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| Spring time in Montana is as beautiful as it is unpredicable |
Hello again from the wonderful, wintery, wild world of
Montana in April. I’ve decided that now
would be as good a time to take a break from adding to my ever growing stack of
never-to-be-sent death threats to my local weatherman and do something I really
love. Write about mountain biking. Like my English teacher annoyingly points
out much too often, “If you can’t do it, write about it”. Now I don’t know how
much water that theory holds when it comes to five page essays dissecting the
theme of Lord of the Flies, but it
couldn’t be truer pertaining to my sport. When I write about floating through
the forest, my tires hooking up with the tacky dirt just as I round a corner,
I’m transported to that spot. I immediately feel the sun shining on my skin,
making me heed to the need to move faster just to blow its combusting heat off
me. The prickly pine trees scratch and tug at me, only to be soothed by away by
a swift dose through a douglas fir.
Or at least that’s what normally happens. By this time of
spring I’m more in the, “Oh, God, why can’t I be doing that right now!” mindset.
The, "Why can’t I live in Santa Cruz or the Bay Area!" mindset. at this time I’d even
settle for the beautiful, tropically misty mountains of Monterey right now, but
that would be a stretch. I suppose I
wouldn’t be feeling so bitter about the weather if I just hadn’t returned from my
third adventure in the home base, the motherland, my fertile crescent. Yes, I
mean the one and only sweet, sweet, California.
The song goes, “Do you know the way to San Jose”. I found
that out the hard way thanks to my dad’s musical spasms. I gotta say, though, I found myself joining in once I discovered our bags all knew the way to San Jose on time with
us. Upon arriving, I left it to Google maps to find the way to Monterey, and one
quick jaunt down the Pacific Coast Highway later, I was there. At the single most
electrifying, monstrous, hectic, wallet draining event in the western
hemisphere, oh yes, I had made it my friends- to the Sea Otter registration
tent. 15 minutes later, fresh entry wrist bands in hand, we were ready to enter
the second most electrifying, monstrous, hectic, wallet draining event in the
western hemisphere- the Sea Otter Classic.
How to describe Sea Otter… I guess the best way to describe
it is like a gigantic family reunion of the entire American cycling scene.
There’s plenty of deliciously fattening foods, the beer flows freely, and, like
all good family reunions, there’s a hearty brawl in the middle of the party. Another
word for this brawl is XC mountain bike race, and would it be a brawl to end
all brawls…
Ok, don’t turn off your computer! I know I’ve said brawl
four times in one and a half sentences, but come on, how many times does one
get to freely spout off the word brawl in everyday English now a day? Besides,
it’s about time I take on the task of trying to get across with words how
innately beautiful, or as some of my Californian hosts might say, totally rad,
the single track we got to race is. I mean you want to drive yourself into the
ground, you want to make yourself dig into the red zone, and you want to try to
leave everything you got on that course, but you can’t. Everything you disperse
on the trail is immediately fed back into you by just the sheer love of ripping. Excitement is transferred to energy, and energy is transferred to
speed. It’s an amazing thing, and something I can’t see happening on many other
tracks in the world.
Unfortunately though, even that wasn’t enough to keep me
with the leaders on that day. After about halfway around the 22 mile loop I
popped like a button on my pants after dinner at a the Whole Foods buffet line.
It’s ok, though. Days like that happen, and happen to everyone. I know that the
only way to survive in this sport is to take your defeats with as much a grain
of salt as your victories, but to not until you’ve learned it’s full lesson. That
day I learned how to put up with my defeat. I had to find a centered mindset
when it seemed the world should have crumbled down. This was the big one, the most important race of this time in the season, but as it turned out this otter
was a bit slippery, and I had to be ok with that. Of course when I was
able to come back to BMC base camp and congratulate two awesome efforts by my
teammates Ksenia Lepikhina (5th) and Kyle Bloesser(7th)
it made putting up with my own disapointment all that much easier. In fact, how could I feel anything but pride? Pride for a team that has so many
wonderful people, people that work so hard to make us succeed. Pride for a team
that makes a tent and trailer feel like home when home’s really a thousand
miles away. I didn’t have my best race at The Otter this year, but frankly, who
cares? When you’re having as much fun as I am, it’s hard to let one bad race
out of hundreds in the future bring me down. It’s all part of the trails and
tribulations of mountain biking, and without it, it just wouldn’t be the same.
Thank you to all my supporters out there and the supporters
of the team. It means more than you’ll ever know to just have people who
believe in you. I’ll be off the national circuit for a little while now,
hopefully doing some of that grass roots racing. Like always, I think those will be just what I need to whip me into shape.
Keep that rubber side down, that blue sky up, and the dirt out in front. See you on the mountain.
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