Two weeks seemed to go by pretty quickly! Already we’re back in Port Angeles. This being the biggest race of the season, we wanted to make sure to get there early so we could save our spot. After setting up the tent, we went up to do a track walk. It was pretty busy and we weren’t able to shuttle so that meant walking up then down the course, which wasn’t too bad. There weren’t really that many lines to chose from, you just had to ride fast. There were a few little awkward gaps though, so I wanted to get those out of the way as early as I could on Friday practice so I could focus on speed for the rest of Friday then Saturday.

Friday practice went well, I did all the gaps earlier on in the day so I could focus on the rest of the track. There were a couple gaps that deteriorated so I wasn’t able to hit them, but that didn’t really bother me, I knew I could hit them with the right speed.

At the end of the day, I was having a lot of problems with my rear mech. Up until recently, I hadn’t had any of the problems that everybody else had with the B-Tension tab breaking, but I found that I had to tighten the allen key that went into the hanger up every run. This eventually lead to the hanger threads being ripped out. Good thing we had an extra hanger, and we ended up having to modify an 11 Speed derailleur for it to work.

Being a pro GRT, only the top 60 would qualify. I was feeling pretty confident that I could, but then it started raining. After that, I was a bit worried about crashing, but then I remembered that a lot of the guys I was racing against were from California and they had no idea what to do when things got slippery. That gave me more confidence knowing that I had been riding in the rain all winter. Qualifying went well, and I ended up in 46th, well inside the top 60. I had a very cautious run because I knew if I crashed, I would be out.

The rain did not continue so I thought the course would be pretty perfect with only the roots being a little slippery. I did two practice runs in the morning and was pretty excited about finals. Last year there were huge crowds in a certain section and I was hoping that they’d be there so I could get cheered on. They were there alright, and it was a pretty cool experience! My race run was solid and I pulled back quite a lot of time from my qualifying run but still ended up 46th in the end.

It was a good weekend and I learned a lot. I am getting a lot more confident in my race runs so I just need to up my overall speed, which I think is the easy part!