One hour before the start of Chequamegon, I sat in the car in a puffy jacket with the heat cranked up to 80 and I was shivering. Nerves were maxing out in my body and I was shaking in my bike shoes. This race has been tricky for me over the years, I haven’t quite seemed to solve the equation and as I sat in the car before the race, I desperately wanted a different outcome than the past.

That said, the week leading up to the event hadn’t exactly been optimal preparation. After racing the World Championship in Italy with 14,000 feet of climbing in 58 miles, and flying back to the USA, fighting jet lag all week, and basically just resting before “The Drag Race Through the Northwoods” I also didn’t have much recent data to pull on that I was ‘ready.’ I just had to decide that I was.

I pulled my shaking body out of the car, shut the door behind me, and left all of the doubt couped up in the car. I didn’t need to carry that with me.

As we accelerated up the first climb, I did my best to focus on execution and quiet any thought of how my body might be feeling on the day. With each impending roller, the group would accordion in and out and depending on which side of the accordion you sat on, your perspective of the race could change in an instant.

About 15 minutes into the race, I found myself on the wrong side of a split, chasing just a few bike lengths behind the massive swarm buzzing down the ski runs. I felt my legs moaning, my breath rising, my heart rate spiking, and sirens going off in my brain. Then it felt like everything went into slow motion as I thought about what Enso Mental Performance has taught me. I took a big exhale and I told myself, “It’s a decision and you’ve already decided.” Before I had a chance to think about it, I was out of the saddle, accelerating from behind and back on the group moving up through the pack. Today would be different.

From that moment onward, with each passing mile my legs felt better and better and my confidence grew stronger and stronger.

That doesn’t mean it was a perfect race. I missed a few key splits due to misreading tactics or positioning but my fitness and my brain kept me in contention.

Chequamegon is a race of tactical prowess. Fitness gives you a ticket to the fight, but tactics win the race. The first split happened in a narrow trail where passing with near impossible. Without clear trail ahead of you, you were at the mercy of the rider in front of you to follow or get dropped. When we finally exited the narrow trail, the biggest climb of the day was just a couple miles up the road. No one wanted to work together to chase the leaders with the critical climb just ahead. When we finally hit the climb, the attack into the climb was so aggressive that a few people who slotted in early immediately seemed to blow up and cause a bottleneck on the trail. Another split happened.

Over the impending miles, my group never seemed to work together to reach the group ahead, but our aggressive enough pace had us closing in regardless.

In the final miles of the race, we came flying around a corner. I was 2^nd wheel in my group, when all of a sudden, the rider in first slammed on the brakes, back wheel fish tailing out of the side. I followed suit, nearly crashing into her and looking for my safe exit. When I looked for my place to eject, I caught sight of the culprit of the near crash: A little baby bear! And we startled him just as much too. At the sight of us barreling down on him, he let out a little baby bear scream and disappeared into the woods.

We quickly had to discard any thoughts of the incident as we all geared up for a big sprint finish that would take every ounce of our energy but through broken breaths at the finish we all exchanged amazed and enthralled accounts of the tale.

It was a great race in the Northwoods. I finished up in 9^th place and my body is feeling strong and my mind is following suit. Only 2 more races in this season before we head over to Tanzania.