Wow, already its the first race of the season! It’s time to test the fitness and all the hard work in the gym, which flew by so quickly.

Port Angeles has always been a favorite. The people, the hill, the organizers, everything creates an awesome race environment. This year was no different.

We arrived on Thursday afternoon/evening after getting our adventure pass to be able to park on the hill and set up our trailer and tent then did a track walk. The track was a mix between the Cat 2 course last year and the Pro/Cat 1 course from the Pro GRT last year plus some new sections. It didn’t look like it was going to be a very hard race because there weren’t any real technical sections, but I still thought it was going to be fun.

Friday practice was good and the track was holding together nicely with it only being a little bit slippery. I was feeling smooth on the new bike and the lines came pretty easily. It was super humid on Friday and even though it wasn’t hot at all, we were all sweating like crazy inside the Uhaul trucks on the way back up the hill.

Saturday practice went the same, but the track was getting a little more beat up. I knew I had seeding in the evening, so I was trying to figure out a strategy for that. About 5 minutes before my seeding run it started raining pretty heavily. I knew that the first corner into the first woods would be slippery, but other than that I thought it would be fine. I apparently forgot about the last berm that was slippery and ended up sliding out right before the finish line. It happened so fast I didn’t even know what was happening.

It rained a little bit overnight but I knew the course would still be really good. I got in 3 practice runs in the morning and ended up running up to the shuttle to make my race run, but I was still feeling well nutritionally so I wasn’t worried about taking that one extra practice lap. My run went pretty smoothly with only a few mistakes. I ended up 10 seconds back from first.

I’m happy to put together a good race run, I’ve struggled with that in the past, but I’m happy I’m making improvements on race runs. I know I’m fast in practice but I’ve always seemed to be on the brakes and make mistakes in my race run. I hope next race will be even better!