Sunday, May 06, 2007

Spring Thaw

This weekend was a race weekend again. Saturday was the Spring Thaw cross country mountain bike race in Ashland, Oregon, and then Sunday was a DH race in the same place. Saturday while Derek raced cross country, I did a very untypical downhiller thing. I rode my big bike uphill about 8 miles so I could take a practice run down the downhill course. I did a practice run of the 1.7 mile course, then pedaled back uphill to do it again...4 times. It was a grueling workout but left me feeling good about my chances for the race the next day. Downhill is waaaay different than the cross country races I always did. For starters, your race lasts about 5-6 minutes instead of 2-3 hours. So, you have very little room for error. Saturday night was pizza and beer at a place called Creekside Pizza. Ashland is a beautiful city down by the CA border. It is home to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and a beautiful place to visit if you are every in the area.

Sunday I opted to skip doing any practice runs because it would require me to be up at the top from 8:30-10:30 and then not race until after 1. We slept in, went to breakfast and then drove up. I did a small warm up and then lined up for my race. I had an ok race run with two small bobbles, but just didn't feel like I did my best. Luckily, it was good enough to get 1st place! I improved my time from last year by 6 seconds but still have so much room for improvement. Oh well.

I'll post picture hopefully tomorrow.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congrats Heidi!

Chandra said...

OMG, so wait, you rode up the eight mile trail...four times??? You crazy girl! :) Congrats on the first place. And tonight you get to learn the flip turn. Hooray!

Unknown said...

Go girl go. Glad that knee isn't keeping you on the sidelines!