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connie
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| Joined: | Thu Mar 6th, 2008 |
| Location: | Sandy, Utah USA |
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Posted: Mon Jul 7th, 2008 04:49 pm |
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So to give you some background, I’ve been considering myself something of a Super D specialist lately. My strengths are in cornering and going fast through flowy technical trails, and probably as a result of injury and age, my common sense has kicked in a bit and I’m hesitant to push myself on bigger drops and really gnarly stuff. As a result, I’ve been working harder and harder at developing better riding skills (and mental racing skills) so I can ride better, but stay safer at the same time. (Heh - we were shuttling in my car the other day and one of my friends laughed that I'm the only person they know who would keep Brian Lopes "Mountain Biking Skills" and Dr. Loehr's "Mental Toughness Training for Sports" in my car...) I used to push myself to “just go for it” and jump off of things or try to ride lines I wasn’t confident on, thinking it was more about conquering fear… and well, maybe it’s just the wuss in me talking, but I’m feeling like it’s turned out to be more about skill after all (and occasionally learning to just say “no”), seeing as how I rarely pick up new skills when I’m sitting on the sofa recuperating. So occasionally that means I back out of a DH race that’s on a course I just don’t feel comfortable on. Good or bad, this year I’ve stayed safe (well minus several dozen scrapes and bruises), gotten faster, and been steadily improving with my race results. Luckily, I’ve never seen a Super D course that scared me (well… there are some climbs that scare me, but that’s a whole different story!) – hence, I’ve been starting to think that’s my strongest event.
Anyway here’s the tale of my last couple of races:
Deer Valley National:
The NCS Course (the Pro/Expert DH course that they use for National races) has always been a challenge for me. In some ways, I like it. I’ve cleaned Barney Rubble (the rock garden). And I even cleaned the nasty new section above Barney Rubble when we went out to practice before the race… of course I couldn’t get Barney Rubble after it and put the two together. Ugh. I love Psycho Spin… even when it’s scary and blown out – it’s technical steep corners are exhilarating and fun. And at least there’s a go-around for the Waterfall and Bedrock drop, which I have no intention of doing – they’re just too risky and high consequence for my tastes. And I’ve landed the finish line drop in the past… but the last time was super sketchy. It’s one of those things where I’ve managed to ride it in bits and pieces with varying success rates on each obstacle. But thinking about trying to actually race it about makes me sick. Watching friends get hurt on this course every year – ranging from season ending to career ending injuries doesn’t help either. And so I decided to put all my focus on the Super D this year instead.
Super D:
The Deer Valley Super D courses are always fun. Fast, flowy singletrack, moderately technical rocky sections, fun roots and berms… no matter what course they choose, I’ve loved all of them. This year was no exception. The top was the same as last year, but where it turned onto Deer Crest, this year it cut back across the mountain with a steep and nasty but thankfully short climb, and then merged onto a bit of the sport/beginner DH course, and then over to Tour de Homes for some fun bermed turns. Then it cut back to a fast fire road descent jumping back onto some singletrack at speed and then a flat (slightly uphill) sprint across the ski run towards the finish – which consisted of two tricky, off camber turns to the finish line.
I was feeling pretty confident on the course, but the competition was stiff. And then they added in a crazy cyclocross style start. You had to run 100 feet or so up a hill with your bike, and then jump on the bike after crossing a second line. Um… that doesn’t sound too hard, but I’d never actually jumped on my bike while running before. And my bad knees (5 surgeries) don’t even like running in the first place, let alone running and trying to jump on a moving bike… I tried a few practice attempts in the start area, but my start was still nothing short of comical. I think I might as well have just stopped and gotten on my bike instead of tripping and stutter stepping as I was getting on my bike and then missing the pedals before finally getting going. Oh well… I pedaled as hard as I could down the fire road and across the first flat. I came into the first two loose corners a little hot and slid around one and lost too much speed, but stayed on the bike. Down through the rocks and across the fun flowy part under Barney Rubble, and I remembered to raise my seatpost (that Joplin sure comes in handy) and started to shift into an easier gear well before the climb. The part right before it was too rough to do anything but hang on… I tried to stay off the brakes and keep as much momentum as possible up the climb, but the loose gravel and steep grade had me at a slow chug before I knew it. And my bike, so nice on the rough descent gets a lot of bob when I get into that type of pedaling. UGH. But I crested the top of the climb, and pedaled it out heading down the fire road again. Dropped my seatpost and changed into a big gear and charged into the Devo singletrack. Yay. I bobbled a bit on a rock but pumped through the rolling terrain and kept on going. Once I was in the turns I somehow got off track on a very loose gravel section and was just going too fast to adjust and ran right off the trail into the bushes. Noooo…. The bushes slowed me to a stop. I was only about 2 feet off trail, but lost all my momentum. Got back on and hit the bottom berms as fast as I could. Just barely managed to stay upright on the last flat fire road corner and bombed down to the flat pedal at the end and pushed it as hard as I could to the finish.
I had started 2nd and had no idea how my time would hold up. I ended up in 3rd place, behind Joanna Petterson and Amy Laird (who finished 1st and 4th in the DH, respectively, and are such incredible riders it’s an honor to be on the podium with them at all) and was really happy with that result. I also headed to my local bike shop and picked up an air shock for my trail bike to try and help out with the bobbing issues when I’m climbing. And apparently I really need to work on the cyclocross style starts too. You never know what they’re going to throw in there for Super D starting line antics!
Wyoming State Championships:
The great flip-flop. J So this was a new race for our Utah State Series (confusingly enough) and was also the Wyoming State Championship. We raced DH and Super D at White Pine Resort, near Pinedale, WY this past weekend. It’s a beautiful, quiet little mom and pop style ski resort, and they catered to us really nicely. They run their lifts until 7pm (yay!), let us camp right in the parking lot, served breakfast in the cafeteria, had a beer trailer, and a BBQ dinner on Saturday night. They’ve been building a lot of new trails up there in the past year or so and they are AMAZING. Just technical enough to be fun, but not terrifyingly steep or gnarly. And there were a lot of trails – not just the few we were racing on. We got to check out some of them, and they were all incredibly fun. I can’t wait to go back and just ride!
Anyway – the pro women’s class consisted of Addie Stewart and myself. And Addie has been kicking butt lately, so I honestly didn’t think I had much of a chance in the DH race.
We went out to practice and were blown away by how fun both courses were. And crazy as it was, the Super D course was actually more technically challenging than the DH course. It had a fire road climb and descent at the start, and headed into the trees. The rocks just came at you non-stop, and since several sections went down and curved back uphill with more rocks, there were a couple of interesting sections where you needed to time your pedal strokes just right, and others where you had to squeeze through slots in the rocks that just begged to snag a pedal or a derailleur. And once you were through the arm pump inducing rocky techy section, you popped out onto a LONG steep fire road descent – chock full of rain ruts and rocks that got you up to a scary fast speed before diving through the grass and off into a flowy and pedally singletrack section at the bottom. And the end was a lung killer. Just barely uphill but it seemed to go on forever. And just when the finish came into view, you had to pedal through loose sand and grass that just sucked every bit of speed out of the energy you put into pedaling. Ugh.
I had felt great in practice, but unfortunately, when I was bombing down the fire road I somehow missed my marker to start braking and suddenly noticed the turnoff going by me. I skidded to a stop and had to go back uphill for probably 10 feet. Luckily it wasn’t that far, and the turnoff was bad enough that it required a near stop in the first place, but wow that was a big mistake. I made it through the technical section with just one bobble where I got caught in some rocks and had to put a foot down, and then rode the rest clean. Addie likes to act like she doesn’t know how to pedal, but she can kick my butt on climbs, not to mention on the technical stuff. So my mistake cost me and Addie beat me by 6 seconds.
So it was on to the Downhill. The course was rocky and technical enough to be quite challenging at speed, but just fun, fun, fun to ride overall. There was a rocky, twisty section through the trees up top, a couple of high speed fire road sections, a mud bog that kept things interesting, and a fast bermed turn section through the trees at the bottom, running out into a really nice tabletop jump just before the finish line. Woohoo! Early on in the weekend (before it got blown out) I was actually faster riding the DH course on my trail bike than on my DH bike. It gradually got more eroded and dusty and the DH bike came back out. And there was one drop that was totally do-able, but I landed front wheel heavy the one time I hit it in practice and I decided to ride around it. I wasn't sure how that would play out, but told myself the second or so I'd lose on the go-around would be nothing in comparison to picking up after it if I wrecked trying to jump it...
For our state series races we do a two run format. You do two timed runs and take the best of your two times. So for our first run I rode clean, but felt a little slow and conservative. But Addie had 3 get offs (no serious wrecks) and I ended up being in the lead by about 8 seconds or so. Whoa! I haven’t been in front of Addie in a DH race in years. We went back up for our second run and I knew she was going to step it up a bunch for her second run. I knew I had to stay relaxed and clean to keep the lead. I started off taking an extra couple pedal strokes going down the fire road and that was a mistake. I blew out of the first corner on the fire road and way off the side into the loose grass and rocks and had to pedal my butt off to get back up to speed. Luckily, I’m a lot bigger than Addie and told myself I was gaining on her on that fire road and put it behind me. (I guess I did it pretty well because I literally forgot I had made that mistake until about 20 minutes after the race!) I rode the rest pretty clean – a few bobbles and not quite perfect lines through the rocks, and then one skidded out turn after the mud bog that robbed me of speed, but otherwise it was clean (and I did my go-around to the drop in both race runs). Addie had stepped it up and took over the lead by 2 seconds. I crossed the line and they announced that it was really close and then left us in suspense for what felt like forever. Turns out I won by just over a second!
So I’m really stoked. And I’m really happy to have spent such a fun weekend racing against a good friend. We had a great time pushing ourselves and each other, and it was really nice to have the two events so we can each have a state title. Yay! It’s pretty funny that our results were the opposite of what we (and everyone else) expected them to be, but wow what a great weekend. I’m just bummed Kimber wasn’t there to share in the fun with her injured arm/wrist. But she’ll be back at it before long!
Anyway - to sum up my results for the past couple weeks:
Deer Valley NMBS - 3rd place Super D - Pro Women
White Pine (Wyoming State Championship) - 2nd place Super D - Pro Women
White Pine (Wyoming State Championship) - 1st place DH - Pro Women
Last edited on Mon Jul 7th, 2008 04:51 pm by connie
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yentna
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| Joined: | Wed Mar 21st, 2007 |
| Location: | Park City, Utah USA |
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Posted: Mon Jul 7th, 2008 07:34 pm |
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You've got more strenghts than you think! Good job, I'm proud of you!
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jeninsb
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Posted: Mon Jul 7th, 2008 08:37 pm |
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here you are at deer valley 
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allieburch
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| Joined: | Tue Jan 16th, 2007 |
| Location: | Patterson, New York USA |
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Posted: Tue Jul 8th, 2008 08:58 pm |
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| Wow Connie, you're rockin' it this year!!! WOOHOO!!! Can't wait to see you clean up in VT!!! :-)
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Miss Mary
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Posted: Wed Jul 9th, 2008 05:42 am |
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Hey Connie, can you please send me links to the race results so that i can post them to the bella results post.
thanks & great job, mm
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connie
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| Joined: | Thu Mar 6th, 2008 |
| Location: | Sandy, Utah USA |
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Posted: Wed Jul 9th, 2008 06:33 pm |
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Miss Mary wrote: Hey Connie, can you please send me links to the race results so that i can post them to the bella results post.
thanks & great job, mm
Thanks!
http://www.pinedaleonline.com/news/2008/07/WhitePinePowOwShifti.htm
http://www.bluewolfevents.com/media/results/1215045302.pdf
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