The NW Inland Series Queen!

By Shannon "Crazy Momma" Holden

I have been fighting this upper respitory cold all week, and really have been having some troubles getting my workouts in. Saturday morning came along, I didn't feel much better than the rest of the week, but I decided I would race to get points for the series. So the course is a lot of road with a huge sand area which was ever changing throughout the race. In one spot if you took a good line you could power through, otherwise you were running.

The run up was on a non-existant trail on the side of a hill. We take off at the start and since I didn't feel good I sat in. After the first run up I passed the girl in first and made my way from there. I was able to find lines through the sand everytime so it was a big advantage to me. It was my first race on the Q-rings, they felt really good. It wasn't unitil the last lap that I felt like being sick all week hit me. I managed to pull out a huge win. So I was really happy, unfortunately I coughed for the next hour until my ribs hurt.

Sunday was a whole different story. I actually felt a little better as far as my cold went My legs were a little tired but I felt strong. Ready to give it my all I wanted take the lead from the start and hammer hard to get away. So the gun went off I made it about 10 pedal strokes off of the start and I hear this terrible noise and my bike came to a hault. I had caught a branch in my rear wheel and my rear derailluer got wrapped around it tearing off my derailluer hanger. I was so bummed because I just had spare wheels not a bike and I needed to at least place second to win the series. Lucky for me I am in pretty good with the juniors up here, one of the mom's came over and said I could borrow one of the girls' spare bikes. So I ran my clean beautiful, featherweight 54" KONA and traded it in for a 42" Redline tank. Yes I looked like a circus clown on this bike.

I was 2 minutes behind the other girls and I took off ripping around the course. I had to ride out of the saddle because I didn't really fit otherwise and yes this did pose some issues. Mounting a way too small bike can prove to be rather odd and I landed on the rear tire. I made up quite a bit of time on the girls I had gotten a minute back by 1/2 way, but I had blown up my quads and my back. I managed to work my way into third place before feeling like my legs were going to blow. I just couldn't get anything else out of them the last 2 laps.

The cool thing is I found out I can hammer out of the saddle for good 50 minutes before they blow and I got to race. I ended up tied for 1st place in the series ( that was with missing 1 race) but they gave it to the girl that won today. So now I have to be really nice to my husband to see if he can fix my bike for next weeks US Grand Prix.

Happy riding.

Shannon Holden