U.S. Cup- Mount Snow, Vermont

Ah another year of racing at Mount Snow. I guess my race season wouldn’t be complete with out racing at Mount Snow. I believe this is my 10^th year in a row making the trip over to Vermont for a national event.

I did the usual drive on Thursday, pre ride on Friday and race on Saturday routine. After checking into the rental house Hattie and I headed over to the Shaw’s grocery store in downtown Wilmington, VT. It was at Shaw’s when Hattie pointed out that one of my car tires looked pretty low on air pressure. I found an air pump, filled it up and then drove back to the house. Once I made it back to the house I could hear an air leak from the tire! After investigating the situation I noticed a rock or nail had punctured my tire!! Now what? Do I try and drive 5 hours on a donut, or try and buy just one tire when I really should buy a set?? Could I find a reliable shop in town? All these questions were running through my head and it was stressing me out.

Friday morning I found a reliable garage in town. They crew there thought they could plug my tire, an option I didn’t think of. I dropped the car off while Burns, Joos and I went over to the mountain for a pre ride. Mount Snow had been advertising a new course for 2009, but there wasn’t much new. We didn’t climb as far up the mountain, had one new cross cut and then it was pretty much the same decent as past years. The course was awesome like it always is; I was just a little disappointed with the mountains advertisement of a ‘new’ course. After a few laps and picking up our number plates we headed back to garage. Turns out the guys at the shop were able to plug the leak for a whopping $12!!! I was stoked that the bill wasn’t going to break the bank and that the Saturn was again going to be safe to drive; what a relief!

Sometime around Thursday night a cough started to form; one of the coughs that come from deep in your lungs.  I tried to ignore the cough and play it off as ‘allergies’. The last thing I wanted to do was think or admit that I was run down from two weeks of racing world cups, traveling up to Canada twice and working at Starbucks between each race. I just kept telling myself I was fine and didn’t say anything about my cough. With this said I could feel that m lungs were tight when I lined up for the race. Before the gun even went off I knew I was in for an asthma attack.

So yeah the race didn’t go so well. Asthma on the first lap, then things got even worse. My stomach went sour on the second lap and I even puked a little. At this point I was thinking of pulling out of the race or just try and ride and have some fun on the course. I decided for the second option and just cruise around until the end of the race. I am still unaware of what my final place was as I have yet to look at the results.

After the race everyone met up at the house for dinner. We discussed what to do for the evening and the naked crit came up more than once. It didn’t take much convincing for everyone to pile into the Saturn and head back up to the mountain. An hour of waiting around and no naked crit. I guess Mount Snow just isn’t Mount Snow without the naked crit. However the evening wasn’t wasted as the mountain did put on a great fireworks show and had some live music for everyone to enjoy. So despite a not so stellar race the weekend was still an enjoyable one which is why I always return.