First mountain bike race.

Like I said in a previous post, I'm going to start racing. I get butterflies just thinking about it though. But in a good way. I used to run cross country in high school and before every race I would get nervous. But as soon as the race would start, I would be alright. So I know kind of what to expect.

Anyway, the first race is coming up on September 9th. It's in Arkansas City, Kansas. In races there are three different classes. Beginner, Sport, and Expert. After reading some stuff online, I came to a realization. I thought that Beginner is for people who are like "What's a presta valve?" and Expert was like really expert. So I would have started racing in the Sport class.

But from what I read online, Beginner really means beginner racer. They say that Sport is just super fast and expert is out of this world. So either I can get my butt kicked in Sport, or I can see where I stand and do a beginner race.

I have decided to do the beginner race because I have never raced before. So, if I turn out to be really good at it, then I'll move to sport, but we'll see.

Anyway, more about this first race. It's called the Tour de Lizard. The beginners do just one lap while sport does two and expert does 3. I'm actually not sure about the distance... I thought I just saw it but I must be mistaken... oh well. I'll race in Beginner Senior Men (age 19-29).

I'm really excited because the race is on a Sunday but on Saturday they have a free first time racers clinic. They teach you everything about racing and make it very understandable with a no drop practice ride at well below race pace.

So it's about 2 hours away. I don't want to drive to and from on Saturday, then to and from on Sunday, and they have a special pasta dinner on Saturday night... so that means... we're going camping! It will be our first camping trip together! And Templeton's coming too!

It's going to be so much fun! So a quick second race update... the next one is the following weekend. It's a first annual 50 mile endurance race. It's just a bunch of laps but I really want to do it. It's called the Broken Nose 50 at Roman Nose State Park.

Well, I have to go so I'll leave you with some pictures, but I don't have any of me racing yet so I'll just take some from various bike blogs (courtesy of bikeblogs.com)