I spent the week before Nationals in the mountains of North Carolina training. The weather was perfect! I think the high temperature was 68! I was able to find a recreation center in town that let me use their aerobics room to set up my road bike on a trainer and get a few rides in. I was also able to get back over to the Dupont trail system for a ride also. I was feeling good during my training since CycleYouth camp and felt like my body was starting to peak.
The trip from NC to PA was a long one and the closer we got to PA the hotter it got. The morning after arriving I prerode the course and TRIED to find some good lines. There were so many rocks that the good line was where your front wheels bounced too. I did stop to work on a couple of sections but still was not able to find the lines I was looking for. After the ride we headed to Gettysburg. I stayed off my feet most of the day but Gettysburg was so interesting I had to walk around some, and I'm glad I did! The next day I met with the rest of the CycleYouth team and we did a preride together. I remembered a lot of the trail and felt I was ready for tomorrows race.
The heat was bad on race day so we all pinned ice packs on the back of our jerseys to stay cool and stood under umbrellas at staging. When the 19-29 CAT 2 was in staging USACycling opened up the gate and then called them to the start line. I lined up on the front row at the gate but when the gate opened for us everyone took off before scoring called us up. The gate opened on the right and I was on the left so I got stuck behind the gate watching everyone else go to the line. I ended up starting in the second to last row and knew I had my work cut out for me. When the gun went off it was just a big mess of tangled handlebars with 40 other racers. The trail was really open and long before getting into the singletrack so I had to push it really hard to make up time. I was weaving around racers and making quite a few passes but ended up getting blocked in with a rider in front, a rider to the right and barriers to the left. Unfortunately they were riding the same pace. As we approached the single track someone crashed and we came to a stop. Now I was in a walking bottleneck. The course was hard to pass on because of the rocks so I could only gain positions on wide climbs and the few gravel road sections. I managed to pull up to 17th for the finish but went home knowing there was nothing more I could have done. It simply just wasn't my race to win.
Overall I had a really fun time at Nationals and learned a lot for next year. During my 2nd preride I had Todd Wells brush against me, Georgia Gould follow me up a climb and ended it with breakfast the next day with Drew Edsall.
Special thanks to Leroy and crew at Leroy's Bikeworks for unlimited support to all cyclists and my teammates for cheering me on!
I took a week off after returning to Florida and started my new training program for the Florida State Championship Series.
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