The Robbie Report is a weekly feature on MTBracenews.com. Robbie Squire is the 2008 Junior National Champion and the newest member of the US National Team. Just two years ago Squire was racing as a Sport. In '08, his first year and only year as a Junior Expert, Robbie won the Junior National Championship. In '09 his first year in the senior ranks, the Utah resident will be racing with the U.S. National Under-23 Team. Each week Robbie will share his experiences with us. Join in as the 19 year-old Junior National Champion and first year Pro travels across the United States and Europe racing his bike and living out a once in a lifetime opportunity.
This weekend’s race was National Championships, one of the biggest races of the year. Despite being only two days of racing, the preparation for this race is different and much more intensive than other races. It definitely isn’t the “biggest race” that I’ve competed in this season but it was very important because of the prestige of the national championships.
The preparation for this race was way different from the previous year. Last year, I was able to train how I wanted and ride as hard as I wanted in order to get fit for the race. However, my health had different plans this year. The illness I developed in Europe has been a lot harder to get over than I had anticipated and caused a lot of frustration in the weeks leading up to the race. Typically I’d be training as hard as I could but due to health issues the most beneficial thing for me to do was rest. Taking time off is harder to do than hard training. It is difficult for me to understand how sitting on a couch and just resting would help me in one of the biggest races of the year. That was really hard to deal with but I think that the rest was the right thing to do and probably helped more than I like to believe, especially in comparison to trying to train hard.
The race was in Granby, Colorado, which is considerably high altitude and thus made getting ready for the race even more tricky. I decided instead of trying to sleep at high altitude to get ready for the race I would go out there a few days early and get the feel of the course and familiarize myself with the area.
The XC race wasn’t on the best trail I’ve ever ridden but it was way better than the stories I heard about it. It started straight up a climb of about 15% and continued to climb for another 15-20 minutes. The descent is the part that was a little lack-luster. After last years nationals at Mt. Snow and racing on many of the best course in the world I was hoping for a technical fast descent. This descent was relatively slow and un-technical. Granted it wasn’t as bad as I had heard but in comparison to other courses it wasn’t as easy to make or lose time on.
The race was the first time this year that I would be racing just U-23’s and wouldn’t be mixed in with the pros. It makes the race quite different. There isn’t as much battling for position and the race comes down purely to riding ability rather passing people.
When the gun went off about forty U-23s went as hard as they could for the climb, I got to the top of the first climb in 4th and then moved up to second place during the rest of the climb where I remained for the rest of the race. Colin Cares was in front in the beginning and managed to keep a 8-15 second lead on me the entire race. I would catch up to him in certain parts on the climb and he would make up time in other places. I would see him up most of the climb and descent but just wasn’t able to catch him. I ended up finishing 15 seconds behind him. As it turned out Colin and I were setting a pretty good pace and we finished right around 5 minutes ahead of 3rd place.
Now its time to focus on the upcoming World Cup races in Mount St. Anne and Bromont. These two races mark the beginning of a trip that includes the Vermont and Windham national races. The next few weeks should be very interesting.
