SoCal #3 Keyesville

For me, this race isn't very close to home so I was thrilled to know that is was right in the middle of my two-week spring break. The week prior to the race all my rides were recovery rides so I was feeling good and was ready to race. Since I had never been to Keyesville I was excited to ride the corse and check it out. I had been hearing a lot about the big water crossing and was ready to try to ride it.

                                  

We got to the venue at around 9:30 on Friday night and had been talking to the rest of the team to figure out where we were going to stay. Since we got there in the dark and we had a new motor home and we didn't really know how to do everything. I mean figuring out what buttons did what was the hard part because there was literally a button for everything. In the morning the whole team went on a super easy pre-ride of the corse. After the pre-ride, my dad made sure everything was running smoothly on my bike for the race the next day.
     

     I woke up at about 6:30am race morning and ate breakfast which was an egg burrito. After that I laid I bed until 8:00 and then I started getting ready for the race and my warm up. I started warming up at 8:20 and was finished by 8:50 to give me ten minutes before I had to be at the line in time to not miss my call up. The starting shoot was much smaller than it was at the last race and I forgot to look at it before hand to see what side I wanted to be on. So I started in the middle so I could change lines easier depending on which line was better. Before I knew it we were off and I jumped out in front really fast to get the line I wanted then I let the other racers pass and I got on their wheel. When we got to the river crossing for the first time I was the first one through the water and I didn't let the water slow me down much. The next section of the corse was the longest climb of the race which really wasn't that long. 

     This is where the leader made his first attack and we broke away from the rest of the group. When we got to the top of the hill I made a strong effort to try to be in front of him before we got into the single track but that didn't happen so I was stuck behind him. On the climbs in the single track he would get a bit of a gap on me but on the downhill parts, I would reel him in. We came out of that single track together and I passed him going into the next one and was in front of him till right before the line where he passed me going up the last punch onto the false flat where the finish was. From that point on it was a game of carrot, rabbit, and wolf. The leader being the carrot me being the rabbit and the whole rest of the conference being the wolves. In the last five minutes of the race, one of the riders had me in his sights and was chasing me down. For those last minutes, I went all out until the line and managed not to let that person catch me.

                                       

After the race I congratulated the winner and all the riders in the chasing group and went to find a chair before I fell over. After sitting in the chair for a while I heard Jason Ranoa (also my coach) calling my name for a short interview to see how the race went.

A big shout out to all my sponsors who make this possible: ESI Grips, Kenda tires, Box Components, Ridefast, SoCal Endurance, Ellsworth Bikes, Ryno Power and Dovetail Coaching.

                             

SoCal Race # 2 Vail Lake

     Coming into this race I was super excited because Vail is my home course. I was ready to see everyone's true ability as a mountain bike rider and what their skill level was compared to me. I was ready to see who were the roadies of the group, who were the skilled riders and who were the all around riders. Since I ride at Vail all the time I was super confident about my abilities on the course and I hoped that I would do better than the last race. Looking back at the previous race at Lake Perris I looked at all the things that I did wrong and all the things I did right. I made sure to capitalize on what I could and make changes to my pre-race itinerary accordingly. Since I threw up after the race at Lake Perris I change up what I had for breakfast in the morning. At Perris, I had a bowl of oatmeal which seemed to be the cause, because it was too heavy so this time I just had one egg burrito and was good to go.

     The morning of the race I woke up at about 6:30 and had my burrito. From there I stayed in bed until I absolutely had to get up which was around 7:45. When I got up I got my bottles and my gels for during the race ready to go. From there I got my kit on and grabbed my mountain bike and headed over to the pits where my dad had my road bike on the trainer for me to warm up. My warm up consists of a steady zone 2 and slowly rises to a zone 5 to get the blood flowing and the butterflies out of my system.

     Since I had the second call-up I didn't have to be at the front of the crowd and neither did the leader. One thing I really like about this sport is the good sportsmanship so when I got to the line I was talking with the leader a little bit. When we got called up after A conference and we were waiting for the race to start I took one of my gels and gave my warm up vest to my dad. Before I knew it we had 5 seconds and, the whistle, we were off. The second high school race of the year had begun and we were on our way to the first section of the course which was the high school signal track is what everyone calls it. At the start of the race, the rider that got 5th at the last race was leading and he is like 6 feet tall and compared to me that is ginormous with me only being 5'2 so I was getting the best draft in the world. He stayed in the lead until the leader decided to make his first attack going into a climb called air force. I was the only other rider abe to stay with the leader when he attacked so when we took off the other rider couldn't keep up so we dropped them and they never caught us for the rest of the race. By this time we had already caught part of the back of A conference so there was traffic in the single track. He managed to pass a couple of slower riders from A conference right before the single track and I couldn't pass them for a little bit. By the time I did pass them the leader had about a whole football field on me so now it was time to real in that gap in. Luckily for me, he got stuck behind a slow person so it gave me time to catch up.

Right as I caught them the leader taped the slow riders tire and he crashed. I immediately capitalized on his mistake and passed both the leader who was on the ground and the slower rider. I came through the finish line on the first lap with about a minute ahead of him. As I came out of the first single track of the course and was heading towards the long fire road I realized that he had closed the gap almost all the way. So then I backed off because he was already on my wheel and there was no point in wasting energy if he was just going to draft on me. When we were going up the climb we were chilling we didn't even make an effort to pass each other until the single track was in sight. I managed to get in front of him before we started going down but I was so exhausted from the sprint I didn't have enough energy to try to pull away on the downhill. Once we got out of the single track I was trying my hardest not to let him pass me because I knew if he did then the race was going to be much more difficult. He managed to get by me on the last sustained climb and I wasn't able to stay with him. Since I knew that I wasn't going to catch the leader I focused on not letting anyone else catch me. I manage to finish second place at this race taking my second #2 placing of the year. Due to rain, they postponed the awards until the next race at Keyesville.

    I would like to start out by thanking all my sponsors, ESI Grips, Kenda Tires, Box Components, Ridefast, SoCal Endurance, Ellsworth Bikes, RynoPower and Dovetail coaching.

Lake Perris 2017

Lake Perris, the first high school race of the year and my first high school race ever. I was so excited for this race because I had been training really hard for it and both of my coaches were saying that I had a very good chance to win this race. One of the bummers of racing freshman is you really don't know who you are going to be racing so it is harder to prepare.

Leading up to the race, the whole week before I was eating as healthy as possible and every night before school I would spend 45 minutes cutting fruits and vegetables for the next day. Every day I brought a salad, carrots, cucumber, snap peas, an apple, and a peach. It was kind of painful to watch everyone eat whatever they wanted when I was eating salad, fruit, and vegetables, but that is part of being disciplined and wanting to win. I also was taking the Ryno Power supplements and taking their protein as well which I think really helped in the race.

On Wednesday I got on my bike to do intervals with Jason Ranoa and my bottom bracket was creaking so I showed Jason. He said that I would need a new bottom bracket when my dad came home on Friday. So we did the intervals and when we were abut halfway done I came around a corner to find my brother laying on the ground off his bike. It was kind of startling because in the past there had been people getting concussions in that area doing the same thing. Lucky his helmet took all the blow and he was fine which was a relief being the first high school race was in less than a week.

On the Thursday before my race, I was on my way home from my ride and I realized that my bike wouldn't shift into the 5th gear. Since my dad (bike mechanic) didn't come home till the next day I had to wait until he got home to fix my bike.

The Friday before the race I didn't have a ride on my schedule so I got to sleep in because we didn't have school. I washed my bike so my dad could work on it later. After I was done my dad took a look at my

bottom bracket and when he took out the crank arm off there was so much sand in there from pre-riding Lake Perris the previous weekend. So we took q-tips and cleaned it and eventfully got all the sand out. After that he put the crank back on he fixed the shifting problem and all was good.

The day before the race I woke up at around 8 and ate breakfast. After that I put my road bike on the trainer and started my 45 minutes cruise. With about 5 minutes left in my ride, I got off the trainer and road around the block a couple times until my ride was over. After my ride was over I packed for the weekend and we left for Perris in the motorhome. It takes about 30 minutes to get to Perris from where we live. Once we got there we unpacked the motorhome and had about 2 hours before the Mesa team potluck. After the potluck, the head coach told everyone where everything was and then one of the moms passed out the team T-shirts and jackets. Then for the rest of the night, I sat around and did nothing until I went to bed.

The morning of the race I woke up at 6:30 am and had a bowl of oatmeal and at around 6:45 am I had an egg burrito. At about 8 am I started to get ready to go to the pits to warm up. At 8:30 I was on my road bike on the trainer warming up for about 20 minutes. By then it was 8:50 and I had ten minutes to do any other last minute things. At 9 am I went to staging.  I was the second group staged. 'A' conference went off at 9:15, 'B' at 9:20 and 'C' at 9:25 but they didn't just say go. They had a motorcycle start us and then stop us again and then they said: "GO!" Since we were freshmen there were no call-ups so the did the UNO card and if the last number on your number plate matched the UNO card then you were called up first. They drew 2 numbers, one and zero and the last number on my plate happened to be a zero because my number was 2020 which is the year I graduate high school and that was at random. So since I was in the front I didn't have to work through any traffic to get to the front. When they said go the second time when there was no moto surprisingly they didn't go out like a rocket-ship like I was expecting. They took off really slow actually and I was in the lead and I didn't want to because I wanted to draft. Then eventually a couple people caught up and I got on their wheel. The kid that took the lead was riding for Great Oak High School and right behind him, there were 2 kids from Redlands and then me. When we were nearing the top of the climb made my attack to get into the downhill first. The 2 Redlands kids had the same idea so I crept up behind them and passed them and before they could react I was too far away to catch before the downhill. When I attacked I was able to get passed the Great Oak kid that had pushed wind for that whole first part of the race. The one Redlands kid was able to stay with me the whole time and every time I slowed down to let him in the front so I didn't have to push wind he wouldn't pass. I went all the way to right before the feed-zone in the lead and then I slowed down again to try to get him to pass and he sprinted by me too fast for me to be able to stay with him so he managed to get a large gap. Then the other Redlands kid and a different

Great Oak kid caught me and I fended them off for the whole lap. When we started to go up the hill I looked to see how far up the leader was and he was about half way up and we were at the bottom and that is when I realized that it was a fight for second place. I made a little gap between me and the other 2 kids so that when we came into the finishing shoot it was so close of a sprint. I managed to fend them off and finish second place in the first SoCal high school race of 2017. Just to put into perspective how hard I was working, after the race as soon as I stopped I felt like I had to throw up. So I went around the corner and saw my breakfast again except this time it didn't taste so good.


And a big shout out to all my sponsors who make this possible: ESI Grips, Kenda tires, Box shifters, Ridefast, SoCal Endurance, Ellsworth Bikes, Ryno Power and Dovetail Coaching.