Stupid long Mount Snow

So, I pretty much slacked off a whole lot on the whole blogging thing, and I’m sorry about that. I missed the last like, 4 days of the trip, and unfortunately, that was pretty much when all of the action happened. I guess that also explains why I didn’t keep up with my stuff though… And now I've got nothing to do, so you get a very very long report of the last few days.
So yeah, Friday. I tried to chill as much as possible, and other than pre-riding the course once again, I accomplished this nicely. The course was just as hard as I remembered from the day before, only this time I felt a whole lot better on the downhills. I was hitting my lines really well, and felt smooth and fast. I wasn’t all that happy with my climbing, but I felt like I could keep it together. I’m honestly having a hard time remembering what happened on Friday, so I’m just going to skip over this day and move onto Saturday.
I was supposed to wake up at 5 to get my breakfast, but my phone died in the middle of the night. Yeah, we didn’t really have a whole lot of cell phone service and I kept having to keep my phone plugged in cause it died so fast. But whatever. The end result of this was my not getting woken up on time, and having to eat a smaller breakfast so that I didn’t hurl on the day’s first climb. So after we all got ready to go, we headed over to the course for a nice warm up and preparation session. Good times. I felt pretty good during warm ups, and got to the line nice and hot. I was standing on the line, listening to the announcer drone on about some unimportant details of the race, when I heard a slightly frustrated voice calling my name. It kinda sounded like “St. Marie” with an, uhh, slightly frustrated tone to it. I looked around to find Julia standing at the fence trying to wish me good luck. I was in the process of getting called up to the line, managed a hurried good luck back at her, and rolled up to the start. (Julia, sorry about almost missing that). I had a really good start, and ended up at the front of the race. I got passed by a couple of people, and rolled off the prologue loop in 3rd. I got passed by some more people on the next climb, but was still riding where I needed to be when my derailleur hanger suddenly and inexplicably ripped off. I stood there for a minute trying to grasp what had happened, and for a second couldn’t figure out what to do. I guess lactic acid poisoning of the brain can screw up anyone in a flash. Once I decided that there wasn’t anything I could do to fix my problem and that my race was over, I had to figure out how to get back down the mountain. I briefly considered riding straight back down, but I figured, “hey, I worked to get up here, I’m almost to the top, I’m in no rush to get anywhere, I think that I’ll walk the rest of the climb and hit the downhill.” So, that’s what I did. It was a lot farther to climb than I thought, and the fun part wasn’t as fun as I was hoping, but hey, I eventually got back and that’s what matters. I watched Julia and Pinnitt and Wells during their races, was impressed with a few results, and then watched Tasha during hers. Good stuff. The pro women were faster than the winners of my category. Let’s just leave it at that.
The next day was Sunday. Obviously. I was racing short track today along with Julia and Pinnett. Julia’s race was in the morning, and we drove over to support her in her efforts. She was doing super, riding strongly in a podium spot, when she had a massive catastrophic mechanical that knocked her out of the race. I guess that’s what she gets for riding a clapped out pro’s, ex Jockey, ex Old Man Balls bike. We went back to the house and I had to rebuild my bike from the day before. I got it done, had to lower my standards on perfection a little, and hoped that everything would work out for me during the race. After all, it’s only a 20 minute race, what could go wrong? Well, I started, felt really really really good, was on the second wheel and starting to settle in when something did. I was coming around for what I think was my 4th lap, sitting in, not even trying hard (that’s what I get for dropping out of my earlier race. Fresh legs.) when my chain dropped off and got tangled up somehow in the derailleur. I got it fixed, but by the time I got everything straightened out, I was so far off the back that it really didn’t matter any more. So, yet another DNF in that race. I’m pretty sure I could have won too. But hey, live and learn, eh? Monday was pretty much just driving. It is now a suppressed memory for me, so I am going to not talk about it. Yeah. My next race is this weekend at Fontana. I’m going to race short track, and I’m trying to decide if I want to race XC, SS, or nothing at all for the longer race. I’ll let you know how that goes. I’ve got pictures from the weekend on my facebook…