Teva Mountain Games

Driving back from Vail on Saturday night I thought to myself, “It’s easy to be happy and positive when everything is going your way, when you’re effortlessly pedaling through a race with the sun smiling down on you…it’s when things are tough, when you keep trying to no avail, when you need patience, when your legs simply won’t feel good and you feel like you’re starting to lose your livelihood that makes you who you are. It’s keeping a positive attitude during the good, the bad, and the ugly.” You can guess how the Teva XC went from that statement.

This is before I noticed the smudge on my lense from my rain ride last week. Start/finish.

Sobe and Teva did an excellent job with this event. I was very impressed with all the different events. Anywhere from rock climbing to dog jumping. I’m glad to see that mountain sports can still rock! I also did a TV interview on Plum TV on Saturday that I’m trying to get a copy of for your viewing pleasure. Big thanks to Sobe for that too. 🙂 I was very flattered. Fuse Marketing is doing a great job for us. Thanks to them too, very very impressive!

I showed up to Vail hoping to be recovered from my spring madness. I pre-rode the course on Friday and was excited about all the climbing and the wicked, steep, rocky singletrack descent. The course was pretty short, but I just wanted to race my mountain bike. My coach told me that if I still happen to feel blown out, there is no sense in pushing myself into a deeper hole. I felt pretty decent on the warm-up and had to swallow an excited lump in my throat at the prospect of being able to actually race again. However, once we started, I knew after 5 min that my body still was not ready. They started the expert men right behind us, so I tried to stay out of the way and halfway through the lap, I stopped and waited for some of my friends in the womens’ expert field and rode with them before I pulled out. I was bummed about it, but I did not let disappointment ruin my day. Instead I stood on the side lines, screaming like a frat boy at a football game at my friends, running next to them as they went by. I thought, “hmmm. being a spectator is kind of fun. I can be as loud and obnoxious as I want!” Here are some pretty pics from my pre-ride

Mossy waterfall.

The muddiest section of the race was in this tunnel. Mud bog. I hate getting my butt wet when I’m riding.

Still some snow up in Vail, CO. Just a bit!

Eric is not only a mechanic, but he designs his own clothes. He was being gangsta with his magnum tee and I was being straight hip hop throwing the signs from da ‘Querque.

I still do not own a bike rack. My back seat(well, the actual seat is out) gets kind of full of bikes sometimes.

How’s your Aspen? haha. That never ceases to be funny to me.

Singletrack. A little piece of heaven and no passing.

What does this mean you ask? this means slow, flat riding (i.e. the bane of my existence) until Deer Valley. I should be good to go by then. I am able to get up to and above my LT now which means my body is coming around. The legs just need to heal a little more and hopefully I’ll be able to bring home some results very soon and rage hard the second half of the season.