College Mountain bike Natz!!!

College natz was awesome. I didn't acheive my goal of a top 10 in the Short Track but I finished 21st and 23rd in the cross country which was better than I had expected. The courses and conditions were tough! Our trip started off with driving to Kentucky and staying at the Union College boys apartment in downtown Barbourville KY. Their apartment was sweet and we really appreciated them letting us stay there. We woke up to big mountains all around and the rest of the drive was full of huge mountains and forest. We prerode on Thursday and checked into our cabin which came complete with a Sega Genesis that provided us with hours of entertainment! It wasn't raining in the XC but it was still epic and the course seemed to get more slick every lap. I got a good start and managed to ride all of the crazy rock gardens pretty well. After the XC it started raining and continued to do so until Saturday morning. The short track was really muddy and tough. I crashed 3 times and hit a lot of trees. I got a good start but my legs weren't feeling great. I also had really bad tires for the mud which didn't help. Saturday afternoon we watched the downhill and had a lot of fun on saturday night. Sunday was a long 10 hour drive home but it was beautiful the whole way. It was a pretty good way to experience my last collegiate mountain bike natz. it is hard to believe I am gonna graduate in May!

getting ready for natz

Man! Mountain bikes sure do break a lot!! I feel like I have to go to the bike shop every week to get something new adjusted or fixed. First it was my disk breaks which are now all good. Then it was the hub cones on my wheels and they are not messed up again!! I think I have gotten at least 5 flat tires in the past 2 months on the bike and just today my bottom bracket needed to be replaced because one side of the bearings were shot!!! I also had to have my fork rebuilt 3 weeks ago because oil kept leaking out of it!!! Well hopefully after today my bike is fixed and doesn't break at nationals on Friday or Saturday. Aside from all the bike fixing training was pretty well this weekend. Friday I did sprints on my road ride, saturday I did a 3 hour super hilly road ride with Greg and Today I fixed my bike for an hour and then rode both of our local mountain bike trails pretty fast. Monday and Tuesday I am gonna recovery. Wednesday we are gonna drive and Thursday pre ride the XC course. I am really gunning for a top 10 finish in the Short track and then my season is basically over unless I decide to do a little cyclocross. I think I might do Jingle cross because it is a fun course and there is a ton of money but I am finding it hard to train a lot with school. the next update will be from Banner Elk, NC and will hopefully be about how I did well at natz!

RegionalZ!

Purdue hosted the MWCCC Mountain bike Regionals this weekend and it was a blast. Pretty tiring but still awesome. We had our XC on our campus trail that is about 5 miles long and there was lots of close racing action. I was riding in 3rd about half way through the 4th lap when I ran over either a spoke or one of our little metal flags and it jammed into my derailleur jamming it and bending my hanger. so needless to say I had to take my derailleur and chain off the bike even to get it to roll. I was kind of mad but the bike shop got it fixed except that my chain was skipping like crazy while warming up for the STXC so I borrowed Travis's wheel. STXC was on Slater hill which is right on our campus and was awesome course that we designed. It had a 1.5 foot drop off and several fun downhill turns. I got 3rd and was pretty happy with it. I did the dual slalom too which switched back through a bunch of trees. it was exciting and I even got into the top 8. In my first race I did this crazy move to cut my opponent from Mizzou off. I think we bumped about 5 times in one run but I got it and then got eliminated by Weston who won in the next round. Setting up the courses and taking them down was a bit of work but the Purdue club is big and well organized so we got it done relatively fast. Thanks to everyone who came out and raced or helped out with the races.

Getting better

This past weekend I raced at Butler's mountain bike races. It went well I got 4th in the XC and 2nd in the STXC and I managed not to get hurt or crash in the downhill race. I have got to say that North Vernon is an awesome XC course lots of 1 minute-2 minute climbs and fun downhills without too much dangerous stuff. I really had fun in the cross country and it is one of the few XC races where i didn't blow up on the last lap. The Purdue Regionals race that we are hosting is this weekend and should be a blast! Also school is really tough right now I had my last of my first set of tests this morning and it went OK. I also have a huge paper due next wednesday that I have just barely got started on. i am pretty excited to get done with school in May this year.