Deer Valley NORBA Nationals

After discovering the amazing trails over the last few years in Park City and Deer Valley, we decided to stay 6 days this year in a condo and make a vacation out of this race. Myself, Simone, Chris, and his teammate Duncan and I have been having a blast. We hired a cute 16 year old boy to watch Simone (necessity for her) so we could ride together.

Today was the race, weather conditions no smoke, sun, slight breeze, 80 degrees or so. Chris and I both started at 8:00 ish so we left Simone with Duncan to warm up and get to the start. I love this course, starts as a steep climb which I love, followed by twisty single track with hairpin turns. It is fast, taking me about 43 mins to do each 7 mile lap that has about 1000 feet of climbing. Despite having the fastest winning time in our expert 30-39 cat last year by 2 minutes, they took a lap away from us to make sure we all finished before the pro women start. They also had the semi pro men out there, making it quite agro with a lot of traffic.

I felt great, averaging a speed that would better last year's time and 3rd place finish by 12 minutes. Then on a descent a gal in my group caught me, I passed her back and gapped her on the final ascent which was exposed switchbacks and quite a climb. About 10 minutes into the descent that followed and a mile or so from the finish, she passed me. I stayed on her before getting thrown off my bike by a guy trying to pass me on a single track that really had no room to pass. He graciously apologized later but my chances of winning at this point were over. I am happy with second but even happier to have child care for 9 hours over the course of 3 days for some epic rides with Chris and Duncan.

I stayed to watch the pro women start. Georgia Gould and 2 other Lunas (canadian nat'l champ being one of them) were rocking it. I left after their first lap of 32 minutes. Smoking and 10mins faster than ours. They were inspiring to watch and it is gals like them, doing what they love so well, that make me so proud of being a part of this amazing sport.

p.s. in case you care Chris got 20th out of 57 semi pros, and Duncan is still out there racing.

-Sarah P.

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