It’s strange to not be winding up for the pre-Christmas NorAms as I have for the past 7 years. Instead, piecing together a plan for the winter to try and get as much faster at riding a mountain bike as possible by next spring has been interesting…
Before now, I’ve never had to deal with compelling evidence that I’m not good enough. Compelling evidence being the numbers on the results sheet at the end of the day. I know a lot of people don’t like to talk about the numbers, because racing is about a lot more than digits and decimals… but at the end of the day, you’re not going to get picked for the National team, or World Championships, or the Olympics because you tried hard.
Sprint day was solid. It was a real sprint course: two laps of 600m for about two and a half minutes of racing. I’m not so sure I like these true sprint courses. We’ve had three of them this year – at Sovereign Lake, Lappe, and Whitehorse, and I can’t quite figure them out and make…
Sometimes you have to start small. Sometimes you have to start slow. Nationals have started slowly for me. Or rather, I’ve been going slowly at the start of Nationals. In the 5km classic I finished in 16th place, 2 minutes off the pace. It was a tricky day for waxing, with the temperature rising well…
Yesterday, I did some short race prep-intensity to get ready for the start of Nationals. My first race will be a 5km classic on Sunday. The workout went well, I’m starting to feel more residual energy in my body, but am still far from feeling spritely. We’ll see how things pan out this week. I…
The second half of the Tour took a turn for the better. You won’t recognize that on the result sheet though, those were still pretty bad. But my mindset was considerably better. Was I still frustrated that I felt and was racing so poorly? Absolutely. Was I racking my brain and agonizing over it? Nope.…
Conditions in Seefeld were pristine. Conditions in Rasnov were, well… there was some snow. Our team arrived in Romania on February 18th after spending the earlier part of the week training in Seefeld. Given a couple more days to explore, I found some more great trails but unfortunately wasn’t able to make the most of…
The tone was different at the Under23/Junior Trials at Lappe last weekend, compared to my previous experiences competing and spectating at the event. It may have just been my perception of it though. Arriving at Trials after a mostly downhill rollercoaster of racing at US Nationals the week prior, I felt pretty relaxed.…
With two weekends of racing under my belt, I’m already three months ahead of schedule from last year – where I didn’t really get racing until mid-February. Needless to say, this season has started off on a much better foot than last year (pardon the pun). My first weekend of competitions (Nov 27-28) were in West Yellowstone,…
Winter is fast approaching along with the start of the racing season. With less than three weeks until the first official races of the year the focus and specificity of training has been ramping up. I am now just on the tail end of a 10-day training camp at Forêt Montmorency where I’ve put in over…
Jenn Jackson 