Change of seasons

Collegiate season is rolling on and I have two races left on the plate: Conference Championships and Collegiate National Championships. Luckily both of which are going to be local races so its gonna be nice and affordable. ASU is hosting our first conference championship race this year in a couple weeks, so that will be fun. Then two weeks after that is the one race that means a lot to me and eluded me last year: the collegiate national champs. Last year I had a bad weekend of many crashes and just overall not feeling 100% racing-wise. This year I'm focusing much more time and energy into preparing for it and hopefully I'll have something to show for it this time around.

On another note, trail building season is about to kick into high gear and we have some big plans for this winter. We've already started on a much needed reroute around a section of trail that got way too blown out after all the heavy rains. It should be pretty long and have TONS of tight turns and jumps in a very thick Rhododendron forest.. hard to build but epic to ride!

Collegiate Season

Collegiate season started 2 weeks ago with App putting on the first race of the ACC Conference series. I had a pretty good weekend, sweeping both DH and DS for the weekend, with Steven and Mueller rounding out the top 3 both times for a nice App State podium domination. This past weekend we all went down to Brevard to poach the SEC series for some better competition and racing on much harder tracks. The DH track was a mirror image of the trails we've been slaying around Boone, so it felt almost at home. I had a really embarrassing crash right off the start in a flat turn in front of EVERYONE in my race run, but still managed to hold onto a 2nd place finish behind Lees McCrae's Aaron Bradford. Awesome track with super steep sections into perfectly placed pocket berms that you could rail. Slalom came around and I have to say it was by far the best slalom track I think I've ever ridden. Not too long, but very technical and called for all skills to be ridden fast. I qualified 1st, but was unable to race because they didn't want racers from other conferences to eliminated the riders in that conference because of points. Kinda sucked but it they were right it wouldn't be fare. Oh well, we just went and shredded the pump track for a while and watched some really good racing.

I guess I'm heading down to Paris Mountain this weekend to race so maybe another update after that. According to some people its god's gift to mountain bike racing, so we'll see...

Snowshoe race #3

I left home for Snowshoe Thursday afternoon in the rain and it didn't stop the whole way to Snowshoe. Late Thursday afternoon the trail crew at Snowshoe decided that they needed to change the track so it would hold up to the wet weather that was expected. Luckily the rain held off pretty well and didn't come back until a short shower Saturday afternoon. Practice went well with the occational crash every now and then. Come Sunday it was time to race, and I wasn't really sure how I would do. This would be my first race of the year and I had no expectations coming into it, I just wanted a nice clean run. Since I had no points from previous races, I was the first Elite guy down the track. Soon as they said GO, everything came together and I felt as if I had been racing all summer long. It was awesome, I just tore out of the gate with what seemed like endless energy on a track lined with people scattered all over watching. My run came together pretty well with just a small bobble, brushing against a tree with my left shoulder. When I got to the bottom everyone was yelling and I couldn't have been happier to be back in the game again, it felt awesome seeing everyone. I ended up the day with a 5th place, my best placing so far at Snowshoe. I had fun all weekend just cruising run after run with friends. Collegiate season starts this weekend, more updates to come...