Blog

On June 16th, I headed to Stewart State Forest in Rock Tavern, NY to race the Stewart Poison Ivy Mousetrap H2H xc event. Stewart is always a lot of fun with fast, twisty trails full of shale rock and roots, steep, short climbs and descents. 13 of us were in this category which is a great turnout for the Pro field in this area.

The race consisted of two laps, so it would be shorter than many of the other xc races I've done. The start was fast, yet I didn't get into the single track from the fire road in the best spot, so I had to slowly move my way up. There was some bottlenecking ahead, which was to be expected.

For much of the race, I was in 6th and still trying to work my way up. I then dropped to 7th and was going back and forth with 8th. At which point, I forgot about one bridge and went too fast leading up to it, tried to slow down and ended up skidding and falling into the swamp. I hurried to get myself together and hopped back on the bike, but was unable to catch back up to anyone in front.

In the end, I finished 8th out of 13 and a few minutes from the podium. It was a fast race, which took about 1 hour, 34 minutes and despite the crash and poor start, I'm happy with my finish. It was great to race with a fast group of east coast women and I'm looking forward to the next race this weekend!