National Champs! Holding it down for the east coast

Reporting to you from the lap of luxury in our full on factory style 1970's condo where we have no cell service or tv, but occasionally have wireless! Phil, John, Jordan, Hig, Stacey and myself are quite comfortable here with our super plush wrap around couch, microwave oven, one of the first dish washers ever made, atrocious wall paper and trinkets, ample hot water and great pressure. We even have a deck for all our pimpin rides. So far the south has been treating us well. Everyone is incredibly nice, things are very affordable ($300 for 4 nights in our condo), great views, and the weather has been exactly what we all want for an east coast National Champs - sunny and cool during the day, rain at night. The course is awesome, the course is awesome, and once more for good measure - the course is awesome. AND MUDDY. A great mixture of everything; some hauling ass ski slope with drifty turns, a long tech rock garden, big jumps and hucks if you choose to do so, berms and tons of peanut butter mud switch backs with hub deep ruts - time to get loose and over the back ladies and gents. Ample choices for line variety, certainly with some risky moves to shave off those milliseconds.

We are completely exhausted from riding so much but the course is such a blast that it is hard to stop. Rather out of character for me to say, especially for such a high profile event, but I am having a blast, loving the course and actually very pumped with my riding. In fact, everyone in our group is riding very well. Phil, Hig and I had qualies today. Unfortunately phil flatted putting him at the back of the pack, Hig had a bad hang up with a tree in the rock garden putting him around 25th, I had a good run - missed a few lines in the top woods and certainly need to give the last 30 second berm and pedal section a lot more effort but ended up qualifying 12th. Phil is hoping to kill it tomorrow, with a good run he should be able to get top 5. Hig is hoping to shave a good 10 seconds hopfully keeping him in the top 15 and I am hoping to stay in the top 20. Jordan is riding very fast and controlled in the mud, if it stays wet the west coasters could struggle and he could possibly have a podium finish in Cat 1

Slalom was awesome to watch, sick course. Great atmosphere, music and fireworks tonight along with 33 micro brew beers on tap. For $25 you get a glass and it is all you can drink. If I step foot anywhere near this tonight it will ruin my chances of doing any riding above meow 2 tomorrow so I have made the decision to stay away from the pretty talking southern girls and all you can drink micro brews and instead update ya'all and go to bed early. We are all completely exhausted from a combination of slaying peanut butter ruts and crushing pulled pork sammys.

So as we sit here discussing line choices and thinking over the course the question of the night is wet or dry tires tomorrow. Everyone has been running cut spikes but this afternoon was hot and burned a lot of the wetness away. Tomorrow looks to be the same with racing not starting until 3pm. Weather forecast tonight: DRIZZLE (fo shizzle - thats actually what is says.)

peace out