Yes, things could have gone better. Wednesday's course was just a big slalom. It was VERY similar to the east course that screwed me up two years ago with just a few very small changes.

No offense to Karen Babb but I'm not impressed with her courses. Her course had basically one element, slaloms. Yes, we did have a straight on the back of the course but most people didn't, we just happened to be narrow enough to squeeze through. Roger Johnson on the other hand is the master. I loved the west course with lot's of different elements and lots of speed.

Tuesday went pretty well. My first run started off a little slow and left me in the 11th spot. The next run went better and brought me up to 5th. The last sweeper was friggin' awesome with lots of speed. Take it properly and you're setup for the finish, if not, you're screwed. On my last run I had made it 1/3 of the way through the course when I stopped for a downed cone. I was the last person to run and the re-run was good enough to move me up to 2nd, .202 out of first. Kind of ironic that my third and last run of the first day had me in second when my first run of the second day last year had me in the same spot. I did manage to have the fastest third run of the day if that's any consolation.

But Wednesday was a different story. Unfortunately, I discovered after the fact that Dan McMahan (Jim's setup master) suggested to Jim to setup the car a little stiffer which didn't happen. The car was setup soft in order to take the bumps here in Atlanta but since the surface in Topeka was as smooth as a baby's butt, it hurt us in quick transitions. What evidently was happening was the car was rolling over (confirmed by Tevin Richardson who was working the course when we ran) in the transitions which obviously takes some amount of time to do. I was having to really modulate the throttle to get it to turn which slowed me down, how much I have no idea. I coned my second run so I had to be somewhat conservative just to get a clean fast run. And the last run was a little faster but not enough. But not winning was my own fault. I backed off way too early for the last cone in the back slalom and gave up WAY too much time. You can't be conservative at the Nationals and I was and it cost me.

So... I ended up .014 out of 4th and .186 out of 3rd. We all got clobbered on the second day so first was 1.377 away for me.

I did manage to beat everyone that beat me last year (including the last three years National Champions) so maybe a little bit of a moral victory. I just hope to be able to go back next year and try to redeem myself one more time.