Nove Mesto World Cup #3

Category: Junior Women

Field size: 41

Place: 10th

We headed out to preride and I absolutely loved the course. There were short, steep, technical climbs and super technical fast descents. I was pretty nervous about taking the A line on this one rock drop but eventually manned up and tried it. I crashed. I got up and tried it again, clearing the section. I rode the drop a few more times and went over some of the more technical sections and was feeling super confident and ready to go.

The next morning I rolled out of bed to find a thunderstorm warning on my phone and some pretty cold, wet weather outside. Nevertheless, I slipped on my USA skin suit (which definitely makes you faster) and headed to the venue. After an extra long warmup I headed to the staging area where European girls were lined up and looking pretty intimidated.

I was called up 30th which meant 3rd row, but I guess I didn't catch on to the whole half wheeling the girl in front of you trend because two girls shoved their front wheels in between the 3 inch gaps between the wheels in front of us and basically boxed me out. The start was a full sprint and with the girls next to me hitting my bars I was forced back a few spots. I decided to just get to the front no matter what it took so I put down a full sprint and barely caught the front group. The start lap was arguably the hardest part of the entire race. We sprinted the entire thing. I never shifted out of the big ring. I was suffering. Finally we reached a downhill and I recovered a little bit. When I made it back to the first climb for our first lap I realized I was actually feeling much better and passed a few girls on the technical climb. Marc yelled at me that I was in the top 10 and I was stoked. I focused on pushing really hard up the climbs and being as smooth as possible down. Finally settling into a good (but also really hard) pace I started having fun with all of the awesome single track descents and hard climbs. At the start of the second lap we started catching U23 riders and I became rather confused as to what position I was in. I felt pretty good and just kept pushing up the climbs and passing as many people as I could. I realized if I powered up the short climbs and passed people right before a technical descent I could put a little time on them by the next climb. Unfortunately I got caught behind some slower U23 riders on a technical descent and had to take the outside line on a sharp corner. I slipped out on some wet roots and crashed which unfortunately allowed the 11th place girl to catch up to me. I rode the next technical section clean and the 11th place girl from the Ukraine put her foot down, allowing me to get away. I powered through the last lap trying to catch a British girl that was about 15 seconds in front of me but slipped out on some wet rocks and had to clip out on a technical climb. I came into the last descent with about 20 seconds up to 9th and a 20 second gap on 11th place. I made it to the line in 10th, super stoked on my finish!

This race was incredibly fun and I had a great time racing against some really tough competition Looking forward to La Bresse next weekend!

Kate