Talk about last minute decisions! Last Monday I had no intentions or thoughts about racing anytime soon due to my hip issues earlier this season, but after deciding to make the trek out to Morgan Hill to visit the amazing people at Specialized, I figured, well, I’m already out here, might as well pop into a race and just see how it goes! This race I was about to “pop” into just so happens to be Escape from Alcatraz, one of the toughest but most amazing races on the circuit.

Overall, my race went OK. I’m not thrilled with my performance but considering I wasn’t planning to race until 3 days beforehand, I guess it was decent. The Alcatraz swim is notorious for being rough, but wow was it a tough day out there. I exited with a huge scratch across my face and feeling slightly seasick from the waves, not to mention being frozen from the freezing water temps! But onto the bike my feet thawed out and I put my head down and just tried grinding it out but my legs were not with me. I’ve been spending more time doing base riding and running lately due to injury so this high-intensity stuff was a killer. However, the run was what I was most concerned about because of my hip. I wanted to test it out in a race situation but I made a promise to my coaches and Bobby and Ian from Specialized that I’d be very conservative and pull out if anything felt wrong. But once I got out there everything felt great! My hip felt almost back to normal, even all that tightness was almost unnoticeable! I finished on the podium in 10th, which I’ll take but am most definitely not satisfied with, even under these circumstances! Huge congrats to Leanda Cave for taking the win, Jenna Shoemaker for racing like crazy to walk away in second and Mary Beth Ellis for hanging in there for third! As always, Alcatraz was a great race with some amazing and very inspiring women!

Since the race, I’ve been spending a couple of days down in Morgan Hill at Specialized learning all about the bikes, products, people, and everything you might need to know about this kick ass company. More details about this experience are on the way but all I’ll say now is that this is one amazing company and I feel very lucky to be a part of it all!