The first race of the U.S. Xterra Pro series kicked off this past Sunday at Lake Las Vegas Resort about 30 minutes south of Las Vegas. As you can see the unique landscape is nothing like what I’ve been riding all winter at home in Victoria!

Xterra West Landscape

It was fun catching up with my coach, Cal, while pre-riding the climbs and surfing down the open, somewhat wide, rocky descents which really only had one good line! (Cal went on to win his age group by about 4 minutes – nice work coach!)

Race morning started out comfortably warm. The water was cool but felt perfect once racing. The two lap swim started from the newly built beach just days before. It was a bit of mayhem heading straight into the sun at 8 am. For the second lap I found myself leading small group before bridging up to Kara LaPoint (a Luna Chix sponsored athlete who finished the day in 7th in her Xterra Pro debut race!)

Am I the only one in the race? Ha

Out on the bike my goal was to hold off and then hold on to my teammate Shonny as she was creeping up on me on. Unfortunately that plan derailed pretty fast as my seat bag felt off and was bumping along my tire. I quickly tied it back on before it promptly fell off a second time, a real momentum killer! At that point I ripped it off and shoved in down my chest where it stayed for the rest of the race as you can see in the photo below. It actually didn’t bother me at all – a future way to carry tools, CO2 and tubes?? I do love my new tri-suit from Champion System for sure, especially when it can help hold the essentials over so many bumps, ha!

Gel on leg, seat bag down front, fun riding!

Onto the run I had big ground to make up. I was feeling pretty good until about the point this photo below was taken, maybe a mile into the six miles. Once out on the moonscape again, my tank was feeling pretty empty, reminiscent of my first year of Xterra racing before I had figured out the training and racing of triathlon.The run followed the first 4-miles of the bike course again and the wind was really whipping up. It was sort of fun passing the many amateurs riding (who had started racing 30 min after us) but not so fun trying to stay out of their way and out of the rocks on the descents. Quite sketchy really. Especially as my friend Mike nearly clipped me while making a pass – the guy he was passing had blocked his view of me and he didn’t even see me until going by – yikes!

Anyway, I ran on but wasn’t feeling too frisky. I could see Chantell up ahead at some points but I was still over a minute from catching her when I crossed the finish for 6th. Flora Duffy killed it for first with a huge margin win, but about 3 minutes separated 2-6th place.(Emma Garrard was second, Luna teammates Shonny and Suzie took 3rd and 4th and Chantell Widney from Edmonton took 5th). A post-race analysis with my coach revealed that after loosing a gel (down my leg) and by miscalculating my drink mix I only put in about half the calories I should have for the race! Rookie mistake – how long have I been racing?? Seriously! Looking forward to tackling the next Xterra in Alabama in about a month and seeing what if a little more sugar in the system will add to the late race fun factor!

Of course one of the biggest highlights of the weekend was catching up with my University of Washington track running teammate BFF, Amy after not seeing her for three whole years. She drove up from San Diego with her youngest son, Charlie (21 months) for Sat night and thanks to her for taking some of these pics and cheering us all on! Next up for me is the Whiskey-50 mountain bike race in Prescott, AZ in two weeks. Should be a good time!

Thanks for reading and Happy Easter weekend!! This means a 4-day long weekend up here in Canada, yahoooo! Bring on the chocolate egg hunting!

With Amy and Charlie post-race