I would like to thank BUMP for inviting me to the 13th Annual Bump and Grind at Oak Mountain State Park. Unfortunately, it really wasn’t the performance I think anyone was looking for. I am sure my jet set schedule really was not ideal race prep and in the end I basically had no legs for racing. Oops. Anyways, it was an excellent chance to mountain bike on kick ass trails and a fun race to be a part of…….
I arrived Saturday afternoon from Vail…. see the Everest Awards for the past two days of fun. To recap, I finished my 10 day training block Thursday, flew to Denver, travelled to Vail, did a bunch of meetings and an awards show, got up at 5:45, flew to Birmingham, and arrived at Mark and Dianne Jacobs’ house to unload and unpack my bike. Around 5ish I got to Oak Mountain and did a quick loop of the course with Tyler and joined the BUMP crew for an evening snack. By about 9 ish we left and by midnight I finally hit the pillow.
Early Sunday morning and four snooze buttons later I dragged my butt out of bed. I think the two hardest challenges for me are altitude and travel. Putting those two together and expecting immediate performance obviously is not going to happen. I had a little snack, headed to the course LATE and toed the line with exactly one minute to spare. Not good.
The plan was to do one lap superfast for time and then survive the second lap. I got the whole shot, got to the singletrack first and proceeded to try to settle into race pace. Unfortunately I blew about 10 minutes later. Heavy legs for Mel. Jamie sat on my wheel for about half the lap and I just thought about Geoff Kabush and how amazing he rode to win the last two NMBS races… maybe I could pull a win out of a bad day? Ummmmm, nope. Shae Rainer was rocking on the course and passed us both, Jamie went with her and I decided I was going to RIDE instead of RACE today. I went okay for 30 minutes and backwards for over two hours. Yikes.
That is how it goes. I didn’t expect an amazing day and got a completely crap day. Not that surprising, really, so I am definitely not that panicked even though I am obviously disappointed. I came home, had a two hour nap, had some ice cream, watched a movie, had some wine with Dianne, watched another movie. I really, really enjoyed laying about for the rest of the day and after the last three hectic days I obviously needed it.
I will bring the goods on the big day. We’ll talk about it after next Sunday.
Oh yeah, did I mention Jamie won the race? I think Shae Rainer was winning and busted a cleat or something but how do I know… I was OFF THE BACK… haha!