Saturday, July 18, 2015

Justin earns 33rd at Nationals

On July 16th Justin Mitchell pedaled to the line at Mammoth Mountain Ski Resort to race against the best junior mountain bikers in the country (and the world).  Justin has trained relentlessly this year logging over 3300 miles during his 230 hours on the bike while maintaining over a 4.0 GPA and scoring two 5's on his AP exams.  One of the challenges to this race was the elevation since Mammoth is located at 8500ft and the majority of the top riders spent at least 4-6 weeks at nationals training camps in areas like Park City and Boulder.  As such,  Justin was going to have his work cut out for him!  The race started off with a 2.5 mile gravel and single track cat 4 climb which took about 14 minutes to complete.  The race then quickly got interesting with a rocky and technical 1.5 mile descent back down to the start/finish line that took around 3 min to complete.  The riders did four of these laps averaging around 18 minutes per lap.  Justin's finish time was 1:28:06 over 16 miles and 2600ft of climbing earning 33rd place among the best riders in the nation!