Nicole's story: Westside MTB 360

BaseCamp athlete Nicole Gunton shared her experience at the Westside MTB 360 mountain bike race in Washington.

This was a C race for me, primarily a tune up and learning event to figure out where I need to put more work in as the season progresses and to push the pace like only an in real life race can do! The course was 4 laps of a beautiful 4.3 mile loop of primarily singletrack with a dash of gravel road making perfect passing opportunities. The rain let up early on Saturday and staying dry through the night providing me with some slightly damp hero dirt with a few slippery spots. The Cat 1 ladies started first and headed straight into singletrack with a 30 gap behind the next group. The leading 5 Elite ladies sprinted off and left myself and one other behind to race each other, but it wasn't long before we were held up by one of the riders that started in the group ahead. Staying calm and steady, both of us ladies stayed patient until the gravel/doubletrack gave us a chance to get around. Then off I went and was all by myself for the remainder of the race. I stayed focused and on the gas for all the climbs and recovered on the downhills which were very short; today seemed to be nearly 2 hours of 40/20s. :)

All in all I felt pretty good for being this early in the season, and since I did my intervals on Saturday, I'm happy with how things went. Doing a couple back-to-back efforts this weekend gave me some confidence for going into the Cactus Cup in Arizona in two weeks.