Oh Hello!

My blog is alive again! So what has been happening in the last year and a half? 1 tearful college graduation, 1 move to Flagstaff, 1.5 crazy hectic years of physical therapy school, too many lattes, lots of amazing travel around the country, 5 cycling National Championships (perhaps I’ll post those stories on here soon), and more road racing then I’d like to admit.

Proof I've been outside...

But I am healthy, racing (as much as I can!), surviving my last year of school before internships, and missing my Durango mountains everyday.

One perk of grad school is that even though I miss my Fort Lewis team more then ever, I can still race collegiately! This last weekend I participated in the Lumberjack Mountain Bike Conference Finals for the SWCCC right here in Flagstaff hosted by yours truly, NAU. The SWCCC and NAU team is run on a much much smaller scale then then the Rocky Mountains which has been an ongoing adjustment but the relaxed atmosphere is much more appreciated with my current school schedule.

XC was on Saturday and it was a chilly start lined up with 2 great friends I’ve raced with in Colorado plenty of times ironically enough, Lindsay and Tizzy! (Largest Women’s A field of the season haha) We rode two 10 mile loops starting with a dirt road climb transitioning to single track a couple miles in and tackling the volcanic rock the rest of the way up. I was feeling more then a little rough around the edges technically and this course was not helping! But my line choice improved towards the top and my pace went from relaxed to oh-yeah-I’m-in-a-race-remember. The descent was smooth with lots of switchbacks so I picked up plenty of speed and just enjoyed the aspen leaves falling like rain while I sped down the mountainside (magical I know right? Haha). Second lap was slightly faster then the first and I was happy to finish and be racing again. BUT… here’s where things get interesting… so right at the start Lindsay and Tizzy had rode away from me (as expected… darn school, I thought sitting 8 hours in class each day made you faster!) As it turns out, less then half a mile in, due to some poor information received at the start, they both made a wrong turn and went off course, and I guess I was still fast enough to stay in front, so even though I had no idea at all that I was in the lead, I WON!!! Haha so whether you count it or not it was a surprise ending to the race, even though when I finished I adamantly argued with everyone that it was not true. So that was certainly nice :)

Sunday I also raced short track, but had no go in my legs (placed 2^nd to Lindsay the beast) and also raced on a relay team for NAU which was a lot of fun, even though again, my legs had no go (our team got 4^th, but the other NAU team got 1^st!) In the end I was able to help NAU cinch the D1 Conference Championship Title over University of Arizona by a slight margin for the 4^th year in a row!

Also, the USA Cycling recap just had to note that “Lindsay… took the D1 women's title with a margin of 560 points over teammate Nathalie Krantz.” Hahaha, hey I only did 1 race, at least I got second!