Mountain Biking

I got to pre-ride the world cup course the past couple of days, it is completely different than anything I have aver ridden in my life. It is also way harder. I got to the course and started riding, we came up to the technical sections and stopped to take a look at the stuff. I got pretty scared. They told me to prepare for drops so I went out and rode some drops but nothing like this. I rode down the drops that are pretty big and skinny with multipul drops, just need to keep my hands off the front brakes. The roots here are also really slippery, but not the hardest part. I have to walk some of the course because I am not prepared for this at all. Vail has been a little snowy lately preventing me from doing the training I wanted to do. When I first got out on the coure yesterday I felt like I have never ridden my bike before in my life. I felt a bit more confident today, after I knew what some of the stuff was like, and I knew what I was going to walk down and just needed to find the best way down it. I though I was alright at bike riding until I got here. The other competitors all fly down this stuff with ease, and are super fast. I am just hoping to be able to ride it better than I have been in training, race the best I can and hope that my knee is not hurting to bad. I was really glad that I got to see the juniors race today and see how things were going in the race, and that I was not the only one running down stuff. I have never see a race this big. I am racing tomorrow, no more pre-riding on the course.

Checkout the blog Wesley Geer put together for the trip. http://eurocamp2011.wordpress.com

Start to Summer

After the skiing competitions ended I went back home for a week with Ashley Caldwell. We were lucky and got some nice skiing in that week. The weather was different every day so we got almost every type of snow condition. We even decided to try snowboarding. We probably fell about 20 times getting to the lift from the parking structure. After a few more runs of falling constantly we started to get the hang of it. Snowboarding was fun but I am defiantly a skier. Vail got hit by a huge storm and it was time to hit some huge cornices and rip some powder.

We headed to Charleston to visit Ashley's family and go the beach. It was nice to get some sun this spring since it has been stuck in winter mode in Colorado. We hit the beach and got some pretty awesome sunburns. You need a lot more sunscreen than you think when you used to winter weather. The warm weather was nice but the 85 degree days definitely put a hurt on me. We had some fun slacklining on the beach, playing in the sand and painting our selves with mud.

I came back home, back to winter. Skied some more while the mountain was still open. I went with my family to the desert and we did lots of biking and hiking. I finished up high school and started to train for biking. I got selected to go to Germany with USA cycling to train and race with the U23 team. I get to do a world cup and a racer cup durring my trip. I trained in the gym, on the bike and skinned up Vail mtn some. The amount of snow around this time of year is incredible. It is nearing the end of May and the mountain looks a lot like it does on closing day some years (other than the fact they plowed the roads). The trip to Europe this time should be different and hopefully exciting, it has been a while since I have been to Europe in the Summer. I am excited to race bikes and hopefully get stronger for skiing.