3 races in 3 days in 2 states is one way to start a mountain bike season. Go big, or go home, right?

Why 3 Races in 3 Days?

As a bit of background (and if you don’t care to read about nerdy mountain bike race details, just skip ahead a couple paragraphs), I primarily focus on cross-country marathon (XCM) and enduro, two disciplines of mountain biking that are essentially just big days in the woods and on the trails with your friends. At the pointy end, both forms of racing require high levels of fitness and an ability to create short bursts of power, but still generally center around a need for endurance and the ability to keep on motoring after 4 or 5 or 6 hours on the bike.

However, XCM and enduro racing, while generally popular in the sense that any average joe (or josette?) might enjoy racing any number of the local or regional races in these formats, is not popular in the U.S. at an elite level. Gravel racing has stolen XCM’s thunder in recent years, and downhill is the showy big brother of enduro racing. Admittedly, downhill racing, cross-country Olympic (XCO), and short track (XCC) are FAR more spectator friendly than either XCM or enduro…so I totally get it. Gravel… well, that’s not mountain biking. LOL.

All of that to say, if you want to race at the elite level and/or have the option of racing internationally and you have chosen the two least popular disciplines in mountain biking…you need to get creative in order to accumulate the necessary points for qualification and/or call-up priority. For XCM, the easiest option is to race either XCO or XCC, both significantly shorter and higher-intensity events than XCM or enduro. I don’t train for that kind of intensity.

TLDR: If I want to get UCI points to be able to potentially qualify for XCM World Championships and/or get a higher call-up position at endurance mountain bike National Championships, I needed to race XCO and XCC at the Angler’s Ridge race in Danville this past weekend, despite neither being a discipline or style of racing/intensity that I train for. At all.

As I started to plan out my season and evaluate various races based on my overarching goals for the season, I realized two things:

1. I needed to get some UCI points. Enter the Angler’s Ridge UCI XCO/XCC race.
2. Gaining confidence and experience racing enduro was going to be my biggest challenge this season coming back from injury. Enter the West Virginia Enduro Series (WVES), the first race of which was the same weekend as Angler’s Ridge.

Typically, when racing enduro, there are one or two days of pre-riding on-course prior to race day. In order to race both the Angler’s Ridge UCI events and the WVES Black Bear Enduro, I would need to race XCC on Friday and XCO on Saturday in Danville, then drive to Charleston, WV after my race on Saturday–which would mean missing the chance to pre-ride altogether. Some part of me thought that sounded like a good idea several months ago… and put all three races on the calendar as my first official race weekend post-shoulder surgery.

(If anyone figures out what part of me that was, please let me know so I can fire them. I’m pretty sure its the same travel agent that books a red-eye ticket because its cheaper and “won’t be that bad.”)

“My brain isn’t ready”

Two weeks ago, I went up to Kanawha State Forest, the location of the WVES Black Bear Enduro and joined some of the crew for a trail work day and partial pre-ride. We ended up riding just 3 of the 5 potential stages, and I was absolutely terrified the entire time. At that point, I hadn’t spent any time on my enduro bike or on gravity-style trails, and had no confidence at all.

On the way home, I sent two “Mayday” messages, one to my sports psychologist (Erin Ayala of Skadi Sport Psychology), and one to my skills coach (Harlan Price of Take Aim Cycling): “My body might be ready, but my brain is not. I need help.”

They both jumped on board and agreed to join a collaborative Zoom call where we met as a team to figure out this puzzle of bringing body, mind, and skills together to help me prepare for this first enduro race–and those to come. Between visualization work, specific skills practices, targeted film-review, and making a trip to Kanuga for some work on purpose-built trails and an additional skills lesson (with Josh Whitmore of MTB Skills Factory), we crammed a lot into about 10 days in an attempt to build my confidence (a word I’ll come back to).

On my top tube, I wrote three things: Stay Curious, Trust Your Skills, Strong Position. In addition to these visual cues, I determined that I wanted to focus primarily on building confidence through this race, not on results. To do that, I gave myself “permission” to take things slow, walk features if I didn’t feel comfortable with them, and to just have fun. Part of that included choosing a different “crew” to ride with than I historically would have; instead of the “fast racer bois,” I opted ahead of time to ride with a local friend and coach for the junior gravity team, and a few other guys who held a more “chill” approach to enduro racing (they are still very fast–just not as results-oriented).

Friday: Angler’s Ridge XCC

Before the weekend even started, my usually very flexible job went full-on chaos mode about mid-day on Thursday with a project that suddenly needed to be completed by Friday evening. Even though I had requested (and been approved for) PTO months prior, the looming deadline required all hands on deck, and though my immediate supervisor was willing to go to bat for my absence, I also felt a bit like I was abandoning my team by walking away–so I promised to take my work laptop and log on when/where I could depending on service at the race venue.

So on Friday morning, as I drove through the rain to get to Danville, I was also tuning into a team Zoom meeting and attempting to follow the progress of the project, despite phone service dropping in and out. When I got to the race venue, I signed off of the call, checked into the race, and prepared to go pre-ride. It was then that I realized that I was very out of practice with the whole racing thing: I didn’t have a screenshot of my 2025 race license, and though I had checked the forecast and seen it was supposed to rain (and had packed a rain jacket), I had not thought to change tires or even bring a spare set of “mud” tires…and it was very muddy.

My pre-ride consisted mostly of slip-and-sliding around the XCC and XCO courses, and examining the newly-constructed UCI rock garden, which was so fresh that the clay had turned into slime in the downpour, making it impossible to even walk down, much less ride. C’est la vie. I filed the rock garden problem away in my head for Saturday’s race, finished out my pre-ride, and sprayed myself and my bike off at the trailhead bike wash (which, why don’t all trailheads have bike washes?!).

Then, with a few hours to spare before the start of my race, I made my way into town and a coffee shop to snag some wifi (and coffee) and logged back into work for a bit. The rain (against all odds) seemed to ease up, and I began to have some hope that the course might dry out a bit by time my 3:15p race start rolled around.

It was not to be. When I returned to the venue and began attempting to warm up (50F and rain is NOT warm), the rain returned with a vengeance. As we were called up to the start line, the announcer called me out as “a local elite rider, a senior racer in this field,” which made me feel old–and even older when I later looked at the start list to find that I was 15 years older than most of the other women (girls?!) I was racing.

Short track (XCC) is brutally hard because it is a 20-minute race, which means you are racing literally as hard as you possibly can for the entire time. In my head, I tried to prepare myself for this by comparing it to some of our local road rides, where I spend the entirety of the ride hanging on for dear life as the fast guys pull away. As the start gun went off and we started up the first climb, I felt the effects of the cold and the delayed start, and willed my stiff muscles to respond. The course consisted of a paved climb, singletrack descent, gravel start/finish chute, and repeat. On each climb, I tried to push myself just a little bit harder, and on each descent, I tried to manage the sliding just enough to keep the bike upright.

My only goal for the day was a top 10 finish, so when I came across the line in 9th place, I was thrilled.

Saturday: Angler’s Ridge XCO

Saturday morning, I didn’t want to get out of my sleeping bag. Car camping is great when its warm and you can hang out in a lawn chair all day and enjoy the sunshine. When it’s cold and windy, its far more challenging. Because I didn’t race until 2p, I chose to go back into town and the coffee shop to while away a few hours and stay warm before my race.

When I returned to the venue, I hiked out to the UCI rock garden to see how the course was drying out since the rain had finally stopped sometime in the wee hours of the morning. It was clear that the early morning races had the worst conditions of the day, and that the course was getting ridden in, ruts were forming, and the dirt was beginning to pack down, if not dry out. A quick pre-ride of the course before my race revealed that my previously questionable tire choice was a far better option for Saturday’s event, as the first half of the course was getting tacky and fast, and the second half of the course, even if wet, was far less slippery than during Friday’s race.

As we lined up, I once again told myself that the shorter format of this race (at least in comparison to XCM races) at 1.5-2 hours made it necessary to dig deep for that high-intensity effort that I rarely access in mountain bike races. The longer course meant that the start climb was shortened as we dipped more directly into singletrack, and thus it was even more critical to give everything I had to stay in a good position. Off the start, I underestimated just how short that first climb was, and ended up towards the back of the pack as we entered the singletrack for the first time, but fairly quickly made a few passes to move up to 8th place, where I then stayed for most of the first four laps. The rider just ahead of me was within sight, but just out of reach…though I realized quickly that I was gaining time on the climbs, something I never am able to do. This motivated me to push just a little harder on each climb, while continuing to focus on maintaining smooth momentum on the descents and through the corners. Midway through the fourth lap, I passed her, then established a bit of a gap on the longest climb of the course, just before the rock garden.

It was shortly thereafter that I made a rookie mistake. Between the long climb, the rock garden, and the short climb after the rock garden, I had managed to get out of sight, which was huge. But then, on a (stupid) whim, I opted to take a new line around a tree just before one of the small wooden bridges. Note to self (and any other concerned individuals): NEVER take a new line on lap 4/6 in a race. Said new line channeled me into a rut, which then forced me into a deeper rut/hole beside the bridge, which very nearly caused me to go over the bars (OTB), and did force me to a halt as I barely saved the near-OTB and wrestled my bike out of the mud hole, costing me precious seconds to the rider I had only just passed. Fortunately, she didn’t manage to catch me, and I refocused myself on riding a clean, smooth final lap to finish in 7th–my best XCO result in years!

Sunday: WVES Black Bear Enduro

I got up to Charleston late Saturday night, and before going to sleep, I listened to my visualization script one final time, while thinking through the skill cues I had made for portions of the course I knew could be challenging. Though I certainly didn’t feel confident, I did feel as if I could give it a fair try. I wasn’t terrified, which was progress.

When I woke up in the morning, t was even colder than it had been on Saturday. Fortunately, someone had made a fire, so I alternated between making breakfast/coffee and hovering over the fire in an attempt to stay warm. Once again, my out-of-practice self, though checking the weather, had not noted the overnight temps and had not packed any kind of cold weather gear. Still, I forced myself to check my bike, prepare my equipment, and, eventually, change into my race kit.

Thanks to winning the series in 2024, I got the #1 plate, which felt a bit ironic, as I knew there was little chance I’d be actually “competing” in the day’s race–my goal was to ride, try to have fun, and build some confidence. If, in the process, I went “fast by accident,” that would be a bonus.

As our crew pedaled up to stage 1, though it was a trail I hadn’t ridden since racing it nearly a year ago, I took several deep breaths, then opted to drop in first rather than wait for everyone else. I took each steep chute in turn, breathing deeply, trying not to over-brake, and focusing on maintaining a strong, balanced position. When I got to the end, I nearly collapsed with the force of the exhale of relief–maybe I hadn’t actually been breathing the whole way down after all!

Stage after stage, I repeated that pattern. Deep breath, drop in, strong position, eyes up, set up early for the turns, pedal if you can, brake less, and relax. But, stage after stage, I finished clean–and only walked one feature all day (a janky drop that I’d not ever ridden previously and didn’t feel comfortable riding blind). It wasn’t fast, it wasn’t really even smooth, but it was clean–and that was a start…and enough to land me in 3rd place.

Though I didn’t end up listening to it until the drive home, The Growth Equation recently released a podcast on “True Confidence,” which they define as “earned self-belief.” This felt especially accurate, as with enduro racing in particular, I’ve struggled to feel confident approaching bigger features. Phrases like “trust your skills” and “just believe” always seemed to fall a little flat, and I think part of the reason for that is that I jumped into the gravity side of mountain biking with very little formal skills training or technical riding background. Sure, I could manage a cross country bike on the average domestic cross country course–but I’d never really even seen rocks until I moved to Roanoke just 4 years ago. Steeps, off-camber switchbacks, big drops, doubles, gaps? What? My endurance alone gave me the ability to “manage” most enduro courses, even when taking B lines or walking sections…but when I jumped in with both feet, I also put the expectation on myself that I would be competitive, which meant tackling features head-on. I never “earned” any confidence on those features, just expected the confidence (and skill) to be there.

This year, as much as I want to be competitive (which means being fast), I want more to be intentional about building confidence, even if that means slowing down at races to ride within my skill set. Outside of races, it means getting reps and doing visualization work and taking skills lessons whenever I can–but also slowing down and building that confidence on easier trails and smaller features before attempting to “level up” and speed up.

Still, I have to keep reminding myself of that. “The speed will come.” I’m naturally impatient. I want to be competitive now, even if I know that taking it slow and earning confidence will pay huge dividends in time.

Final thoughts

Kate Courtney’s recent post on striving was a good reminder that the “messy middle” and consistently showing up is perhaps as (more?) admirable than the podium photos, even if less recognized (or celebrated):

What’s harder—what takes intention—is seeing the moments of striving that also defined my races. The refusal to give up. The tiny moments of recommitment – powering over the top of a climb, riding a line clean the lap after a crash. The ability to reset mentally and physically again and again.

The last six months–of shoulder surgery, the long recovery, being hit by a car, and the fight to get back to form are full of the small, but consistent actions that made racing this weekend possible. One of my core “race values” is showing up, and if nothing else, I’m proud of putting in the work to show up this weekend, of being brave enough to do my first race back in absolute slop, of being the “old lady” still out there fighting, and of being willing to “do it scared.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to keep striving… I’ve got some big goals that are going to take everything I’ve got (and the full support of my team). LFG!