SERC #2 in Columbia TN

Last weekend was the second race in the SERC race series in Columbia TN. The weekend was a full and fun one for me. First of all, it was the beginning of spring break on Friday after school. I was excited about that for sure. On Friday, I went to a really neat jazz type concert. It was a really fun band to see. Then, on Saturday, I went to go see one of my favorite bands called Vampire Weekend at the Tennessee Theatre here in K-town. It was an AWESOME concert. I had so much fun. However, because of that concert my dad and I had to drive over to Columbia on Sunday morning.

So, on Sunday we woke up at 6 AM and were on the road by 6:30. I was proud of us! We had a perfect drive except for we just sort of took a "different" route than was originally planned. I didn't really make any difference though. We arrived at the race in plenty of time. I was so excited and sort of nervous when I got there that I got dressed way to early. haha. It was a rather cold day when the sun went behing a cloud, but when it decided to come out every now and then, it was quite pleasant.

As we sat and waited for our race to begin, we were really excited to see all the people from the first wave coming through absolutely COVERED in mud form head to toe. I know that really got me excited to race. There is nothing I love better than a peanut butter covered mtb course. lol.

So, I started my warm up, and my legs were actually feeling fairly good. I was glad for that. It sucks to do a warm up and you can just tell that you are gonna ride slow. Anyway's, we all got lined up, andit was a fairly large feild of 16 pro/expert racers. We went off and then the suffering began.

Once we hit the single track, we disovered that there was absolutely no hope of steering our bikes or staying upright pretty much. The trails seemed to take me where ever they wanted to. I was all over the place. I tumbled down a lot of the descents, but it did not ever hurt really. Sometimes it can be a little bit fun to wreck if you don't get hurt. Some of these wrecks were a little bit fun I guess.

After the 3 laps of suffering, slipping and sliding were finished I was totally covered in mud. I like to think of it as getting one of those fancy mud facial things. It had gotten much colder duringt the race, and all there was to clean off with was really cold water out of a hose. I got all cleaned up though, and then I felt warm and good. After the results came out I saw that I got 8th out of the 16 that lined up. I was really proud of that. That is good for me!

I also had a really good pit crew at this race! It was my dad. He did all kinds of stuff to help me get ready for the race, and he helped me out a lot afterwards. It was really nice. Thanks a lot!

Also, my Trek bike did perfectly in all of this mud. I did not ever have one single mechanical problem. That is saying a lot in conditions like those! Thanks so much to Trek and all of our other awesome sponosrs!