2016 Race Wrap-Up

States Raced In: Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, South Dakota, & Florida
# of Races: 18 mountain bike, 3 road, 20 cyclocross
# of Wins: 5 (MTB), 4 (CX), 1 (Road)
# of Top 5: 13 (MTB), 2 (road),  14 (CX)
# of Beverage Drinking Devices Won: Yep, I am STILL winning bottles and coffee mugs, after all these years!

• I spent so much time in 2016 being negative about my race season that I missed seeing how great it was actually going.  Perhaps this was a blessing, as finishes like the Tatanka 50k came as an amazingly happy surprise, and I had no expectations going into Hill Climb Nationals.  But I even got sick of hearing myself bitch about how “terrible” of a season I was having.  I don’t know why I let the Florida Cup deliver such a devastating blow to my cycling confidence so early in the season.  I totally lost perspective on the whole thing.

2016 Hill Climb National Champion – Masters Women 30-39
2016 Laramie Mountain Bike Series Overall Winner – Open Women
2016 Colorado Cross Cup – 2nd Place – Singlespeed Women
2016 Rocky Mountain Regional Cyclocross Champion – Singlespeed Women

• Those highlights above show why 2016 was an amazing year, even if I wasn’t training like I was in 2015.
• If anything, 2016 was the year of overcoming obstacles.  I decided to take responsibility for my own training.  Sure, that led to me not riding as much as 2015 and spending a lot of time being utterly lazy, but I did spend a lot more time on the mountain bike and the proof was in more confident descending and ever improving technical skills.  Going into the meat of my mountain bike season two days post-concussion with a strained calf muscle and a tendon split in my shoulder was not how I planned things on going, but I fought through it (even though I will NEVER advocate racing with a concussion.  I didn’t make the best decisions in that time period – one of them being getting on a mountain bike in a race two days later).  I guess in a way I don’t know when to quit!
• I still can’t describe what winning the Hill Climb National Championships on Pikes Peak means to me.  I still get teary eyed thinking about it.  It’s like everything was coming full circle.  I won’t lie, I thought about never racing after that day ever again because it seemed like such a good capstone on this cycling craziness.
• On the lighter side, beer hands, even at 10:30am, are amazing!  So was the Bacon Station during Dakota 5-O.  I’m pretty sure that was the only reason that kept me going in that race!

So 2017… well, I’m already registered for the Gunnison Half Growler, as I just find that race so darn amazing!  Other than that I haven’t really thought about what I will or will not race.  I have thrown around the idea of tackling the Double Triple Bypass, which is some 240 miles and 20,000+ feet of climbing over two days in the mountains of Colorado.  Tour de Wyoming starts and ends in Cheyenne, and that’s tempting (and a damn cheap way to do a bike tour!).  As you can see, it might be a lot less of competitive events, and more experiences.  I’m so exhausted from my most intensive cyclocross season yet that I haven’t started a formal training plan or done a new FTP test.  I think I need a bit of downtime to refocus and recover.  2017 is also the Year of Iceland, so a lot of focus and money is going towards that amazing trip!