Keegan Swenson's Blog: Draper Super XC

Park City native and Whole Athlete/Specialized racer Keegan Swenson is the reigning 15-16 year-old national XC champion. This season is his first with the Whole Athlete squad and his first in the 17-18 category. Keegan will be representing his team and the United States throughout the 2011 season and he will be posting a weekly blog on MTBRaceNews.com.

Keegan is preparing for a trip to Europe to represent the USA at several races before competing at the World Championships. Read Keegan's report below.

Utah State Championship Series race #4: Corner Canyon

I was excited for this race, as it was the last of the uscs race series, which has been a ton of fun this season!

The race started off pretty fast for a 36-mile race, with a Euclid racer (Tyson Apostol) leading it out. Then we hit the initial climb and it separated fast, Alex Grant (Cannondale Factory) and I up front and Nate Miller (Endurance Cycle Service) not too far behind. 

We were moving at a decent pace up the climb and then down the descent, then at the start finish Nate had caught us, he must have descended like a mad man to catch us. 

So it was then us three going into the 2^nd lap. Once again Alex and I got a small gap on Nate during the climb. About a third up the climb I began to get a small gap on Alex and tried to increase it by the top. All the way down the descent I was nervous that Alex was going to catch me but I kept on pushing. 

Then going into the last lap he closed the gap and passed me about half way up the climb. One of the lapped riders told me that Alex was about 1 minute up, so I tried to catch him by the top but to no avail…. 

I was going as fast as I could downhill because I was worried that Nate was going to catch me at the bottom. Luckily I stayed ahead of Nate, and Alex ended up about  2 minutes ahead of me. 

Overall this was a super fun race, with sweet single track and ripping down hills.  I ended up winning the series overall which I was super stoked about. Congrats to Alex for taking the Win and Nate rolling in third. Good work to the Utah State Championship Series crew for putting on an awesome series!! Can’t wait to race again next season.