Bear Creek Challenge 8/13-14/11

What a weekend! I headed down to Macungie PA Friday evening to race Short Track, Super D, and XC for the US Cup Triple Crown, as part of the AMBC series. I decided this trip was worth it because I had the opportunity to visit and stay with family 45 minutes away.  My parents and I arrived late Friday night and I woke up early Saturday morning to get a good warm up in. I was unfortunately the only woman signed up in the Pro/Elite Category. There were a few other Cat. 1’s and a Cat. 2 racer. I got the hole shot and never looked back. On the first lap I was already 30 seconds ahead of the 2^nd place Cat. 1 rider. By the end of the race I was over 2 minutes ahead of her. I felt like I was on fire the whole race. I kept a good rhythm and powered it out. My legs were tired by the end, but I loved the course. My laps ended up being 30 seconds and over faster than the Cat. 2 MEN laps and close to a minute faster than the Cat. 3 MEN laps. On one of my laps, I was only 10 seconds slower than the fastest Pro male finisher. When I was done, I had a chance to get a shuttle ride up to the top of the Super D. It was very rocky and technical. I only had my XC bike and no gear, but wanted to just do the race anyway and complete all three events. The race got very delayed, since they could only fit 5 people and bikes at a time into the truck shuttling up the mountain. There were over 45 riders. They were not organized at all. But I had a blast once I finally got to ride the course. I placed second in the Pro/Elite category, the other female only showed up for the Super D race. I placed second overall out of 7 females. My parents and I waited around for well over an hour for awards before we finally had to leave to visit with family. It was a bit ridiculous how much time they took to do everything. The next day, I ended up getting my prizes of a DH tire and a very expensive and nice floor pump. Sunday’s XC race was brutal. It had been pouring rain since shortly after the end of the Super D race Saturday. The ground was soaking wet. I got to the race plenty early, went out and rode about a mile in the woods in the pouring rain. I ended up going inside and trying to warm up there because it was just miserable out. Also, there were racers on the course and I did not want to go too far in the woods to where I would have to ride backwards on the course (there were racers on course). I was getting pretty antsy because I wanted to be spinning out my legs from all the garbage built up in them from the day before. Luckily the skies cleared around 1:30pm and everyone went back outside and spun around. I went back into the woods and did a short loop two times. There were literally rivers running through sections. Everything was so slick and the mud was making the tracking very difficult. The start of our race was very delayed, go figure, but we eventually got underway and I had the hole shot. I maintained first place for ¾ of the first lap (each lap was 7 miles long), but at about 4.5 miles in, I punctured my tire on the descent. Everything was so technical and rocky. I was very ill-prepared in the sense that I had no tube or way to inflate the tire. Normally I always carry something, but it just slipped my mind today. Sigh. I just started running with my bike. I finally had a chance to guzzle down half of my mix and take some GU. There was literally NO place on the course that was safe to take a hand off the handlebars and do so in these conditions. Anywhere that was flat was flooded and squirrelly with the mud. The second place girl was a few minutes back and ended up passing me, and then the third place girl. She said she had a CO2 and handed it over to me. It was nice of her, but unfortunately I could not get the tire to inflate. 3 guys that we had passed all stopped to give it a try, but were also un-successful. I just started running with my bike again, and then ran into the guy who set up the Super D course. He finally got the tire to inflate on his second attempt it did! But, immediately we heard all the air leaking out and he put his finger over the hole to shake some of the Stan’s around, but most of it had leaked out and there was not enough to seal it. Sigh. I started to ride on it again, but it instantly started to flat again. I came running into the parking lot area and yelled to my Dad to grab a tube and pump. By the time I got the change done, the other three women in the race passed and the top 5 Pro men, who were completing their final lap. At this point, I was at least 15 minutes back from the leader, so I just got finished my mix and got a fresh bottle from my Dad and on my bike I went. I had to pump up the tire up to 40 psi in case the tire started to leak again. I knew that mentally it was going to be a very hard lap, but it would be harder to have just tossed in my chips and called it a day. I ended up passing the last place woman, who ended up not even finishing the race, so I was the last racer out on the course. Whenever you pay for a race, you want to at least get your moneys worth out of it! I had driven all the way, and also knew that riding in those conditions would only make me stronger. It was a good thing that I completed the second lap because I walked away with enough cash to cover all three entry fees and still some left over (to buy new REAL tube-less tires with!). I also walked away with a 1^st place trophy for the triple-crown, the ONLY female to compete in all three events for the weekend out of any category. Never ever, ever give up!