Bittersweet Colorado.
Literally every time I go to Colorado something happens. Colorado and I, we don't get along! Last year for this race on Saturday I couldn't stop crashing in the loose ground, and on Sunday I broke my wheel. Nationals..if we read my blog post about nationals here, you will remember I spent the weekend of Nationals puking. Colorado seriously hates me. I debated about not going to Colorado and racing Starcrossed at home. It was a HUGE payout, but the C1 race on Sunday was calling my name.
Way back when (which was probably the end of August) when I was booking tickets to Vegas, I knew I wanted to go directly to CO from Vegas. I was looking at flight tickets and I couldn't find a flight that was reasonably priced, I kept thinking "holy smokes, that much for a two hour flight PLUS luggage"??? Chris was racing in Vegas as well, so I knew we would have 2 bike cases and a lot of luggage. Needless to say, I was concerned on the financial cost of flying everything to Colorado. Someone then mentioned to me about driving, I thought "thats not a bad idea, I won't have to break my bikes down, it's 10 hours, if we leave early enough we can get there in a reasonable time". I can't lie when I say that was the worst idea I have ever had in my entire life. The night before we were supposed to leave I freaked out and told Chris I wanted to book us tickets out of Vegas, I didn't care the cost, I didn't want to drive anymore. I panicked, like really really panicked. I had a moral dilemma, I didn't want to drive, but I couldn't bail out on the people we were going with, so we stuck with the original plan of driving, and I hated every minute of it. We left Vegas at 930am and didn't arrive into Boulder until midnight. Lets leave it at that...
Saturday I knew would be a rough one, and it was. I tried to do my best to keep my mind open and use the race as an opener for the big C1 race on Sunday. My legs sucked, they had one speed, they really truly sucked. On the bright side, I did way better at this course than I had the year before. While warming up for the race on Sunday I was pretty convinced I was going to suck even more than I had on Saturday. I only slightly panicked to Chris (he deals with so much). Turns out, I didn't suck that much and I finished 8th! Only one spot better than the day before, but my legs felt snappier than the previous day. That's success to me!
Sunday night we had dinner with my favorite CX couple Nicole Duke and Ben Berden, then went back to our fabulous host housing (thank you to the Needy's) and packed up the bikes and are our bags and flew out bright and early Monday morning (I will leave out the part about how Chris thought he was going to miss the flight).
Thank you so much to all my sponsors, if my racing wasn't fantastic, my equipment was truly dialed, from my Rock Lobster frames to my American Classic wheels (LOVE) glued up with the trusty Clement tires (I ran MXP's both days, they rocked that Colorado dust, marbles, and grass).