What are you doing this weekend?

Do you like to race your mountain bike? Do you push your lactic threshold on steep death climbs like the one I'll be riding in Angel Fire, NM? Mabye you save your legs for the endurance work. If so, you might be the 24-hour racer type. Or, maybe you hammer it hard on the weekends. It might be that you are faster than most racers; its just that you like to race your friends.

Well, I race and this weekend I'm joining about a thousand other cross country racers, downhillers, mountain crossers, super d'ers and others in the first Mountain States Cup race.

My portion of the race will involve some time on the World Cup course and part of the ski resort at Angel Fire. Personally, I've never ridden the course, so I'm excited to try something new. Even though I'm excited about the course I still wanted to learn more about what I'll be getting into this weekend so I downloaded the Interactive Trail Map from trailcentral.com.

The trailcentral.com site was very useful. To start the folks at Cycle Cyndicate uploaded about a thousand pictures of the trail. Then the trailcentral.com crew added the technical aspects. Some of the pictures included a description of the elevation and a short write up on what a rider should encounter. They also detailed the milage. When I was finished "ooing" and "awing" at the pictures, I scrolled up and took a good hard look at the mashup. One can see each point and how it relates to the overall race. After seeing this, I'm hooked on this sort of thing. It was like I had the chance to ride the course - so interactive.

What's more, I'm hopeful to see some of my old friends from last year. In other words, the race will be fun, but also full of good laughs. To me, that's what racing is all about. You hit it hard and enjoy your friends.

If you're curious about other race series going on across the country, I encourage you to check out the following races. If you are in Texas, be sure to hit up the Texas Mountain Bike series. When you finish with that you might want to ride your butt on over to New England for the New England Championship Series. From what I know of my friends at Yippee Racing, it will surely be a party! I'd suggest getting on a plane and flying to California for the Tour de Granite. Stop, eat a burrito and hitch a ride on a semi truck cause you'll need the rest for the 24-Hours of Big Bear. If I were your coach, I'd tell you to take it easy and drink some wine, but you probably wouldn't listen. I suspect that you would hit it hard at the Southern Lights 24-7. Well, whatever you do this weekend, try to make it fun!