The National Championship is always an important event. It is an honor to stand on the start line with some of the Nation’s best athletes and fight for the chance to earn a medal. 

The course was virtually flat with a turn every 50 feet. Not at all what I’m used to. I reminded myself that one of the reasons that I love mountain biking is the fact that every course is different which offers different riders different opportunities to showcase their strengths. This is a big contrast to a sport like swimming or track where you can usually estimate where you might finish in the field based on each racer’s current personal best times. 

After pre-riding I came to the conclusion that the course had a bit of a speed limit. You can only sprint into and out of every corner so quickly and you can only turn so fast. It wasn’t really course that you could express fitness, so I would have to rely on tactical prowess and cornering skills. I also figured the course would be an exercise in patience. Since there weren’t as many decisive features (big climbs or challenging technical sections) my plan was to let the course take its toll. As the hours rolled back, I knew that people would give into fatigue and start to make small mistakes. My moves would come late in the race, once everyone was a little worn down. Unfortunately, the race ended much sooner than it should have…

From the start, I took the hole shot. I executed my plan to enter the trail first quickly. I set a steady pace, that wasn’t too hard, but was just hard enough that I thought it would wear people down over time. 

The course was supposed to be a 7 mile start lap and then 2 laps of 19 miles each for a total of 45 miles. As we entered into the twisty, turny trails a group of 4 of us established ourselves pretty early on. The miles ticked by. Mile 7, 8, 9, 10. We were supposed to be finished with the start lap by now. When we hit mile 12, I finally broke the silence and asked, “Are we still on the start lap?” Everyone was just as confused as I was. 

As it turns out, the race organizers had forgotten to mark off the start loop. We had not been re-directed back to the finish. All of the pros had taken this route. We finally made it back to the start/finish line after riding 13 miles. As we went through the finish line, we all wondered if this would change the race at all so I yelled, “How many laps to go?” The response I got was “2” but they rang a bell which is a common signal of 1 lap to go.

After a couple of miles, I hollered back to the other women in my group, “Are we confident that 2 laps to go is correct?” Which the general consensus was a resounding, “No.” We still didn’t know how long we would be racing. 

The next time I saw someone on course, I asked again, “How many laps to go?” To which I got a very confident answer, “Last lap! This is it! 10 miles to the finish!” All at once, we had to alter our entire race plan. The race had now changed from 45 miles to 35 miles!

Up until this point, I had led my group the entire race. I had spent 25 miles on the front of the group. There was hardly any room to pass on these really tight trails. With 8 miles to go, I took a wide line and Alexis and Deanna were able to get around me. I hopped onto the back of the group only to discover we were able to encounter a LOT of lapped traffic. 

Originally, the amateur racers were supposed to be started at a time that would not have us overlapping, but since our race duration had changed so drastically, we were now going to overlap for the remainder of the race. 

As we desperately tried to race, we kept also having to pass amateurs. We kindly tried to tell them “Pro women back” but the passing was near impossible. Every time Alexis would get around, it would take time for the amateurs to also let me pass, leaving me with gaps that I had to repeatedly close.

It became rather arduous and eventually I could no longer battle these gaps that were opening due to the course traffic and I got split from the group. I continued to fight and battle all the way to the finish, but with so many people on course at once, with only a singletrack maze, the idea of catching and passing anyone at that point was highly unlikely. 

As I came to the finish, I couldn’t help but wonder if we would indeed be finishing or if there would be any other surprises on the day, but alas, the race was over. It was quite a chaotic 3 hours. 

All of that said, I’m really happy to come away from the National Championship with a 3^rd place medal. It is always an honor to stand on the box and claim your spot as one of the top racers in the Nation.