MSC #5 Race Report: Super-D

Sunday’s Super-D came early for me. Typically I’m up early and warmed up for racing, but this time, I opted to drink coffee and try and wake up from a really poor night’s sleep. I definitely prefer when we have a chance to get just a little course time in before we race Super-D. But for the Snowmass race, the lifts weren’t open before the race, mostly because the race started early, and this was because the Super-D and Downhill courses overlapped. In any case, I hopped the lift to the race start, which consisted of about 100m dash over uneven cat track to where our bikes lay. As at Crested Butte, I was not particularly quick off the gun, but I let my long legs carry me through the crowds so that I was second to the bikes. I held that position through a brief cat track descent (scary on my little XC bike!), then entered the singletrack. The course was really heavy on the singletrack and light on the pedaling. The former meant that it was difficult for anyone else to pass me, the latter made it difficult for me to try and catch the more downhill-oriented girl who was holding first and gain ground on the ladies on bigger bikes right on my tail. So I just tried to stay calm and not crash out on the singletrack, saving myself to sprint every open section. Good tactics, but I just wasn’t riding my finest. I needed that warm-up run to wake my brain up to shredding. Anyways, the course widened out as we funneled into the bottom of the downhill course. There, through a treacherous section of loose babyheads (deadly rocks about the size of, say, a baby’s head that like to shift unexpectedly), I was fairly passed by the woman behind me. Unwilling to go any faster through the choss, I finished five seconds behind her in third. Not a bad place, a podium spot, but still not the win I’m capable of.