NOVA

Ok, I'm back from the Tour of the Gila stage race. I'll write about that in my next post.
Now, to tell you a little about what has been going on in the last month, and some explanations for the pics in the last post.

The first pic is a cool shot from the race venue at the Nova Desert Classic, the second NORBA (mountain biking) national of the year, in Phoenix. This race had a stage race format, with stage 1 being a Super D (downhill time trial), stage 2 being a short track, and stage 3 a cross country race. The super D was a joke as far as super D's go. There was very little elevation change (compared to most super D's), but it was still a fast, fun course. Adam Craig (top American pro racer) claims he never touched his brakes the whole race--I wasn't so brave. I got caught by my 15 second guy, but in the final, hillier section of the course, I clawed back about 12 of those seconds. I placed 17 out of around 60 guys, just a few short seconds out of the top 10. Stage 2 was the lactic acid-fest that short tracks always are. This one was especially interesting because we were sent up a short, steep hill that the course normally goes down. This hill was extremely loose and very difficult to ride up. Having said that I didn't think my newly acquired cyclocross mount/dismount skills would translate to mountain biking, I quickly had to swallow those words. Instead of trying to ride the hill, I ran up it, and with my quick dismounts and mounts, was putting time on other guys on every lap. After a gut-busting 25 minutes or so, I finished in 11th place. This put me into 12th overall.
Sunday was the final stage cross country race. I messed up the start a bit, showed up late, missed my call-up, and had to start at the back of the group. Not that that mattered a whole lot, as I gave it my best shot, but with lower back cramps the whole 3rd lap, I faded a bit and finished 34th. My bad day was not as bad as some, as several guys in front of me in the overall (including the guy in first place, who I passed on the first lap) didn't even finish the race. My final overall result for the stage race was 15th, though I was tied in points with 14th place, and was one point down from 13th place. Considering how poorly the cross country went, I was a bit surprised with this result, but I guess it was due to me being more consistent over the three stages than most.