Ups and Downs in Wyoming
Well I think I went from my worst race of the season to my best race of the season in a matter of two days. I'll start off with the bad day in the XC first. I started off slow like I didn't really have the legs, hoping that they would come around and I could pick off lots of people. Well, at the end of the first lap there was this huge ditch, and I attempted to bunny hop it. I bottomed out my fork and got a little disoriented...and took a wrong turn. I rode for about 10 minutes until I came across a barbed wire fence that ended the trail. So, I turned around and continued my expedition back to the start/finish area where I talked to Andy. We decided that I should just ride tempo and treat the race as training because there wasn't any hope left for me at this point. That was all good until I got the climbing done, and on the top of the descent managed to hit my rear tire just right on this rock and pinch it. For all of you know it alls out there I was riding a 2.0 Larsen with 35 psi in the back, so I just got unlucky this time when I flatted. I changed it, but didn't have quite enough CO2 to fill so had to borrow a mini pump from a teammate. I was back on the trail, and soon after that I was lapped. I ended up getting lapped by about the top 5 riders in my race.
Today was by far my best ride of the year, though, I really think I'm pulling it together. I was feeling good before the start and then when there was 3 laps to go in the race before mine I punctured and was forced to ride a teammates heavy wheel (with slime tubes) in my race. Maybe it was the slime tubes, but I was going pretty good. I wasn't able to make the lead group, but I was in no man's land almost the whole race suffering as much as I could. I managed to finish in 8th place, which I was pretty happy with. Next week I'm going to be rolling on my Crossmax SLs with tubeless tires and I can assure you that I am not going to flat. The new Tim Halliday will be showing up from now on.
I also decided today that I'm going to ride a hardtail for next year. I don't know whether it will be a specialized with NERD or my Rogue with IronHorse New England. My rogue is probably the sweetest hardtail I've ever ridden (including my 9.8) and I really like it a lot. I figure if I sell my Azure I can get enough money to make my Rogue pretty tricked out. A little imput on this decision would be appreciated. I came to this conclusion when I realized that all the fast guys almost exlusively ride hartails. Colin Becker won twice this weekend, this kid Brian from CU is super fast, Eric Ransom is a beast, and that's just collegiate dudes who fly. We haven't even got into the Absalon, Hermida, JHK crew that ride hardtails all the time. I figure that if a hardtail is good enough for them then it sure is good enough for me.
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