Northstar Thursday night races

For the last seven weeks I have been racing all-but-one Thursday at the Northstar-at-Tahoe Thursday night cross country mountain bike races. In no way are these races your average Thursday night drink-a-beer afterward races, although I did drink a beer afterward. The men's race was stacked with national champions and pro athletes. The women's was pretty tough too, one of my regular competitors was Linda Ekert who placed 3rd at Single Speed World Championships this year.
The courses were always tough with as much climbing and technical descending as you can squeeze into a four-mile loop.
I was lucky to win the overall series getting a cool 'winner' t-shirt. Gregg Stone of Truckee was third, he was 7th at Single Speed World Champs.

XTERRA Mountain Championships

I Returned to Ogden again for the XTERRA Mountain Championships and placed 12th in the pro field, not as well as I hoped. I thought the climbing and elevation would give me a good result in this race but I am competing against a lot of women who also live in the mountains, hence the mountain championships.
Swim was bad, non-wetsuit for pros but amateurs could wear them and we started at the same time so basically the wetsuit swimmers swam over me.
Was slow to get going on the bike but strong by the end and was happy with my run. Finished close to 9th, 10th and 11th place. Check out my Sierra Sun column here.

Squaw Valley Mtn Run

Although I continue to chip off time the previous year I cannot seem to win this race, but I'm alway close.
I came in second behind Kendall Knowles, who was on the XC running and track team at UNR with me, so it was good to see her again and see start racing again.
Was not excited to race this day, was exhausted from moving the week before but felt good during the race, pretty comfortable and came in 50 seconds faster than last year in the 3.6-mile race up Squaw Valley USA with a time of 37:12. I was also 21st overall right behind Far West Nordic coach Ben Grasseschi in a competitive
field of more than 400 runners.The race was won by fellow Inov-8 runner Shiloh Mielke with a smokin' 28:50.1