This last weekend the Mountain bike National Championships were contested at Mt. Snow, Vermont. I got to add another state to my list of places-i've-been. It took most of the day to get there, leaving Oakland Intl. at 6.40am wed. My flight stopped in Kansas City for a while to let some people get off (not sure why they'd want to, but whatever) and take on some more passengers. Then we flew on to Baltimore, and a 1.5hr layover. Got on another plane and made the short flight to Albany, NY. Got picked up by Alex, the manager of the Velo Bella/Kona Women's Professional Mountain bike team. We had to pick up Barb Howe and Shannon Gibson later, so we did the professional thing to do, and headed to the bar for a couple of cold ones. We went back and picked up the girls and their stuff...well, some of their stuff. Barbs' bike showed, but not her bag. After we determined that the bag was for sure not in the immediate area, we took off for Vermont. We had directions, maps, people who had made the trip before, we were set. Why we ended up getting sooooo close to Canada is beyond me, but we really took the long way to Mt. Snow. We'll just say we were a bit later than we expected in getting to the house. Thursday was a pretty mellow day, the girls rode the xc course, and Rachel Lloyd (who had come out to win the Super-D) took some practice runs. It started raining in the afternoon, and turned most of the mountain into a wet/grassy/muddy mess. The XC championship race for the women was Friday afternoon at 2.00. The course was in much better shape, but most of the racers had to dismount a few times per lap. Mary M. got a great start and never looked back, taking the win in great style. Three of the Bellas rode, Barb finishing 23rd, and Erika in 38th. Shannon had a tough day and went down pretty hard, not finishing and hoping to save something for the short-track on sunday afternoon. Following the Women's race, the U23 womens race started at around 5.00pm. The Bellas had one racer entered, Natasha Cowie. Her main goal was to beat her arch rival, a competitor she raced against many times this year and had yet to beat. Natasha got a great start, and was right at the front on the wheel of Chloe Forsman (Luna Chix) through the feed zone after the start loop. She ended up beating the rival and finishing on the box in 3rd, a great result for a great up-and-coming racer. I guess i was doing my job as 4 racers had hit the course and no mechanical problems had surfaced yet. None of the girls raced on saturday, but they did some riding and got the bikes muddy again. Good thing Mark Matson (the Kona factory team mechanic) had his nifty electric pressure washer on the trailer at this race! Shannon discovered the lock-out on her RockShox SID had stopped working, and i figured i'd fix it Sunday morning before the short-track. Sunday dawned clear and warm, perfect conditions for the Super-D. I had put some new brake pads on Rachel's bike, and made sure everything was working nicely. This was only her second Super-D race, the first being the NMBS race at Firstone earlier this year which saw her notch a win. She was fairly confident going into the race...with good reason, she killed it! After a hard start (the officials make every start different, this one a lemans-style start that involved much running up and down the start hill) Rachel was on Marla Streb's wheel in second place. On the first fire road section she attacked and passed Marla and took the lead. Marla ended up crashing, so Rachel rolled across the line w/a 28" margin of victory (which would have put her in 8th place in the Pro Mens field!). After 10 years of racing xc, downhill, and cx, Rachel had her first national champions jersey! One of the Bellas (Jennifer Tilley, who was sick but at the race anyway) had offered her Kona hardtail to Rachel to use in the short track, so they got to work changing pedal and other stuff to get it set up for Rachel. I began working on the SID on Shannon's bike, which baffled me despite my 3 day stint at the SRAM race shop earlier in the year. I ended up getting a bunch of help (and parts) from the 2 Gary Fisher/Subaru mechanics, Matt and Nick. Just about all of the racers run RockShox Reba forks, so we don't work on the SID very often. It took the 3 of us about 2 hours to get the thing working right, but we eventually won the battle of mechanic vs fork. The girls finished their warm-ups and took a couple of laps on the course. They do call-ups at the mountain bike races, Barb and Erika taking their spots somewhere in the middle of the field. Due to the fact that this was Rachel's first short track of the season, she was called up dead last. Funny thing was, as i grabbed the spare wheels and pump, i didn't see her at the back of the pack as the national anthem was played. I looked around a bit, and found her on the far left side of the pack of riders waiting for the start...in the second row! As she rolled up, she noticed a big gap on the left side of the field, and just kind of filled it. The girls got off to a quick start, and Rachel came through half way through the first lap in 4th. A group of America's most elite women formed, with Mary M, Willow K, Georgia G, Shonny V, and Rachel. Mary has been racing mostly World Cups this year, and this was Rachels first ST...so the usual Gary Fisher/Luna Chix crowd had some new company. Rachel stayed in the top 4 the entire race, looking very fresh and looking very comfortable riding right on the wheel of the racer in front of her. With about 3 or 4 laps to go, Rachel went to the front and drilled it...this move put some real estate between her, Mary and Willow and the slightly fading Georgia/Shonny. The 3 kept the small gap 'til the last lap, and Rachel just missed getting second by a half a wheel to Willow, w/ Mary getting another win. It had to be the best short track i've seen, fast paced and a lot of action. The race announcers were going nuts as they knew Rachel from her previous racing career, and knew that she had been mainly racing on the road this year. It was great to see them get the crowd really into it! Shannon ended up staying in for the whole race, finishing 16th, and Barb finished in 24th, probably a bit tired after winning this years edition of the (in)famous Mt. Snow Naked Crit. the previous night!
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