Photos and story by Darin "Crash" Maxwell

Man, what a great weekend!

Lacey and I made the 7 hour drive up to Sonoma, Ca. for the USA Cycling one day National Championships. Needless to say, it was HOT!

We arrived on Thursday evening, so we could pre-ride the course on Friday. Surprisingly we saw quite a few people we knew hanging around, watching, and racing this weekend.

On Friday we ran into Pua and Ron. Pua is back on the bike, after having a bad crash not too long ago. She placed 3rd in the Marathon race. That's pretty incredible considering the pain she has endured the last couple of months. She and Ron spent a lot of time talking with Lacey and I about preparing for the heat on Saturday.

Thanks guys!!

Friday afternoon, 630pm actually, we got to go ride the course. Although this was a US National MOUNTAIN BIKE race, you couldn't tell by the course. It had a little bit of fun single track, but for the most part it was oiled down gravel roads, and blacktop. The trail climbs were tough enough, short and fairly steep, but the road climbs were just a grind. I'm sure if you ride the road a lot, this course was great.

Guess what? Lacey doesn't ride the road...at all.

She did say that it was fun, so that's what counts!

Me being the OVER PROTECTIVE Dad that I am, I had Lacey drinking water, constantly, until she was getting ready to line up to race. Bad move Dad! Sunday was HOT, just like we expected. When 5pm finally rolled around, and they had the girls staged to start, they informed them that they would be doing one lap instead of the scheduled two.

When the whistle blew, they were off!

Lacey got off to a pretty slow start, but started catching girls going up the first climb. In fact, by the time she was peaking the first climb, the barfing had started (that's my girl!!). She said by the time they hit the second climb she had barfed twice.

"Thanks for making me drink SO much Dad", is what I'm sure she was thinking! Then came the traffic jam. As they were working their way up one of the short steep climbs, two guy's got tangled up, and Lacey had to downshift to try and ride around them. When that didn't work she got of and pushed her bike around them. That's when her chain fell off!

After those little setbacks, she rode strong!

She finished the race riding strong, and did well enough to place fourth. That's fourth in THE COUNTRY!!

I'm very proud of her, and can only wonder.....what if I hadn't have over hydrated her?? She say's she's ready to keep after the Cal State Championship. After she get's back from Cabo, that is...

-Darin