Northstar

I've been here at Northstar Resort at Lake Tahoe, CA for a few days now for the collegiate natty champs. Its a massive resort that embraces mountain bike riding, so its nothing but fun times here. Too many trails to ride while we are here. You have to take a gondola from the village to the main riding area, where you have a choice of two other lifts to ride up to access many other trails.

The downhill track is really sick. Tons of rocks, not too many roots, and endless twisty turns mixed with crazy high speeds. The rocks here are cool because you can hit them at any angle and not get kicked around because there is endless traction everywhere. I've been just bombing through rock gardens not really having a prepared line and getting through just fine. That wouldn't happen on the east coast.

Racing mountaincross today, then getting up early Sunday morning for Downhill qualifying and racing shortly after that. So far I've had a blast, I'm gonna miss collegiate racing since it really stretches out the racing season and gives me a great opportunity to get out of Boone when the weather isn't it's best.

Collegiate National Championships on the horizon

Next week I'm leaving for Northstar Resort at Lake Tahoe, California for the 2009 Collegiate National Championships. I love collegiate racing, and this year we have seen much bigger crowds than ever, even bigger than most of the public races I've been doing. I'll be trying my best to defend my title in the downhill race, and try not to get too banged up in my first ever mountaincross race. Should be very interesting, I'll have 3-4 days to get used to the terrain before the race runs, so hopefully everything goes well! I also hope that there isn't too much snow on the ground. It should be really fun and I've been looking forward to this particular race for a long time now.

Collegiate Racing Rules

This past weekend App State teamed up with Lees-McCrae to host a dual conference race. Saturday's dual slalom race saw 130 racers and all-out racing from 4 till dark. The Men's A class had like 56 people trying to qualify for the top 32. So sick! My slalom bike was missing a chainguide so I raced my downhill bike and somehow made it all the way through to a 3rd place, and achieved complete exhaustion! Still recovering from that, but so stoked to see so many people my age out there racing and kickin ass..

The Dirty Bird is ready for you

Tomorrow kicks off the first ever Dirty Bird Downhill race at Hawksnest (and defnitely not the last!) and we are finally ready to go. The track is weed eated, raked, and taped. Some work has been done to make sure the that it is running good all weekend long and I can't wait to ride it after the race, hopefully it will get really rough. We are prepared to handle up to 180 racers, and from what we have been hearing, we might get close to maxing it out! We can only hope... see ya tomorrow!

Lance is the man

Lance Armstrong won the Colorado Pro XC championship last weekend at Snowmass, and is about to tackle the Leadville 100 tomorrow, trying to set a new course record on the way. He's still the MAN!

http://www.velonews.com/article/96488/

Respect the SKINSUIT!!!

been a while

Been some time since I've updated this, lots of stuff going on these days...

First of all and most importantly, the Dirty Bird DH race is going off in less than two weeks!!! Get hype and stock up on plenty of PBR at the gas station at the bottom of the mountain...12 packs for $5.87 out the door. Wyatt just hooked us up with 16 fresh Specialized Clutch DH tires to hand out. Thats about $1000 worth of tires!

I got to race in a skinsuit this weekend at the Beech race, and I honestly have to say I loved it. When you wear a skinsuit, you know you have to go fast or you risk looking like a douche bag. The skinsuit makes you pin it!

More Dirty Bird news to come as we get it. Oh, got two 26' uhaul trucks lined up for the shuttle. Should be a pretty solid setup, having them staggered out so one goes to the top while the other is loading up with people. We hope that will help reduce congestion on the race track since there isn't much room for passing or anything...