DENIED

last satruday night i was sitting around my house hanging out with my homeboy tom who just got back from racing the the Pro XCT at Bonelli Park.  tom is fast.  he raced hard and finished in the 40′s out of 65+ riders in the pro field… and he was stoked and motivated.  his excitement got me thinking after talking with him some i charged it.

i logged on to the USA Cycling page and requested an upgrade from cat 1 to Pro for XC MTB.  i don’t know if it was tom’s excitement or the couple of jack and cokes we had, but i when woke up the next morning i kind of wondered if i had made a dumb move.

after talking with beth, ryan, tj, tom, and allison some more i knew i mad the right decision to try for the upgrade.  it’s not that i think i am faster than all the cat 1 guys i am racing now… i’m not.  i race with superfast guys and have a lot of respect for them and a lot of fun banging heads with them at races.  right now i just have the time and desire to train a lot and i know that this won’t always be the case so i want to take advantage and see if i can race with the best guys out there.  honestly winning doesn’t mean much to me, but the chance to race against fastest guys and push myself to the limit is what i want to do…. and i want to race short track!

on wednesday i heard back from USAC and I was DENIED the upgrade.  i wasn’t really shocked or disappointed because i knew there were pretty strict upgrade requirements and i wasn’t really banking on the upgrade… it was a spur of the moment thing.  but that doesn’t mean that i still don’t WANT the upgrade.. I DO. 

i found a blog by a guy that also got denied and he did a bunch research showing just how hard it is right now to upgrade from cat1 to pro in XC MTB.  here are some his posts:
http://squirtgunshow.blogspot.com/2009/06/request-was-denied-on-2009-06-15-1444.html
http://squirtgunshow.blogspot.com/2009/06/getting-rid-of-semipro-class-does-not.html

http://squirtgunshow.blogspot.com/2009/06/why-cat1-upgrade-requirements-are.html
http://squirtgunshow.blogspot.com/2009/06/open-letter-to-usa-cycling_19.html

so the plan is do some more XC races and see if  i can do well enough to “earn” the USAC’s approval.

enough of  that.

Vision Quest is satruday.  the weather is looking great and my legs are feeling good!  can’t wait to race!