However, it rained during the night and throughout race day to take the course from dry and loose to slick. Once I rode through slowly on my first lap to check out the track, I was confident and even found some flow in my practice laps. Sugar was the first course of the year that I actually enjoyed. However, my two last-place finishes had let a couple of women with fewer races get within striking distance for the final event. I was set to be the only single crown woman who did all four races.
I still needed to pull it together for Sugar, though, as the one consolation prize I still had on the line for the season was the overall series title. While there was little I could do to improve my skills or fitness in less than a week, I made the commitment to myself that I would start caring again. I think a tiny part of me wanted to find out if I might be decent without trying, but with every other physical endeavor of my life, that was not the case. I pretty much admitted that after the first race, but I took it too far, barely riding or improving my fitness at all over the summer. To protect myself from being too upset if I did badly during my first downhill season, I had put almost zero effort into getting better between races. Going into the finale' at Sugar Mountain, it became clear that I had miscalculated my forks for the season. However, I expect I still have a few years left before my myelination decreases and my fear of mortality increases to meet in my inevitable plateau. Downhill is undoubtedly a young woman's game. As I learned regarding natural talent, although I might not immediately be good at something skills-based, I could always get better than I was. I realized that since turning 40, I had begun using my age as an excuse the same way I used to blame my lack of natural talent when it came to race results. I also tried very hard to make sure everyone in my category knew I had broken my back last year to feel heroic instead of just dumpster. My 25-year-old self's worst nightmare would be seeing myself at 40, getting last place, and pretending that I was "just there to have fun" while also low-key using my age as an excuse for my performance. I suppose the sarcastically radical self-acceptance of the above Facebook post after the Windrock was just a minor pressure release for my true feelings. It's true I even shared toilet paper with my competition before the race. Like, if I wasn't an asshole about placing poorly, maybe I didn't care enough. I almost felt the urge to be disappointed in myself for not being more publicly distressed about my results. I was upset when I saw the results, but my new "chill" attitude towards racing allowed me to almost forget about that by the time we finished the ~15-minute lift back to the village. At the end of my single downhill run at Snowshoe, I found that the approach had landed me DFL instead. That approach worked over five stages and ~45 minutes of riding. I had still been able to soldier on, focusing on steady, non-aggressive riding that minimized mistakes, including walking to avoid crashing when necessary. What I'd forgotten about my past muddy enduros at Snowshoe was that they scared the crap out of me. Plus, hard rain was forecast for the weekend, and I thought my previous muddy Snowshoe experience would work to my advantage. Two of the women registered for Snowshoe had failed to start at Massanutten, and the other had been a couple of minutes behind me in third. After some reflection, the answer I found was surprising.Īfter my second-place debut at Massanutten, I viewed the pre-reg list for Snowshoe with confidence. Just like that, the 2021 Downhill Southeast series was complete, and I was left pondering how I would sum it up. The second was simply not worthy of a stand-alone post, and the last two were a mere week apart, during which Frank and I were living out of our van in Boone, NC. Of the four races I have completed in 2021, I've only written about one, and that was six weeks after the fact. Despite my return to racing this season, I still haven't been great at returning to blogging.