Iron Hill

There isn't much I can say in this post, since I didn't really have much of a race. Last Monday, I noticed that the fork on my Rush was broken, so we drove down the mountain and met my dad. He switched me bikes and I was able to get a ride in on the 29er. This ride felt so good that I scrapped the idea of racing my Scalpel that weekend and really wanted to give the 29er a try. Warmed up and felt good...got to the start with a few minutes to spare and felt great. Once I got the bike up to speed, I easily passed everyone in the short field and was first into the singletrack. Sam was behind me, and I think we had a little gap over the rest of the class. That helped because there were a few sections that could have easily gotten backed up if it was crowded. I was able to keep good speed through all of the course, and there was only really one time when I worried about being passed. Coming into one of the downhills, I knew that I needed to ride it as fast as I could if I still wanted to be in the lead. So I did that, and really accelerated out of the corner at the bottom to try to get a bigger lead. As I shifted down to the middle chainring, I just thought I overshifted and the chain went off the rings. When Sam passed he let me know that I didn't have a chain. So I ran until I could fix it. Tried to get it fixed for a long time. I actually got lapped by Sam while I was trying to get the pin out. So I ran the rest of the way out. The 15 minutes that I actually rode, I felt amazing. The beginning of the year wasn't too good with training (I got sick a few times and started training really late), but I feel a lot faster than even in Granogue a few weeks ago. Sam might have dropped me at the end, but I know that I definitely would have gotten 2nd. That made me happy, because I realized that it is a lot easier to fix a bike before another race than it is to fix your preformance. I'm looking forward to Tour de Tykes. My dad took the bike into the shop yesterday, and it turns out that my crank was loose, which is probably what caused the chain to snap. So I'll be at Tour de Tykes next week, and I'm excited that it's only supposed to be like 60degrees. Much better than last year.