Pan American Championships
Banos, Ecuador
April 25, 2005

In the past four days I have flown into a city of 1.5 million people all living at 10,000ft, saw a very active volcano a mere 10,000ft above our hotel, eaten some of the craziest fruit I’ve ever seen, had my first taste of sugar cane, saw guinea pigs roasting on a spit, looked down a valley known as the gateway to the Amazon, and spent a harrowing eight hours on busses to and from Quito. Oh yeah, and I also raced my bike in the Pan American Championships on Sunday. It was quite a weekend to say the least.

Why did we all come down to Ecuador? The Pan American Championships also known as the Continental Championships are held once a year. They have a huge amount of UCI points. So following the theme of the year, I gave up a weekend in Moab with my husband to travel to South America for a bike race. Crazy!

The flight to Quito was long. Almost as much time on the plane as going to Europe. But they are on central time so you don’t have to deal with jet lag. We arrived in Quito, a huge city sprawled out across the mountains at 10,000ft, at 10pm. After the chaos of locating all our bags, bikes, and personal belongings we proceeded to load everything onto a small bus and a dilapidated looking truck. I forgot to mention that the US team had its very own military escort. About ten men from the Ecuadorian Special Forces were assigned to “protect” our team. I never thought of Ecuador as a dangerous place to visit, but when ten men all wearing bullet proof jackets and carrying automatic rifles are surrounding your group, you begin to wonder.

After a very short night at the hotel, we loaded the bus again and departed at 7:30am for an 80 mile drive to Banos. We had two military guys on the bus and the rest were in police cars driving in front and behind our entourage. The roads were in terrible condition, choked with traffic, and poorly marked. Our lead police vehicle had his lights and siren on most of the time so we could run red lights and pass slower vehicles in the oncoming lane of traffic. Of course the oncoming traffic didn’t slow down much or even move over that far. So we were creating a third lane of traffic in a narrow two lane road. Cars and buses passed us with literally only inches separating to spare. I was squished into the back of the bus and was thankful I couldn’t see much of what was going on. I think I would have been sick.

The town of Banos sits in a deep valley surrounded by rugged peaks and a very active volcano. The summit is over 16,000 ft and was constantly spewing ash. I’ve never seen an active volcano so it was quite exciting. Except when we realized that we were staying below an ACTIVE volcano!

The race course started and finished in town. The rest of the race was all single track. It was extremely technical with lots of exposure. The designers of the course basically cut a fresh trail that switchbacked up the side of a 30-degree slope. The climbs were ridiculously steep and once on top the wind was so strong that it was hard to keep the bike on the trail. It rained all night on Friday so the course was super slippery for Saturday’s training. I don’t think there was a single one of us that didn’t end up upside down in the bushes somewhere on the course.

The women’s race started on Sunday at 10am. There were only 13 of us with riders from Columbia, Mexico, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Brazil, Columbia, and the US. The start loop wound its way through town on narrow streets that went right through the middle of the open market and shopping area. Crowd control in a third world country is kind of an oxymoron. Around every turn I fully expected to see some old lady trying to cross the street in front of us, or a pack of stray dogs running towards us, or a group of women walking in front of us full of shopping bags oblivious to the fact that a race was going on. It was amazing that no one ran into anything.

Sue Haywood got the hole shot into the single track. I was second with Shonny Vanlandingham in third and Mary McConnelog in fourth. After a quick descent we started climbing the steep single track up the side of the mountain. Sue had an amazing day and rode away from all of us. I had a not so amazing day and suffered from start to finish. Mary passed towards the end of the first lap and rode away from me as well. Frustrating race and it was only 15 minutes old.

I basically did damage control. I was encouraged by the fact that I rode all the technical sections cleanly and confidently. When my legs have a bad day my confidence falls apart, which makes it difficult to ride the challenging sections of the course. But today I felt confident and smooth. My lower extremities just forgot to show up for the days adventure.

After dropping back to fourth for the last lap and a half, I was somehow able to manage a late race surge and passed my teammate Shonny to move into third place. She was fading as I was surging so I opened up a gap on her by the finish. It’s always great to be on the podium but it’s also small consolation when your only goal is to win. But it was just one of those not so good days.

So Sue Haywood is the new Pan American champion, Mary was second, I was third and Shonny was fourth. A clean sweep for the US women.

After watching the US men go 1-2 in their race, we rode back to the hotel and spent a chaotic afternoon packing, eating, showering, and the dreaded drive back to Quito. It wasn’t as bad this time due to the fact that it was late on a Sunday night. We checked into the hotel by midnight in Quito. I finally showered (didn’t shower after the race because the hot water ran out) and then went to bed. A mere 3 and a half hours later we got a miserable wake up call, dragged ourselves downstairs, and piled back onto the bus for the drive to the airport. Getting to the airport two hours early is the bare minimum required for leaving a third world country. After waiting in long lines at check in, customs, and finally security we were on our way home.

And thanks to this wonderful four hour layover in Miami, I’m getting caught up on email. Haha! I have three weeks at home and then it’s off to another Norba National in Sonoma, California.

Until then…

Alison