Blah

Sunday I headed up to Duluth to race the MN State Championship Series race at Spirit Mountain. This is a really fun course and I was excited to ride on the fun singletrack trails. This was a great course so a big thanks to the organizers!

Nothing turned out as I had thought it would which was really strange. For last week's race I did nothing right leading up to the race. I stayed up too late, had a few drinks, didn't drink enough water, didn't watch what I was eating and didn't warm up before the race but I had a great race. Leading up to yesterday's race, I did everything I was supposed to - drank lots of water, got a good night's rest, good nutrition, no alcohol and I even warmed up before the race. Despite all that, I felt horrible for most of the race. The first lap was great but I quickly went downhill after that. Each lap my legs felt numb and I had very little gas to keep going. On my second lap I went into endurance race pace (which is much slower) and the last lap became a very casual Sunday ride. I thought long and hard about quitting but I mustered up enough energy to finish but barely.

Great job to all the racers yesterday!

I'm going to gripe for a minute and my intended audience will never read this but I need to get it off my chest so please bear with me. Apparently there were some spectators at the race yesterday who felt I yelled at another rider at last week's race and it became a topic of discussion as they were watching me go by.

I didn't yell but I will admit that I was frustrated. The standard protocol during races is that racers riding bicycles have the right of way over racers pushing bicycles. Last week, I announced "rider back" and this rider, who was pushing her bike, just kept on walking right over the technical feature and blocked my ability to ride the feature. This happened more than once. I'm sure there was frustration in my voice and I should have just talked to her about it then rather than having her go back and complain about it to others for them to gossip about at the another race. Lessons learned.