WADE'S JOURNAL

May 1, 2001
Well, here I am again sitting on the plane flying to another race. This time it is the ABA National in Desoto (Dallas), Texas. With only a month before the mountain bike race season begins, I am finally getting all my bikes dialed in and I'm ready to start riding them next week. After I arrived home from the race in Houston, I came down with a real bad head cold which put me out for the next 2 weeks, and that led right into the ABA race in Bakersfield. I just ordered a pinhole camera lens that connects to my video camera so I can use it as a helmet cam or place it on my mountain bike so I can watch it in slow motion and analyze my suspension set up. This is what I plan to work on in the next month to try and help myself learn and understand and really fine tune my bike so I can get the best performance out of my bike set up.

During the 2 weeks that I was sick I really did not do any training. I would do a little one day and the next I could not do anything. So I basically rested and tried to recovery as fast as I could. I still had to do some photo shoots and one was with BMX Plus! We did some stuff around the house and then we went to Sheep Hills. I didn't ride for like 10 days and I was supposed to do some style. It took me a little while to warm up and then I started to do some jumps. I was having a hard time, casing and just not feeling that good. So we got some good shots I think, but one of the jumps did not go that great. I got so out of shape I had to bail in the air and I hit the ground hard. It has been a while since I hit the ground that hard and it shook me up a bit. But anyway, we got the interview and photos done and it should be in the next month's issue of BMX Plus! Also the next issue of Transworld BMX (formally Snap) has a "day in the life" article on me and some other pros as well.

One of the biggest and toughest races of the year was at Bakersfield, CA and coming into the race just after being sick, I was not expecting any good results. I managed to make my main on Saturday and finished up 4th. After getting done so late Saturday night after a tough day of racing, I really felt tired Sunday morning. I rode well in the motos and made the semi. With the same lane as Saturday's semi, lane eight, and a real stacked semi, I knew it was going to be tough. There was Christophe in the middle, Robert on the outside and myself on the inside going into the 3rd corner for 3rd, 4th and 5th position. I went in and bumped with Christophe and lost some of my momentum and Robert high-lowed us both. I ended up going backward down the next straight, as I was slowly getting past. I ended up high-siding on Kyle Bennett's back wheel in the last corner and we both ended up crashing. So it was a tough weekend but I was still happy in how I rode considering how I felt. But this does mean I will probably be going into the Grand's with a 4th as one of my top 15 scores.

That next week I did a photo shoot with Brian Lopes for Oakley and we ended up doing some fun stuff. It will be interesting on how the photos turned out. I also was finally starting to feel better and training was back to normal.

My parents have been working hard on the motor home conversion back in Australia, and it is going to get painted up next week as most of the windows have been taken out of the bus. Then the inside of the bus will be made up and built, so everything should be ready to go.

So this next month I will be basically on my mountain bike and pretty much all the way till the middle of September. I have been invited to compete in the 2001 Summer X Games for BMX, but I will have to wait and see how things turn out. The X Games are on the same weekend as one of the Mountain Bike World Cups in Austria, so it will most probably be a last minute decision in what race I will do.

See you soon,
Wade Bootes

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