After a big party to wrap up the UBC school year on Thursday night, Ben, Ross, David and I jumped in the truck and headed down to Port Angeles for the first race of the season. I was fairly intimidated in the beginning as I was racing Pro against a bunch of factory riders like Danny Hart, Andrew Neethling and Duncan Riffle. Also, most people had been training on the course since Thursday and I only got to practice Saturday and race Sunday. I didn't quite know how I would contend so it was hard to set a goal for myself...
Saturday: The Pro category didn't have practice until noon so Ross and myself got the chance to walk the course and discuss lines. Then we geared up and punched out about 5-6 laps. In the evening I had my seeding run. I took it fairly conservative and didn't pedal much as I was very tired from riding all day. I was happy as I hit all my lines and I wasn't exhausted at the bottom.
Sunday morning began with a unnecessary 6am wake up call from Ross Roseingrave. He started barking orders to ensure that we checked out of our hotel, ate, went to Safeway and got changed well before practice started. I got 1 practice run in and then it was time to chill out in the pits until my race run at 3:09pm (the worst part of racing). While I was waiting around, a much anticipated storm rolled in and soaked the coarse. Things were about to get interesting...
My plan for my race run was to do everything that I did in my seeding run except pedal all the transition sections. I decided to be a bit cautious because of the conditions. My run went pretty well except for a few bobbles but I couldn't expect to be perfect in the wet. I ended up improving from my seeding run by 13 spots to 56th (out of 91). I was satisfied considering it was an international event with some pretty tough competition.
Cheers,
Aaron
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