Sunday I made the drive up to Spirit Mountain to race the Powder Monkey, one of the most demanding races in the Midwest. I knew it would be a gun fight so there wasn’t any way that I could miss out on showing up. And I was not disappointed. Pretty much all of the Minnesota heavy-hitters were in attendance so I had to do my part and represent Wisconsin as best as possible!
Three laps of the 45 minute course meant that it was a full-on NORBA duration race in the 80 something degrees and humidity. Maybe the humidity wasn’t so bad, but everyday seems muggy after being out west for a majority of the summer months. At the start Doug and Justin set an absolutely ballistic pace up the face of the mountain. We were all big-ringing the opener climb so fast! I knew that guys were going to crack or I was in for a rough day. Somehow it worked out both ways; guys cracked and it was a brutal day…
By the end of lap two I had worked up into second place, leading a string of riders that were Paul, Brendan, and Justin. Unfortunately for me Paul had a little something extra near the top of the climb and put out an attack to open a gap. Brendan was able to respond to this as I hung on and tried to follow, now riding fourth on the course. I never could pull these two back and Jeff Hall was long-gone off the front, but I was able to hold on for fourth.
Tom did an awesome job with the hand-ups for many of us in the feed zone which really made all of this hard racing possible. Thanks Tom! This was my best ride to date in Minnesota and though I did ‘lose’ second place, I’m quite satisfied with the result on such a demanding course.
Ever since racing Sunday I’ve been very exhausted and taking some serious down time to recuperate. For this weekend I’ll be 100% charged up and ready to go at the WORS Cup XC event. The racing form is working well as of late, so let’s hope that I can go strong again this weekend on home turf.
You can expect a WORS Cup report from me, but before that Chloe will have an update coming from New Zealand where she is competing as a member of the US National Team at the UCI World Mountain Bike Championships. She and Jenna Zander are the two US women racing the U-23 category which goes off at 7:30 tonight (which is noon on Wednesday in NZ). Wish them both well and stop back for a full report. Over a
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