Sugar Mountain short track (Image credit: Tom Danielson)
I hadn't experienced the jet that sometimes serves that route but it sure beats the one hour ride in the propeller plane that I am use to - it took 37 minutes, last Tuesday morning, to fly from Denver to Durango. Tom and I had just arrived home to the usual crystal clear blue skies of Durango from our latest cycling quest. This time it was centered around me. Since I have traveled to many of Tom's races and training camps he decided to support me the past couple of weeks as I competed in the east coast NORBA races.
We tried to start our trip on Thursday before the cross country race at Sugar Mountain in North Carolina . We made it as far as the Durango airport before our flight was cancelled. Being a, sometimes, picky bike racer I started to get a little disgruntled as I had hoped to preride the course on Friday in attempts to tune up my nonexistent east coast technical skills.
We tried again on Friday, this time making it to Charlotte and then driving into the hills of Boone. As we rolled into Boone the sun was starting to set and it looked like I wasn't going to get that pre ride in that I was hoping for. Tom and I found our condo that was 2 minutes from the venue and started to unpack. Tom looked at me, as he put my mountain bike together, and asked if ‘it felt like I was in that seventies show?'. Our condo was straight out of that seventies show complete with orange curtains, white pleather chairs, a unique round hanging light decorated with yellow and orange diamonds plus more seventies memorabilia.
I decided to get up early and ride the course the morning of race day. It was great to get out on the deserted course; the morning air was crisp and woke my mind and body up for the competition. Later, when the announcement for the ‘women's pro staging' rang out over the microphone I felt the butterflies fluttering in my stomach. The national anthem was played and then we were off in a flurry of dust.
