'T FIRST YOUR LAST," on the other side of my bars and a picture of a Crystal Gayle on my seat post. This just made me laugh because my family watches that movie so much and seeing all of the references is just amazing and helped to reduce my nerves. I got up to staging and got on the line. We went off the start and again I couldn't find my pedal which drove me crazy but through the first .5 mile I was able to stay in the top 10 into the first climb and I stayed in 9th for the first lap. The second lap I was stuck in the middle of two groups and I saw my teammate Ryan Landis behind me so I went with him and we stayed together. About halfway through the course there is on climb that is short but very steep and it is just brutal but as soon and you got over it the rest of the course was pretty much down hill. On the third lap it stayed about the same with me and Ryan together and we had 1 or 2 other people with us until Air force climb which is just a super fast momentum climb that you can basically get up without pedaling but during the race there was a head wind which made it a little harder to get up. On the final lap of the day my back started to cramp up on the way up to tunnel of love where I saw one of my friends Brandon Greywitt who didn't look so hot but he said he was fine and I kept on going. At this point at the top of tunnel of love,  Ryan and another friend of mine Chance and I pace lined off of each other for the rest of the lap. Right after we got up the steep climb Ryan went past and I tried to catch on but I felt my rear tire kinda bouncing around, I tried to blow it off like it was nothing. But then I hit a few of the corners after the climb and I noticed that I was losing air in my back tire. I wasn't able to fix it quickly because my flat repair kit flew out of my pocket on one of the descents on the first lap. So I had to baby it for the last 3/4 of a mile of the race. I was a little disappointed that it happened, but there is nothing I could do and I really could not see where the air was leaking from (we found out on Monday that my rim tape was shoot and it was leaking through that then through the nipples.) I started with 26 psi in my tire and finished with 12 psi. I was able to get 16th on the day.  My goal was a top 10 finish  but not every race is going to go your way. The whole weekend was a bunch of fun, I was able to see many old friends on Saturday, experience International competition, test ride awesome new gear and race my mountain bike non stop, and no I did not catch on fire. Looking on ward and up ward to next weekend at Vail AGAIN.