App State National Champions!

This past weekend was the 2008 Collegiate National Championships and App State saw our first ever stars and stripes jerseys come home. My teammate Rebecca dominated her XC race Dukes of Hazzard style, when she was still changing into her clothes and the gun shot for her class to take off! She started with about a 2 minute disadvantage and completely destroyed the field as she picked off rider after rider. That was the first stars n bars jersey. The next day was the DH race and after seriously heavy rain had force USAC to cancel the previous day's qualifying runs and practice on the morning of, I found myself getting ready to race a track that I had no practice on in it's current conditions. It was crazy! The track was like ice and to touch the brakes meant your face would probably touch the ground! Somehow I got down the track smoothly and hammered out one of my best runs ever for an 11 second victory! The 2nd Stars n Bars jersey. I think it was that 2.8 Michelin up front monster trucking over everything that helped the most. My teammate Steven Trottier held down 2nd place with a comfortable 7 seconds between him and 3rd place. The combined efforts of the 8 men and 3 women on our team totalled up to making us the Division II National Champions!!! This is the only national championship win for App State besides Football, and everyone is blown away, even us! We had no idea coming into it that we would have a chance at winning, and had the lead from the very first race! Now I get to relax for a while and start having some serious fun and get into trailbuilding mode for winter...

2 weeks

Collegiate National Championships are two weeks away now. The slalom track at LMC is completely new and pretty much the raddest track I've ever ridden. It's about 40 seconds long and only has one real jump on it. What matters are the turns, and there are a ton them. Its gonna be really cool to race on. I rode Sugar in the rain this week which brought back so many memories of racing there. The only thing that wasn't the same was that there wasn't any mud on the rocks so we could pretty much ride the track like it was dry. So much fun! Looking to get out there this week to clean up and rake some sections before the race. Get stoked!