Elk River, collegiate racing, and life-- by Maria

I've been off the radar lately because of travel for school/work and some school/work transitions. I'm still at the U and I'm still a student, but the end is near, so I'm frantically planning my future.

Any how... Last, last Saturday (5/5) I raced at Elk River's Hillside Park in the BLAST mountain bike season opener. The 3.5 lap expert race sounded like a lot of fun until it started thunderstorming less than 1/2 a lap into the race! Yes, the picture is actually me!
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~stew0257/graphics/ElkRiver2007.jpg Its really sandy at Hillside, so the wet weather took a pretty serious toll on my bike parts. My singlespeed lost all braking capability with 1.5 laps to go (even after several adjustments- the pads were just gone). Instead of dropping out, I decided to make it a real challenge and flipped my wheel over so I could ride fixie (I race a white industry's ENO flip-flop hub). I ended up catching the two women who passed me while I was switching my bike over and
won the women's expert class. This was my first experience riding a
mountain bike fixxed eventhough I commute fixie all the time. Honestly, I'll probably do it again!

This past weekend I was with my fellow U of M teammates at the NCCA
Collegiate Road National Championships in Lawrence, KS. I didn't complete enough conference races during the collegiate season to race in the road race or crit, but I raced the Team Time Trial with Stephanie Thompson (Penn Cycle) and Kari Edvenson (Moorhead, MN). We ended up 11th, which was a little disappointing, but we gave it all we had.

This July-August I'll be in Finland for 4 weeks and other various locations in Europe for another 3. I'll be sure to update everyone if I do any racing in Europe or if I can track down Lieselot!

Happy Riding!