The fourth and final stop before National Champs in the Xterra US Championship Series took place on Saturday, July 14th at the stunningly beautiful Beaver Creek Resort in Avon, Colorado. I’ve always had mixed emotions about this race; I’ve had one good race here and one bad race so my record is split. I love coming to it because it’s Colorado, a beautiful place that I lived in for a couple of years and miss dearly. At the same time, I dread coming to Colorado because of the altitude and the race course which is pretty heavy in the climbing aspect (3,600 ft of elevation gain over the 25km bike course and 1,300 ft. of gain on the 9.3km/5.75 mile run course). Coming from sea level on the east coast I don’t have mountains to climb for an hour at a time so training specifically for this race is never very specific. And there’s just no way to combat the wheezing that comes with the altitude except to fly in as late as possible! So I arrived on thursday, did some course pre-riding and settled into my condo home for the weekend with some friends. On friday I did some more course prep and recon and was actually surprised at how well I was breathing, which was a little boost to my confidence going into the race which I certainly needed!
Race morning brought the typically perfect Colorado weather, cool and sunny with the water temp of 67 which made it wetsuit legal. I had a great swim, the fastest woman out of the water and first onto the bike. I cruised down the short road section and then once we hit the dirt and began climbing the ski mountain I saw Mel McQuaid behind me. Mel and I have had nearly identical swim performances this year until today so I was very pleased to have had a good day in the water. Mel passed me after spending a few minutes behind me and I jumped on her wheel and stayed with her for the next 4 miles up the mountain until I felt the lactic acid building and burning in my legs and decided to back off for a couple minutes as we climbed up a mile of steep pavement. I thought I was riding strong and then Danelle and Sarah T. came cruising by me, working together to catch Mel who was only about 30-60 seconds ahead. I dropped a gear, accelerated and got on Sarah’s wheel but after a few minutes my legs were screaming and I just couldn’t hang with them. I felt a bit of disappointment in thinking maybe I wasn’t doing as well as I had thought so I just plugged away at my own pace and took in some energy. A few minutes later I peaked the climb and began descending a long dirt road and saw Mel at the side of it changing a flat. I saw my opportunity to attack, knowing that once she was up and rolling again she’d be chasing hard and I’d need to really push it if I wanted to stay away. For the remainder of the bike course I would occasionally see flashes of Danelle and Sarah ahead of me but just couldn’t make up any ground. I entered T2 in 3rd and wanted desperately to hold my place but knew that Mel and a couple of other strong runners were somewhere behind me and chasing hard. The run course is just as difficult as the bike course as it favors the strongest hill climbers. I put my head down and chugged along at the best pace I could manage which didn’t feel very fast seemed to be the best I could do on the steep mountain switchbacks. About half-way though I opened up the legs and let em roll fast downhill before beginning the next long climb. I was hurting pretty bad but knew I had to leave it all out there in order to hold my position. I crossed the line for 3rd and sure enough less than 1 minute later the next woman came running into the finish.
I was extremely excited for Danelle to get her first Xterra Championship Win and also pleased with my result for the day. Though the course had a few minor changes from last year that we were told might be about 5 minutes faster, my finish time was almost 14 minutes faster than my performance last year! I was pleased and encouraged by that, but decided that I’d better get some more hill training in before National Championships (which is a very similar course- riding and running up Snowbasin Ski Resort in Ogden, Utah) because that was one painful day of racing!
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