Race Report: High School Mountain Bike Race #1 Snow Mountain Ranch

Sunday the 8th was the first Colorado High School Mountain Bike race. The unique thing about these races is that all of the fastest kids in Colorado, wether it be on a road bike or mountain bike, come together for these events which makes the level of competition incredibly high. Located in Granby, Colorado, it was the perfect location to begin the 4 race series.

The team got to Granby on Saturday to pre-ride together and prepare for the race. This is perhaps the best part of the entire weekend. Hanging out with your friends at night, joking around and forgetting all about the race before it happens. We horse around and make fun of each other while we leg drain and ice bath. Generally with 15 guys on the team, something is bound to go wrong, but nothing did!

The pre-ride was rather intense and we had to take shelter from a high-country rain storm which made the generally normal course into a muddy, rooty, fun course. It's slightly ironic that our first HS MTB race, which fell on the same weekend of the first Colorado Cross race, was muddy, but the cross race wasn't... The course was very up and down, and by the end of a lap you had almost 500 feet of elevation gain!

Race morning rolled around, and the JV and Varsity groups went out to warm up. As we warmed up my legs weren't feeling particularly spectacular, which gave me low expectations for the race, and this was a course that I hadn't done well on in the past, so mentally and physically it didn't bode well. The race started at 1:15, and due to my 3rd row starting position, I was able to get to front of the race pretty fast as the race settled in for 4 laps of the 5 mile course.

I found myself in a leading group of 5, alongside Maxx, Garrett, Michael and Grant. As the race split and the group had an un-reachable advantage of about a minute, attacks started to come and Garrett was the first to go, trying his luck on the final climb and descent of the first lap. Michael pulled him back and things got a little slower. I had definitely surprised myself so far in the race and was wondering what I could do. About then Michael went for it up the first climb and I grabbed his wheel, which turned out to be a bad idea since he's the national time trial champion...

His acceleration split the group and I was sitting second position. Grant caught, and then passed me on the second climb, which put me in 3rd spot with 2 laps to go. Right around the start of the 3rd lap, lightning started rolling in which made it kind of creepy to be riding alone. I held my position until the end of the 3rd lap, where the race was cut short because of the rain and lightning. I was very happy with this result, and it's my best result in HS MTB to date! It was an awesome race and everything went well.

My teammates also had some some awesome results, Zack finished 9th in Varsity, Keegan finished 9th in Freshman, Sam finished 2nd in Girls Sophmore, and Jack finished 4th in JV. Overall a great weekend and very successful with 3 podiums across the team!! I'm very excited for the next race up in Leadville on the 22nd! Thanks to NICA for putting on a great event, Ciclismo Youth Foundation for the excellent support over the weekend, Rob Noble and Michael Roberts for the great photos, and POC helmets for getting us some awesome, very recognizable helmets for the race, they rock!!

I'm hoping to improve on my 3rd place on the 22nd and racing the fast guys again. Thanks for reading!