Saturday was the second race of the season at Cameron Park in Waco, TX. This is one of my favorite courses of the whole year. I don’t know why I like the suffering of this trail so much, maybe the feeling of accomplishment once it’s over, but I do know that four laps is definitely not for the weak-minded. Each lap was about 5.8 miles and roughly 830 feet of climbing.

With Waco being a little under two hours away and having an 11am start time, we decided to drive down early morning on race day. After not getting in a solid warmup the weekend before at Rockyhill, we also decided to load up the truck with both our mountain and road bikes so we could warmup on the trainer. (We have a hard time fitting our 29er wheels on the Cyclops.)

The morning was COLD, and when I say “cold” I mean Texas cold, not Colorado cold…so about 30 something degrees. I was really looking forward to the day warming up right around launching time, and it really ended up to be a PERFECT day for racing at about 58 degrees. Delicious! No excess clothing required and just the way I like it! There were eight of us in the Women’s Open Category and the start was in a field with two 360 degree turns to spread everything out. It worked, because as we took off and headed into the first turn I got pushed to the outside and was already playing catch up to get to the front. Before entering single track I passed a few girls and went in 5th wheel. The first few miles there was no room to pass and I was stuck. Christina and Jessica had already gapped us and were out of sight. Once we hit the jeep road I was on the gas. I moved into third place and was chasing the rest of the race. There was a lot of traffic, most especially in that first lap, and much of it was in some of the tightest, steepest parts of the trail. But despite all that, I felt GREAT and finished in third! This is the same race that I won four months ago and since then I improved my time by nearly EIGHT MINUTES!

The Mellow Johnny’s Classic is approaching fast, only a week and a half away, and it’s getting pretty exciting! This Saturday we’ll be pre-riding the course for next weekend. Sunday we’ll be out in Comfort, TX for race number three of the TMBRA series. I’m looking forward to another great weekend of riding and racing with my favorite husband!