Sand Creek USCUP

We are home from "the Springs". We had a big weekend, feel like we packed an entire vacation into a few days. We saw all the sights there were, or at least Katie and my family saw them all. I sat out one of the trips in order to do some recooperating after the short track. In between the sights I was able to fit in some racing too. Friday night was the short track. It was a tough course with a ton of single track, some cactus on the sides, and a 4 wide start. I had a decent start and made up some spots on the initial climb. After quite a few laps I was inside the top 20 but I went a little too hard on one of the climbs and couldnt get recovered due to the thin air. I lost a couple of spots, which I probably would have lost anyways to Ryan Trebon and Cody Peterson. Got pulled just outside of the 25 minutes time limit which was much better than at Sea Otter. Ended up in 24th.

The XC was on Saturday afternoon with about 90 Pro men at the start. Many of them had skipped the short track to save energy for this main event. I had a good call up in the thirties, but there was a screwed up parade lap where I lost a ton of spots. The course was tough but fun. It climbed up for most of the lap, then came back down on some tough single track. At the top of the climb after the first lap I discovered I had gone way too hard and suffered bad on the descent. At the bottom I could barely pedal and I was in some trouble to start lap two. I lost quite a few spots on the climb on the second lap, but had a good descent and caught back up to a group. The third lap was much better and I rode steady to stay with the group. At the bottom of the climb on the last lap I pickedup the pace and dropped the group and started to make ground up on the next group ahead. I caught quite a few guys who were struggling but couldnt quite catch that group. On the descent Yuki Sato from Topeak Ergon was pushing hard to catch me, but I was able to hold him off as we entered the pavement. Ended up 44th which is okay considering the altitude and the field. There is some good video and pics of me on http://www.cyclingdirt.com/ and Katie took a lot of pics of which some are on the photos section of this site.