Mt. Snow

Here’s a race report from Ellen Patton (17), races Category 1, girls 17 – 18.

I really liked the course at Mt Snow. It was very rooty and pretty muddy, but (from what I have heard) it wasn’t as muddy as previous years. Even though most of the climbing was on fire roads, the descent was very fun single track. My goal going into the race was to place top three and hopefully stay with Jill. I got a pretty good warm up and had an ok start. I got dropped pretty soon after the start but I could see Wesley and one of the other girls, Nathalie Krantz, for most of the climb, but I had lost them by the time I came through for my second lap. The way the course was was there was a start loop that took about 10 minutes and then you came through past the start/finish again and then a little bit after that you past the feed station. So I came through for my second lap, did the start loop, past the feed station and was just starting the climb and I went to shift down and I got wicked bad chain suck. It took me about 5 minutes to fix it and then I started riding agian. By then I was probably about 10 or 15 minutes behind the leader and my legs were just feeling aweful. So my goal changed from wanting to place top three to just finishing. I thought, I didn’t want to spend all that money flying all the way out to Vermont just to drop out. So I kept on going and ended up 24 minutes behind and in last place, but I finished!!

~Ellen