30 July 2008  |  Race Reports

World Cup #6- Mt. Ste Anne Race Report

So now that I am about to race at Bromont, I figured I should probably write about my race at Mt Ste Anne last weekend. So here it is in all its glory:

I got a good start, but someone cut me off in the first sharp corner and I had to put a foot down to avoid crashing into her. I lost all my momentum, and tons of people swarmed around me, All of a sudden I was riding around at the back of the pack- as I passed Waldek standing on the side of the course and he told me “that’s not where you want to be!” It was pretty funny- I would have laughed, but I probably would have crashed.

I was able to move up a few spots on the first climb and went into the singletrack in the top 15. The course was wet and slippery, but everyone was in singlefile trying to ride everything. I jumped off my bike and ran around 6 or 7 people- some screaming the typical Euro “Hey!” (In the multi-lingual world of World Cup racing “Hey!” means everything from “move out of my way” to “you messed up” to “I messed up but I’m blaming it on you” to “I’m angry.”) In any case, I was able to move up a bunch and came through the 1st feed zone in 7th. I caught up to Katerina and a French rider at the end of the lap and rode with them for the first half of the 2nd lap. I was feeling pretty strong, and I was riding the technical stuff well. I rode around for the next couple laps with Gunn-Rita in my sights, but I didn’t pass her until halfway through the 4th lap. I tried to catch Lene, but she put in a pretty monster effort on the last lap so I had to settle for 4th. It was my best World Cup finish, but many of the heavy hitters were missing so I didn’t feel like it was as much of an accomplishment as my 5th places in Madrid and Houffalize.

I was still very pleased with my race and how my training is coming along for the Olympics. I can now say confidently that I am 100 percent recovered from my heat stroke incident, and I am feeling like I am getting stronger.

I look forward to racing this weekend and getting in some more hard training before heading over to China. The US MTB team will be heading to South Korea for a training camp before the Olympics- the idea being to get adjusted to the climate and time zone without having to deal with the smog and lack of areas to train in Beijing. We will be heading to Beijing on the 19th, which gives me 2 days of training on the course before the race on the 22nd.