Narrative Essay On Cross Country Race

I can say it has been over a year since I did my last amateur cross country race, between moving, family/work responsibilities and a self admitted laziness in actually getting my ass to a race early Sunday mornings when I could be sleeping in, I do, in fact miss this part of my cycling experience, therefore I am hoping to join in on the weekend racing festivities next spring when the local mountain bike series starts up again. Even though I have not done much racing lately, I have been doing plenty of riding and having a blast exploring all the sweet trails in my small part of the world. While writing this article on racing I was reminded of all the excitement, nervousness and unplanned chaos that comes hand in hand with weekend racing and
The start times for this race are dementedly early, we were running behind and since I was driving a shiny red car, with hardly any other cars on the freeway, I was a sitting duck! I informed him we were headed to the Sea Otter, so he let us off with a warning. I was stoked! Another year at the Sea Otter some of us girl racers ended up getting lost while on the course because the course volunteer left his post, so we took a right turn instead of a left. Needless to say we lost a lot of time!

- let it be stated for the record that I have history of barfing on the way to a race or right before a race, often times in the race venue parking lot. Mainly because I don't do well with early morning activities, plus I tend to get car sick easily. This has become known to my friends and teammates as the "pre-race vomit"

- one particular race that we planned to do was put on by a local radio station. We packed up everything in the car and headed off to the race site. Pulled the bikes off the car, changed into our kits, only to find that I had left my bike shoes at home. We were to far from home to retrieve them and no one had an extra pair shoes I could borrow so I was forced to watch from the