canberra, beauty,sydney,city!!!

...no post for a long time. im not to keen to post anything unless of a good result. since thredbo i have done heaps. kept up the training, more traveling, and more fun. did a road trip with some friends to Canberra for the national champs! i went with trevwah, lincolin, toby, and oscar. it was a good trip. Canberra is a cool place but the track lacked a lot. lots of peadeling, not a real mountain, and just a different place in general. Canberra is australias capitol. all the government stuff is located there. making it real different. the city itself has lots of regulations. no fences around houses, no powerlines on the street, and the streets are very clean and dont look real. but the canberra course was ok to ride. but sucked to race. i ended up 22nd there. not good.
from there i got dropped off with juzzo and preparred for the upcoming national race at mt beauty. thats a real DH course. super fun and real steep aswell. was riding ok during that weekend and ended up 16th overall. pretty fun day. forgot to mention its was super muddy for qualis but got pretty tacky for finals.
then i went home after that and continued to train. the next weekend was mt baw baw state race. another real muddy course, but really good for a state race. i was riding really smooth and good. on race day i put mud tires on and learned to ride those. during finals i clipped my hand on the starting timer and that seperated me from getting payed. pretty bummed. i ended up 4th and was less than 2 seconds off the winner. thats racing and thats why i love it!!!!
and i just recently got home from Bryn Atkinsons house. i stayed there for 2 weeks with him and his brother. fun stuff. learned a lot and got in good shape. he lives in the blue mountains right near Sydney. real good riding up there.
and now im home after 2 days spent in the city with an awesome DH girl, Jenna. We did a day of push runs somewhere near here called red hill. cool stuff and pretty fun course. Jenna was learning to jump and did just that,jumping nearly 2 bike lengths. then the day after that we took a train to Trevwah's house and went to Phillip island and spent a day on the beach. got to body board a bit and experience some Aussie surf! was really windy and cold but the water was nice and warm and waves wern't to bad, just a bit choppy. then chilled with Jenna made dinner and went home the morning after... finally i am home and get a bit of sleep before im off to somewhere else!!!

Thredbo + Mt. Buller

Its been weeks since Thredbo national actually took place. But i find it hard to find time to type all the races up. but i am actually doing it.

Me and my friend Aaron drove the 7 hour drive up to thredo for the national round #3. I had heard all about the long, fast, and really rough course. Thredbo is the highest mountain in Australia just going over 2000 metres. Also one of the few alpine ranges that lay in Australia. Being on a tight budget i found the $210 dollar entry fee a bit steep but supposedly everything is in Thredbo. Right after registering for the race i caught up with my bunk buddy Tracey Hannah. Then we went off to arrange our accommodation. we soon found out that men and women cannot stay in the same room at our cheap hostel. and that meant no splitting the room fee 50/50. Bullshit if you ask me! so there is another $200 dollars out the door.(the owner said that was half price...it wasn't) so with an expensive room, and a expensive number plate. that meant i was down to less than $400 dollars on the first day.
anyway we got on with practice on the second day. after learning the nearly 7 minute course i began riding really well. The course was pretty basic, PINNED,FULL THROTTLE, one line the whole way down. and also really rough. but i managed to stay loose and relaxed the whole time. during the second day i really began to turn it on. I felt my goal of a top 10 result getting closer and closer. And finally race night all my good practice went through the drain as it began pouring rain. and it didnt stop raining once until after the race. But my first practice run of race day was a definite fun one. Me and my mate Nick did the first one together. The first part of the course started out on a fire road with HUGE waste high water bars that you hit going about 40mph. and they put you well over 6 feet in the air and since you were going so fast you probably cleared about 30 to 50 feet. they reminded me of riding moto! SOOO FUN! just had to talk about those. but the course had got so much rain that it was like riding down a small creek. not to slippery though. just really wet. and after that first run we decided to call it our last for practice. and by the time our qualifying run came time the course had completely changed. holes were everywhere, it had gotten slippery and now i had to put together a good full run. it was a super hard course now but i got through and qualified 26th. only 30 people qualified so i definitely cut it close... but right after i came down a big storm was on its way over and they had to call off finals. so i got screwed. 26th... bummer. but i did learn some important things so maybe thats better than a result.


MT. BULLER

this race was just a small state race. Mt. buller is a cool venue with the village on the top of the mountain,and nothing on the bottom of the hill. it takes some time to get used to,but is really cool aswell. The course we were racing is not the preferred one to ride but i found it fun,and at least we had a chairlift. Practing with one of Vic's fastest racers,Lincoln Verass was fun too. he knew the course well and got my confidence up once i was keeping on his back tire. During race day i was struggling to keep a flow going and was loosing concentration easily. qualifying went ok, i just looked for lines that i knew wern't going to have big holes in them during finals. i qualified 8th with a cruising run. so i knew i could get in the top 5. my final run was going good until a small fall in a corner caused from loss in concentration. after my fall i was determined to make up the time. i was going real well after that until the fastest part of the track i drifted a little bit outside of my line and hit a small sharp rock and flatted my front tire. Oh well thats racing!!!

Now im looking foreward to the Australian Championships in Canberra this coming weekend. and then the following weekend in Mt.Beauty. In a few weeks ill do a post on how things went.

Cheers if you actually read all this Bullshit!

cool picture

Aussies are teaching me the art of the drift!

long time no post

well yeah i haven't posted anything in a long time now. i dont know why except for the fact it seems to take forever to do this. but its a perfect way to remember my racing and keep track of it.

and i have finally made it to the land of OZZZZ! Australia! its soooo cool here i absolutely love it.

i did my first victorian state race the second weekend i was here. i qualified 3rd and screwed my final and ended up 9th.

i just arrived home from queensland 2 days ago for the Round 2 of the national series. super fun course. real fast and lots of roots. and all those roots got really wet and slippery. but also really fun there were over 100 elite riders and only 30 went on to qualify. so i knew i had to have a good run. and i did. i qualified 12th and i was super happy. as for the race run... i struggled in a couple sections with corners and almost lost in a super fast section due to a huge drift that took all my speed. but i ended up 16th only 2 seconds off top 10. pretty good for my first national in OZ.plus all the big dogs were there..Rennie, Bryn, amiel, rando and all the super fast locals!!! so im pretty happy. the one picture i got is reeally bad but its all i got!

lately

i was pretty bummed out after worlds so thats why it took me a month to post anything. but i ended up 30th and didnt ride good at all. but oh well its all part of it. JD on he other hand.... kicked ass 2nd place!


going to australia nov 6th....cant wait.

WORLDS.....SCOTLAND

so i finally got a email.. about me qualifying for the World Championships in scotland. it has been my dream since i started racing mountain bikes. and now its actually happening. i really cant believe it! so now i leave august 31 to scotland snd come home on the 10th of september. its gonna be one of the biggest things that has ever happended to me. and i am STOKED!!!

denver is getting a bit boring. i cant wait to go back home and relax, and train on my own XC bike, and ride some good dirt jumps, and all my own trails. but most of all i really wanna ride some MOTO!!! cant wait!

i found a cool picture too from angelfire, new mexico

vermont+north carolina

vermont drive was complete crap. i offically hate driving now. the DH course was like nothing i have ever rode in my life time. all mud, and rocks that you couldn't even see. plus the fastest course on the circut added for some scary but exciting times. i never got comfortable during practice so my race run was just a crappy practice run. and i ended up coming in 4th place. so im pretty mad about that finish. but atleast my good friend JD won!

slalom was fun, a short, fun course, plus a walking lift made for killer racing and riding. i got super lucky cause everyone i raced was having chain problems, and ended up second.

COLE BANGERT PRO DH NATIONAL CHAMP! SICK!


then we loaded up again and headed down south for north carolina. this is probly one of the best courses on the whole national series. fast, technical, and all around a fun course. but the chair lift was super slow and killed the riding buzz! for the DH race day i was feeling super good and knew i had this one on lock. but as we headed up for race run it started raining and making everything wet and slick. my race run was going nearly perfect when i went into a creek crossing and hit a rock and went over the bars, then had to turn my bike around run up a muddy slick hill, and proceed to pedel my bike into a flat muddy section while in the hardest gear. i finished 3rd with a 4:15, second had a 4:13, and first had a 4:06. my fall was atleast a 10 to 15 second fall and possibly 20 seconds. so had i stayed on my bike. i feel i could of won by a good margin. but i didnt and thats racing.

slalom was a super fun course long too. times around 40 seconds. i qualified 3rd and went on to get second place. taylor calvert won.

now were back in colorado and we have a weekend off before snowmass finals. im gonna train my ass off and hopefully take the win for the finals.

plus i turned my world championship petition in and it looked really good! the team will be announced next week!