We're back racing!! After ending my first race of the season at Bear Mountain with a
disappointing flat tire last weekend, I was really looking forward to truly testing my legs in a mountain bike race once again. It was a good winter of training, and I am ready to crush it this week. I did the Pisgah Stage Race two years ago on a team with my dad and now we're back as a team and hoping to go faster than ever.
Today we were successful in completing stage 1. We started strong. My dad pulled ahead and some other riders came between us, but I stayed calm and rode my own race. Eventually I caught up at the end of the first hill and we hit the Enduro downhill section, which was very rugged and a ton of fun.
The gravel climb that followed started off good but went on for what felt like forever. This was when I started to talk to people. Some of the seasoned riders remembered me from when I raced the stage race two years ago and I was really nice saying hi and pushing through the pain by spending time with friends.
About halfway up my lower back began to hurt like crazy. This is something I've been struggling with all winter, and have been working to fix by stretching and recovering properly. For the shorter hills it is never a problem, but this long hill began to aggravate it again. This pain sapped my power, but I pushed through it and made it to the top.
We finished the stage with quite a bit of walking on extremely technical trails. Sometime in the second half the second place mixed duo team caught up to us and, despite our best efforts, they dropped us and went on to win the stage by about 2 and a half minutes.
It was only after, at the awards ceremony that we found out that the team that beat us was Georgia Gould and her husband. And for those of you that don't know, Georgia Gould won bronze at the 2012 Olympics. Hopefully we can beat them tomorrow...
Stage Overview Video:
(watch close... I'm in the purple Liv jersey and my dad is in the blue Giant jersey)
Stayed tuned for tomorrow's race report :)