The Adventures of Sola: Stage Three: XC

The final event finally came. We loaded up and ate some breakfast before heading to the venue. The start was delayed by over 45 minutes that had me wondering if would get hungry mid race. Before I knew we were all lining up and starting. The course was fun. It had some fast open sections of pavement and grass before heading into the dirt. Some of the dirt sections looked like they had just been lawn mowed and tied up with ribbon. The course looped around a lot and you could see racers everywhere on different parts of the course. The experts had an extra loop to do every lap which was fun but it made it confusing on lap two when the sports started getting mixed in. I got held up in the singletrack at times but everyone was really nice about passing. I'm not a fast starter and began feeling better on lap 3.

Heading into the twisties

I slowly began passing back people that worked me over on the first two laps. I saw Bear drilling it at one point and cheered for Paul and Nick when I saw them.

This section was fun and tight

On the final lap I was catching another racer in my class. I asked if I could get by and he did not budge. He said if you got it try to get around me. So I did. Not sure why he wanted to act that way but oh well, his choice, not mine.

Nick rolls in

Brandon (one of the athletes I coach) was giving us bottle hand ups and they were more than needed. Thanks for your help Brandon! Carson (a junior on our Visenka team) was there cheering us on. He raced the road crit and ciruit race and put up a wicked 4th place. Nick would finish 2nd for the day and Bear would take 1st in his class! I rolled in finishing 5th and happy with how I rode the last two laps.

Cruising the zoo trails

Post race awards took a while but finally got under way. Nick and Bear both took the overall wins after three days of racing! I ended up finishing fourth overall.