CA High School MTB State Champs

May 16, 2010

Grass Valley, CA

Varsity Girls

Second Place

After my win at the last NorCal race, I was feeling pretty confident and hoping to see if I could pull off another win. Unfortunately, getting beaten had given Shayna Powless a lot of inspiration to race harder than ever, so the competition was tough. Right after our neutral start, we hit a big climb, and I quickly got into second place, after Christine Weir, with Shayna right behind me. Right before we got the very end of the climb, Shayna sprinted ahead of Christine and I and took the lead on the downhill singletrack. Shayna and Christine were both faster than me on the downhill, and got a little bit ahead, but I caught back up to them on the next climb. Shayna was starting to get a little bit ahead of Christine, so I passed her and caught up to Shayna. For the rest of the first lap Shayna would get ahead on the downhills and I would catch her on the flats and climbs. However, this kept getting more and more difficult; Shayna was just too fast on the singletrack sections. By about the middle of the second lap, I stopped being able to completely catch her on the hills, and eventually I could see her when the course opened up, but couldn’t catch her, and by the third lap I had completely lost sight of her. At this point bystanders kept telling me very different things about how far ahead Shayna was. One would tell me she was five minutes ahead, and then the next one would get really excited and tell me I was only ten seconds back, but I was always fairly certain I was a lot further back than that. The rest of the race was pretty uneventful, I just went as hard as I could until the end, finishing with a solid second place, about three minutes behind Shayna. I guess that just proves how much power your competition has to make you push yourself, and I was proud I was enough of a threat to have that effect……….but Shayna better look out next year!