Mountain bike season is in full force! Price Utah was our first mountain bike race of the season. Emily, Colby, and Logan have worked hard the whole summer training and riding a lot.
We got to Price on Friday night to do the pre-ride. The course was a great course and really easy. The kids looked forward to racing on it the next day.
This was Logan's first race and he was way excited. He laughed and to us saying, "What if I podium." We told him to do it! Logan raced first in the Beginner 7th Grade Boys category and it was fun to see him take off and race his heart out.
Logan is the kind of rider that is there for the fun, but is also a silent competitor. He pushes himself and gets ahead of people with his endurance up hills. I saw him on the midway point on his lap and he was in the top 10 spot. Holy cow he's was doing amazing considering he started at the 38th position! We continued cheering for him and told him to keep passing people. Then came the steep hill climb which Logan is great at. On the climb he passed 5 more people and I thought, he really is going to podium! When he sprinted to the finish line, he placed 5th and got a podium spot on his first race.
We were all way excited and proud of him. It was cool to be his Dad and Coach as I gave him his 5th place medal. Way to go Logan!!!
Emily is a pro by now. She knows the ins and outs of the race life. Emily races in the JV B Girls category and her goal this year is to qualify for state. To do this she needs to finish the year out in the top 40. I told her that is great and she could do it. I also told her to have a fun and race. She started further back this year, but she made up for it quickly by being more aggressive and passing a lot more. She moved up quite a bit during this race.
Right before the start gun went off for her race, the race officials gave the riders some news. Because a storm as coming in and they wanted all of the riders to race instead of cancelling, the race officials decided to have all of the afternoon riders, starting with Emily's group, do only one lap instead of the typical two laps they would normally do. This announcement got a lot of cheers but also required the riders to change up their race strategy. Instead of conserving energy for the second lap, this race became a sprint. Emily was okay with this and did really well. At the end, she was still going strong. Her finishing time was 31:43 and in 32nd place! She started in 47th place so she was able to pass 15 people getting her closer to her goal of state. Good job Emily!!
Colby was also fun to watch. He also only had to do one lap instead of two. He was excited for this because he knew he could sprint the whole way and move up a ton. He had a huge game plan mentally down in his head. We told him good luck and get it done. After seeing Logan podium, I knew he also had a goal to push hard and podium.
Off he went in a cloud of dust. Colby is great at sprinting and knows when to push on hills too. You can just see the determination in his face as he rides. He came across the finish line at 9th place with a time of 26 minutes. What a race for him as he started in 28th place. He didn't get the podium spot he wanted but 9th place definitely put him in a good position and a possibility of a podium for the next race. Good job Colby!!!
We had podiums after the racing was done and it was fun to stay and watch everyone. Mountain Crest did a great job received multiple medals. After the podiums, the weather came in and down poured. Thank goodness they shortened the races or Colby would have been racing right during the downpour. There were some areas on the race track that had some flash flooding. We stayed in our trailer and stayed dry, ate food and played games. We headed back home the next day. It was a good race day!
No comments:
Post a Comment