The course was true to form: punishing as usual… yet utterly delightful, glorious, and satisfying. My legs are starting to improve, but it’s still going to be a few more weeks before my iron is back up to normal. As Coach says, “We are not out of the woods yet…but getting there.” I was happy to be able to finish (especially because I bonked spectacularly on the preride and was slumped on the hot pavement in the fetal position afterwards, getting brain freezes trying to guzzle down ice cold water), to feel decent for most of the race, to rage on the DH, and to feel zealous and stoked enough at the end to keep pushing straight to the line.
I got the luxury of attending the Snowmass with Mr. Jeffrey Kerkove in true Ergon fashion.
Quit taking my picture!!!!! Jeeeez.
I was very good about manning the camera most of the weekend…so since a picture is worth a 1000 words, that saves your eyes from having to read and my fingers from having to type. After all, gotta recover. 🙂 It feels soooo good to be spent from a race.
Yes Uphill is good. Uphill is recommended.
Giddy on the singletrack. Not smiling is not an option.
Must…find…coffee… my veins need to flow with the magical bean juice.
Post race. Camera is locked and loaded. Look out! This is the face of a super heroic endurance racer who can dish it out in a little XC race and the 13 hour, super epic, 100+ mile mountain bike races. That is raw talent if you ask me. 🙂
and he was nice enough to help me make my bike work because I am not bike mechanically inclined.
Mantra for the race. I might start having a new mantra to make me smile through the tough times in the XCs. 🙂
Classic…
This is what heaven looks like.
and you wonder why it’s called Aspen, Colorado.
Jeff taking video and riding. who needs to hold on?
I have a new nickname for Jeff Kerkove. It’s Geckove. Now let me tell you why. The man can ride up XC courses and maintain a HR of 100. Reptiles can slow their HRs down, and he wears green. My HR was 170 when his HR was 100. Forget “Mr. 24”, I think Super Geckove is it!
View from the top of one of the climbs.
My newErgon gloves. Rockstar!
There he goes again… HR is 92. 😉
Dirt tan lines are so hot right now.
Now just a bit on the race. We did 1 short and 1 long lap. Snowmass always starts out with a gut-wrenching long climb. The course was different from years past in that you got on singletrack pretty fast, rather than groveling up a dirt road forever. I tried to maintain a hard, steady pace for the majority of the race. I ended up riding at about 90% of my max HR (191 BPM) for the 2:39 race. I tried to keep it comfortably painful the first lap and out of the majorly red zone. By the time I started on the second lap, I was feeling it pretty bad so I tried to push it on the downhills and survives the next several thousand feet of climbing. Most of the peeps were at the NY Norba. I believe there were 12 pro female starters. I popped out 8th which I’ll happily take of all things considered. 🙂
I miss Snowmass! had a 4th place finish in the Expert class there in 2006.