Feed: OrangeTomato - AggScore: 78.3

I had only one weekend at home between my sister's wedding (a few posts back) in August, and finishing Team Trials last weekend. Only now do I feel like things have settled down at all - even finding time to clean the house was difficult!

First trip: the weekend after the wedding, Brad and I flew out to Minnesota to visit his parents, and of course to go to the State Fair. I was so excited - hadn't been to a fair since the Alaska State Fair about 7 years ago!

It was everything I'd hoped for and more...

We went to the "miracle of life" exhibit, which turned out to be pregnant and recently born farm animals. Little animals are so cute, no matter what species they are!

A little lamb had just been born:






And piglets:


Brad was super cute, petting the new baby calf:




It was crowded, but there was lots and lots of food. All on sticks.


Giant corn dogs on a stick


Corn on a stick


Cheese, bacon, and even cheesecake on a stick!


I was so full.

But had energy from the food to try to win a prize at the hammer swing. The crowd was kind of quiet, then a cheer went up when I out-hit the guy before me. Pretty sweet. (For what it's worth, I got up somewhere around the 50 mark, the full goatee, but I can't remember for sure.)


Of course, being athletes, we couldn't leave it there. The next morning, we had to burn off some calories and keep up with our training, so we went to the local high school for a sprint workout. Phew, net loss of calories, or so I hoped.

Brad and the water tower - we don't have water towers like this here in Utah so I am always fascinated by them.




Me:


We finished off the trip with this pretty sunset:

In US Skeleton National Team Trials, I earned a spot on the Intercontinental Cup team, the racing tour just one step below the World Cup. SUPER stoked as I didn't expect to come out of Trials QUITE so well, (though of course hoped). Was a bit shell-shocked for a couple days, and now am in the midst of preparing for the season. A complete whirlwind...

For the first half, we leave November 21, the weekend before Thanksgiving, and will be racing in Europe for a month. A month!

• Winterberg, Germany, 2 races (northwest Germany)
  
• Königssee, Germany, 1 race (near Salzburg, Austria)
  
• Cesana, Italy, 1 race (2006 Turino track)
• Igls, Austria (near Innsbruck)
  

For second half, after the holiday break, we leave January 3, and will race for 3 weeks, though one of those weeks will be here in Park City, so I don't have to travel for that.

• Lake Placid, New York, 1 race
• Calgary, Canada, 2 races
• Park City, Utah, 1 race
  

Phew! Getting work covered, coordinating with 5 others to get tickets, hotels, and cars booked, and making sure I can afford it all has been crazy. But we've been so successful that all three of us girls arrive in Frankfurt, via three different airlines, within 5 minutes of each other!

So, speaking toward the last point, only the World Cup athletes are funded, so as you know we have to pay for our own airfare, hotels, food, race fees, rental cars, etc. It adds up pretty quickly!

I've decided to sell some of my bike and ski/board gear to help fund these expenses. Priorities right now do not include biking and skiing/boarding, right?!!

The saddest = parting with my downhill bike:



It is for the best though, since I only got to ride it about 3 times this summer, and can't afford to hurt myself and sabotage skeleton training. And if it means less $ on my credit cards, it's an easier choice! :)

It's come to the point where I've had to choose between biking (to a point) and skeleton. (I say "to a point" since I intend to continue riding and racing Super D, but am not going to do the downhills, where I'm more likely to get hurt. That and I LOVE my Super D bike so much the downhill bike got neglected this summer...)

That in mind, I've listed my downhill bike on a couple websites for sale. For instance, it's listed here on KSL.com.

It's a sweet bike, so if you know of anyone who needs / wants a downhill bike, let me know or pass on the word!

• 2008 Kona Stab deluxe, size small. (I am 5'7")
• fork: 2008 Rockshox Boxxer World Cup, 8" travel (ding in side but fully functional)
  
• brakes: Avid Code dual-piston hydraulic
• handlebars: FSA gravity
• stem: FSA gravity lite
• headset: Christ King, (pink of course!)
  
• derailleur / shifter: SRAM X.O
• seatpost: Easton
• BB/Cranks: Hussefelt
• Chainguide and bashguard: FSA Gravity
• grips: ODI Ruffian lock on
• front wheel: Stans NoTubes tubeless wheels, with blue Hope hub
• rear wheel: standard Sunringle, tubeless setup
• tires: Maxxis DHF and Highroller

Thanks to the upgrades it would retail (if brand new) for over $6000, but of course has been used and so I'm asking $2650-OBO for it.

You can see the ding in the sticker on the fork, lower left view:


And remember the twin splints my poor arms were in last summer?


Couldn't ride it much, and it took a backseat to the Moment this summer. Well, to the Moment and skeleton training. So it's got a lot of riding left in it.

Also decided to trim down my ski and snowboard collection, especially since I only use one or two things regularly. Brad came to the same conclusion, since he has to pay for his America's Cup racing season as well.

Between the two of us, Brad and I dropped off 5 pairs of skis and 2 snowboards at the Park City Ski Swap this weekend, and I've been selling spare parts and equipment on eBay.

Our basement before the sale - we hadn't even realized how much of a collection we'd slowly amassed over the last 5 years!



Kind of funny. Hopefully our collected stuff can help fund our racing.

As is common, I need to play catch up...so there will be a few posts coming in the next week or two to bring you up to speed. Busy busy busy 2 months since the last post!

Team Trials
Brad and I spent 2 weeks in Lake Placid and a third week in Park City racing in US Team Trials, a long 3 weeks and eventful. The short version is that now I am USA 5, and Brad is USA 10, both improvements over last year!

Other interesting happenings:
- day trip to Chicago to visit a friend (and earn miles for skeleton travel)
- weekend trip to Minnesota to visit Brad's family (and earn miles)
- weekend trip to Wisconsin for Brad's friend's wedding
- week trip to Crested Butte, Colorado for a work conference, with many associated adventures (such as getting lost in a senior citizen's bus)
- studying German at the University of Utah
- Halloween party
- fundraising for the race season
- Other stuff that will come to mind as I sort through pictures

A quick sample of our upper-body workout...our sprint workouts and power lifting are pretty standard, but this, well, you'll see for yourself.

Ok, to wrap everything up, here's the rest of the trip.

The nest day, Friday August 21, 2009, was the wedding day.

Brad and I got back from a whirlwind trip to Alaska Tuesday morning. Whirlwind!

As part of our summer training, and as part of the upcoming Team Trials, we have to pass a physical test with certain minimums. We spend our summer training, mostly for the upcoming racing season, and partly to pass the test!

We jokingly refer to the test as some sort of hepta-deca-supa-cathalon since there are 9 items, and you have to do all of them on the same day. It's grueling, but, a good measure of our fitness.

The nine items are:

• Standing 15-meter sprint
• Standing 30-meter sprint
• Standing 45-meter sprint
• Standing 60-meter sprint
• Flying 30-meter sprint
• Ball toss (4 kilo ball for women skeleton, 6 kilo for skelly men / bobsled women, 8 kilo for bobsled men
• Standing broad jump
• Power cleans (barbell)
• Back squats (barbell)

The sprints can all be run at once - i.e. you can choose to just start and run through the timing eyes, or choose to do them separately, but that's still a minimum of 3 full-on sprints. Tiring, but kind of fun too, and it's nice to measure our progress.

We did our first test on July 25th, as Brad's and my "baseline" test. We'll test twice more by October, when our training peaks. Mid-summer tests are slower, so we wanted the baseline by which to gauge our fall tests.

This time, we tested at the Park City High School. First, it was outdoors on the track for the sprinting / jumping / throwing portion.


Brian, one of our coaches:


Brad sprinting through the eyes:


Me getting ready:


My weakness is getting out of the hole - I hesitate a bit and it costs me. I.e. my 15 and 30 times are slower than some of the other girls, but then I catch them by the 45 and 60, which means my speed is up there but I'm not exploding out of the start:


Plus, look at my neck - I clearly need to relax a bit! Eek!


The broad jump is a lot of fun, though I haven't practiced it enough.

Brad:


Me:


Nick:


"Dr. Rosen":


The ball toss is one that I'm reasonably good at doing.






Brad's even better:


He really gets after it:


So do the other guys:


We spent a lot of time between items checking our scores and seeing how much improvement we need by the end of the summer.


Tribute to Alaska on my shoulder (for those not in the know, it's a reference to the state flag):


I had the points sheet on my phone:


After sprinting, it was indoors for the lifting portion.


The coaches kept an eye on things, and had to watch each time we did an official lift.


Adding a weight plate during my warm-up:


I don't have pictures of my actual lifts, but I got several personal bests throughout the test:

• Clean: 160lbs from the floor, 1 rep
  
• Squats: 205 lbs, 3 reps
• Ball toss: 12.4 meters
• Flying 30 sprint: 3.86 seconds (still need a couple tenths there)
  

As for the rest of the test, my standing sprint times were the same as or a little better than my end of summer test last year and my broad jump was a baseline since it's a new event.

All in all, I'm pretty happy; mid-summer times are slower than they will be in September/October when we peak, so to have them so close to or better than last year's peak test makes me happy!

My overall score ended up well over 600 points, and we need a minimum of 500 to pass, but of course I can't be content with the minimum:

• Squats, Cleans, and the Ball Toss were in the "elite" category
• Flying 30 and Broad Jump were in the "America's Cup/Europa Cup" category
• BUT the rest of the sprints were in the "development" category and that's just not acceptable to me.

Here's to more training and updates from the next tests.

The weekend was fantastic, as I've said before, and here are some peripheral stories that need their own space so as not to clutter up the race stories.

Rather than stay at a condo, we opted for the cheap version: camping. It's always hard to afford the late-summer races, having already spent $ on bike gear and parts, and travel to the early races.

Camping - Day 1
My friend Addie and I hopped in the car on Thursday after work to make the 7.5 hour drive (we made it in 6:20, heheheheheheheheh). Since we couldn't check into the official campground until Friday morning, we ended up doing a sort of car-camping at the park'n'ride at the turnoff for Snowmass Village, just outside of Aspen.

By a "sort of" car-camp, I mean we shoved the gear back in the car, laid the seats back, and got as comfy as could be.

Addie:


Me:


Our campsite (we got woken at 6am by a horrid pounding sound - turned out to be the industrial sprinklers, oops):




Home sweet home, days 2-3
By 8am, on Friday, we had registered for the race, got our number plates, purchased our campsite, and had our new home set up on the soccer field by the rodeo grounds.


With no TV, we had to find ways to entertain ourselves at the campsite when not up at the race venue.

"More bars, in more places." Heh:


It was fun watching the local wildlife (both people and animal). Here's one of our little buddies:






Lift riding
My bike got the luxury treatment all weekend, no hanging off the end for it:


I got a little dirty, but did get to enjoy the sun for the, wait for it, twennnnnnntttyyyyy-fivvvvvvee-minnnnnnutttttttte-lift-rides.


PS - lovely sunset on the drive home:

Atmosphere
I love the atmosphere at the races. People cheering, pushing themselves, having fun, it's all great.




The two girls (the shorter two in armor, backs to the camera) were walking up to do their qualifying runs in Mountain Cross (like skier cross, on bikes). They couldn't have been more than 12 years old, and as they passed me, I heard one say to the other, in a little-girl voice: "Hey, are you in Girl Scouts?" I couldn't help but turn and take their picture.


DOWNHILL
After my race, I hiked up the hill to watch the pros race DH. I spent most of the time hanging out at the Waterfall / Hell's Kitchen, and saw a lot of crashes.


It's really loose, and we got dusted a lot.


Addie, riding for Go-Ride out of Utah, looked really good through Hell's Kitchen.






She had a stellar weekend on the downhill course, taking 3rd place, also her first ever National Podium as a Pro! We were both flying high on the drive home.





Not only that, but Chris Hadley, a friend of ours also racing for Go-Ride, won his Cat 1 race:






Way to represent, Utah!

Downhill Carnage...
And speaking of dowhilling, while watching the pro men come through, some crazy stuff happened. I didn't have my camera for the first part, but it was carnage. One rider with a flat tire was being passed at the finish by another rider, and the flat tire rider was in the middle of the trail. The announcer shouted "move over, move over!" and the flat tire rider unfortunately moved into the path of the passing rider...and the passing rider, who was going at full speed, was launched off the trail, over the netting, into the archway supports, landing on several spectators and their bikes.

He must have flown 20 feet, easily, and we were holding our breaths until he got up.

I got my camera out after it was all cleaned up, but for perspective he went into the air before getting to the arch, and landed on the red pole to the right there.


I do have pictures of the aftermath, however, since he had shredded one of the guy-wires for the archway. About 2 riders later, the arch began to fall over, and the rider had to pedal for all he was worth to make it under the arch before it blocked the trail.

Here are people holding up the arch.


Then, they gave up, and put a hold on the race so they could take it down completely. Crazy I say.


All in all, fantastic weekend that pretty much made my summer for biking. Yep.

I got home after midnight last night from a whirlwind trip to Snowmass Village, Colorado, for the Blast the Mass Mountain States Cup bike race. It was an AMAZING weekend, and I did better than ever before!

There are too many pictures and too much to say for just one post, so watch for parts 2, and 3 in the next couple days.

Cross Country riders we are not...
This was again to be a virgin ride on the Ellsworth Moment, as this time she had a new shifter, rear derailleur, grips, and fork. Nothing fell off, phew, which must mean my bike building skills are improving.

Addie and I went up the lift the first day to take a ride on the Super D course. After some hunting, we found the start sign, and started following the arrows. For some reason, the Super D (aka Super Descent) kept going up. And up. And up. And up, very technical climbs and way Way too much pedaling.

After four HUGE climbs, and about 30 minutes (most Super D courses in their ENTIRETY, both ups and downs, are less than 20 minutes, if even 10) I was ready to throw the towel in on racing Super D, when suddenly it hit us: we were on the Cross Country course!

This is the hill that gave us the enlightenment...Addie's grin of "Whoops! This is NOT the Super D course!"


We got a little more lost trying to find our way back and also bypass the lengthy trail we'd ridden, and ended up first on a dirt road:


Then we were on a private paved drive, and finally found a little trail that took us back to the lift. Phew!

The next run, we went the OTHER way, and realized we'd been following the wrong arrows. Black arrows on white background = cross country. White arrows on black background = Super D.

Cross County (XC) and a familiar face
It turns out that the XC racers climb most of the Super D course.

Here's a shot of a "rather famous) XC racer, going the opposite way as the SD arrow. Can be confusing, no? We go down this part.


Speaking of Cross Country, recognize him? He has been training for the Leadville 100, which is next weekend, and decided to race Pro XC at Snowmass as part of his training. He won, of course.


Lance Armstrong:

(Short editorial: while I just have to agree to disagree with those that worship the ground he walks on, he is a talented athlete and has brought a lot of publicity to riding, and brought some attention to the MSC this weekend, which is good.)

Super D, Part 1
This is part of the Super D / Cross Country course. See the black-on-white XC sign? Yep, they got to pedal UP while we got to ride DOWN....I'm not jealous. Also, this guy happens to be taking his life in his hands by walking up the Super D course....riders go REALLY fast through this section since it's flat and smooth and launches us up on to the dirt road.


Sunday morning, and the Super D, arrived....

As I'm sure you remember, Super D starts are always something different/unique/terrible/crazy, you pick the adjective. Snowmass didn't fail to deliver, and I got another brand-spankin'-new start, dun dun dun: Lie on the ground, heads pointed towards the bikes 30 meteres away. At the whistle, get up and sprint! No chance for injury here, eh?

The Pro men, first to go, set a good example.

Ready:


Go!


Run!




The Category 1 (formerly known as Expert Class) men, even better show...

Ready:


Steady:


Go!


Run!!!


Obviously, I had to put my camera away so don't have pictures of us, but I'm sure we were equally entertaining for the race staff.

Super D, part 2, the race!
Unfortunately, I tripped and fell on the start (and sprinting is my strong suit!) and jammed my finger, but was still somehow first to my bike! How? I don't know.

As I pedaled out, I shifted to my big ring and pushed my legs for all I was worth, my legs pumping like little (big?) pistons.

Again with the "unfortunatelys", my spare crankset (still waiting for the Hammerschmidt) has only a medium size ring, so no matter how fast I could pedal, there was no way to keep up with the rider that gained on my left side. She was cranking away in a big ring, with more power, and I watched helplessly as she pulled away.

(On an aside, after the race, she came over to chat and take a look at my bike 'cause she thought it looked awesome - props to Ellsworth, it is lovely - , and the first question she asked after pedaling it was "Hey, was this ring big enough for you? I was in my big ring the whole way down and was still spun out." All I could do was laugh. Oh well, lesson learned!)

On the first fire road, another girl caught me on the right side, but then we got to a sketchy turn in the gravel, and I managed to hold my speed while she didn't, so I beat her to the singletrack. Once on the singletrack, passing options were limited, and I just focused on keeping enough distance between me and the women behind to prevent passing on the next two road sections and the climb, the only other opportunities to pass on the course.

Somehow, even though they were XC riders (and thus good climbers), I managed to keep ahead of them (yes, even on the climb) and even with washing out on one corner. SECOND PLACE!!! I was whooping and grinning and laughing. Couldn't believe it! Yes, I know, if more of the pro DH girls had raced, it might have been a different story, but then...who knows? I'll take it.

Uh-oh, Super D Awards
Then, I panicked...as a terrible realization hit me. In the rush of packing and leaving straight after work, I'd left the envelope with my sponsor decals on the kitchen table. In Utah. Not ironed onto my jersey where they were supposed to be. Oh no! Now my jersey was going to be in podium pictures without the right logos! Crap. BAD athlete...

I rushed to my car, only half an hour until awards, and hoped that I was still somewhat good at freehanding....

With the help of the registration staff who loaned me a sharpie, (since filling it in with ballpoint pen would have taken more than 30 minutes) and gave me safety pins (I was using hair clips to hold them on), I came up with these:




Phew!

The podium...my very
FIRST EVER NATIONAL PODIUM AS A PRO!!!
I was on cloud nine. Or ten. Or...wait...even better...turned it up to eleven.







Have I mentioned lately that I LOVE MY BIKE???!! I got a lot of compliments on it this weekend, and every time someone mentioned it I just started gushing. The Moment is the perfect bike for me. Perfect. Money. Butter. Pure joy. What else can I say?

Addie did really well in the downhill too, and I'll tell that story tomorrow. Cheers!

It's so pretty....I get to go race it in Colorado at the Snowmass Mountain States Cup (MSC) this weekend, and that's exciting.

My fork and wheels arrived, and then my lovely SRAM xO shifter and derailleur, so it was time to take the hijacked parts off the Moment, put the delicious new parts on it, and reassemble the Dawg.

The last part of the puzzle was the fork, and on Monday last week I found out that it had arrived at Hyland Cyclery (a super shop, set up for everything one could need, and great service, cool guys, all that good jazz) in Salt Lake City.

I busted down to SLC after work, and after chatting with Steve and the other shop guys, and having them cut my top tube and set the crown race and star nuts (and after trying to talk one of their customers into buying a Moment, let him ride mine...hopefully he's sold now!) I raced back home and got to work.

I was so excited that I didn't even change my clothes! Oops...thank goodness for aprons, or the aftermath might have been worse than this:


(PS for a sponsor shoutout - I didn't even try to do this but those are Zeal sunglasses, a Patagonia skirt, and a Fox Racing shirt, heh! Love them all.)

When last we saw the Dawg it looked like this:


After a couple hours of going back and forth, pulling parts off of one bike to go back on the other, the Dawg looked like this:


Woot! I've done so much bike assembly lately that it almost seemed easy! And yes, I went over and checked all the bolts, just to be sure. :)

The Moment, well, it got a lot burlier, and girlier...yes, it is possible to be both! From this:


To this:


Notice the pink SRAM xO shifter?


And derailleur?


And blue Hope hub and shiny white Stans NoTubes rims?


This fork came off the Moment and went back on the Dawg...


And this beefy 6" Magura Wotan fork went on the Moment...(it feels so buttery and smooth even though it still needs to be adjusted for my weight):


I got a little dirty...but didn't mind.


Ok, ok, ok, I'll stop gushing now. Sorry - I've just NEVER had a bike so tricked out and pretty and perfect before! Thanks to Ellsworth, Magura, Stans NoTubes, SRAM, WTB, and Crankbrothers, my bike is amazing. (Thanks also go to Fox Racing, Patagonia, and Zeal Optics for helping kit me out so I can ride protected and look good too.)

Ok, done drooling now, but don't worry, there will be plenty of drooling and ranting and raving to come! The bike isn't QUITE finished - I need to get the Hammerschmidt crankset, and in the meantime need to find a spare front derailleur to keep my chain from falling off.....but small steps. It's almost done.

I'm about a week late posting about this, but life just continues to rush by with no care that I need time to blog. Aargh.

The 2009 USA Mountain Biking National Championships were held last weekend at the Sol Vista resort in Granby, Colorado. It was a lovely 7 hour drive that Connie and I made after work on Thursday, arriving at our rented condo just after midnight. No, really, it was lovely!


See?


I was feeling high after frantically completing the Ellsworth Moment (mmm, delicious) as outlined in a previous post, and Connie was abuzz about leaving the next week for two World Cup races in Canada (Mt. St. Anne and Bromont). So the drive went quickly.

The next morning, we dragged ourselves out of bed at 6am and headed to the resort to register and get in line, after only a few hours of sleep, only to find that downhill practice had been moved from 8am, until 10am. Regretting the missed opportunity for more sleep, we took off to ride the Super D course on our downhill bikes, to kill time until DH practice.

By the way, at this point I had only registered for the Super D, planning on taking a run on the DH course to see how it felt. (Remember the earlier post about my quasi-retirement from downhilling for this season...I only wanted to race DH if it would be fun and not too risky.)
____________________________________________________
Downhill:
After one run on the DH course, hah! There was NO WAY I was going to race it. It was super rocky, loose, slippery, and simply wasn't fun for me. Totally doable, but the consequences of just washing out in a steep loose rocky pile? Not worth it.

There was this sequence of jumps...
One:


Two:


Three:


Yes, that says the gap is 48 feet.

No, you didn't have to hit them and could take a go-around. Kind of a confusing maze:


I did feel sad about not getting to ride the bottom of the course - berms and small doubles and table tops.


Connie was racing DH, and having a good run of it, until a high speed section near the bottom. She was aiming her bike for a tiny berm in the trees, so she wouldn't need to slow down too much for the turn, and clipped her pedal.

So hard that while a normal steel crank arm looks like this (look at the arm, not the pedal):


Hers looked like this:


Amazingly, after a crash at such high speed, she had only tweaked her shoulder! And some bruises and scrapes, but she still felt capable of racing.

The entire ice bag helped:


And the beer I'm sure:


In the race, she looked pretty good.




Even injured, and expecting to finish last, she was not last, and made it down in one piece. Something to be proud of!
____________________________________________________
Super D

Definitely felt a weight off my shoulders when I decided not to do the DH (even before Connie got hurt). Instead, I focused on the Super D. And was easy to focus, since....

The course is the MOST....
FUN....
COURSE....
EVER....
In the history of mountain biking.
I swear.
Truly.

It was the first weekend of lift-served biking I'd done since Angel Fire, and my body wasn't ready for what I threw at it. I rode that Super D course over and over, hour upon hour, because it was simply so much fun there was no way to stop! Blisters on my hands, shaking arms, exhaustion, wasn't enough to make me stop. In the condo, my gear was so sweaty it ALL had to lay out to dry.


I don't have any meaningful pictures of the course, unfortunately, but suffice it to say that I'll drive to Granby with anyone who'd like to go for a weekend, just to ride that trail. Berms, swoopy corners, in the trees, flowly.

I'm sure part (all?) of it was my bike. The Moment is amazing, in case you wondered. Even with the temporary parts (read: heavy and cumbersome) it is the lightest, poppiest, quickest, most responsive bike I've ever owned. It's not possible even to IMAGINE how awesome it will be when the other parts get here! (New Magura fork is on the way, Stans NoTubes wheels have arrived, derailleur/shifter here, Hammerschmidt coming soon.)

Honestly though, I was really worried at first, since this is the first bike I've built myself with NO ONE checking my work...but nothing fell off, nothing broke. Phew! After my only crash all weekend, all I had to do was straighten the bars:


The scariest part was when I had to hang it on the chairlift - they have a three-bike rack every other chair, but the fourth bike has to hang. Intuitively I know it's safe, but still, scary!




I did find time to bling out my shoes (this picture is on the lift):


For those not familiar with Super D races, a Super D includes aspects of both downhilling and cross country, thus some technical descents and also some burly climbs. Truthfully, I'm not a good pedal/climber. So I was just hoping for a non-last place finish, since there were some cross-country pro women, who would just kill me on the climb.

Also, let it be known that the starts are always funky. The start can be almost anything, such as:

• sitting backwards on your front tire, then at "go!" dragging your bike backwards to a certain line before allowed to mount
• laying your bike in a line, then a ways back, kneeling with one knee and one elbow on the same line, not allowed to move until "go!", then running to the bike
• starting in a line with your competitors, all holding your bikes, then running with them up a hill, only allowd to mount and pedal after a certain line

In our case, we laid our bikes in a line, then went around the corner and down a grassy hill, then had to do a mass sprint about 50 meters up the hill, around the corner, then another 20 meters to our bikes, then ride the bikes in a zig zag in the area by the start, then finally hit the course.

Finally, it was "go!" time, and up the hill we went. With all my skeleton training, I was the first woman to the bikes, but haven't practiced the running mount, and got passed by a couple women there. Then, I hadn't realized how much climbing the zig zag part entailed, and was in the wrong gear, and got passed by a couple women there too. Aargh! But still, in the top 6-7 or so, not bad.

Then, a couple others tried to cut me off on the inside and tangled in my handlebars, and I of course wasn't going to let them knock me over. Instead, I held my ground and just gritted my teeth, pedaling for all I was worth, and they went over instead. Then, swoop! We were on the singletrack, the fun part. I swooped, and searched for places to pass and failing that, kept as close to the women in front of me.

Then we hit the middle climb, and, being a slower climber, got passed by a couple more women, though fewer than I expected, and that completely made my day!

And accidently let a cross country rider get by me on the inside of the last turn, which was my downfall since she was NOT a technical rider and was super slow on the remainder of the singletrack. Since the rules forbid going more than 4 feet off the trail OR into the trees, and the trail was singletrack in the trees, there were no more opportunities to pass. I almost got her at the finish, but to do so would have entailed knocking her bike over, and that just wasn't in me. Maybe I'll be more ruthless in the future, but.....no, probably not.

Anyway, even with all those rookie mistakes, I was told at the finish that I had come in 10th. Whoopee! A top 10! Super excited, and I was riding well, so was quite happy.

(Then, after I got home I discovered that the results were amended, so I really ended up 11th, but even with that, my best Super D finish previously was one from last, so it's still a happy thing.)

And once again, isn't the Moment lovely? Here's where I could make a bad pun like "living in the Moment" but I'll spare you.

To celebrate the 4th of July, our only plans were to go to the Oakley rodeo, which we did:




Silly me, I had forgotten that I got a long weekend due to the 4th of July. Suddenly, on Monday or Tuesday before, it hit me - maybe we could fly out to visit Brad's family! They have a big gathering at the lake cabin.....which could be fun.....and due to my sister's wedding in Alaska in August, we weren't going to get our annual trip....

Long story short, Brad's dad works for Delta, so Brad can fly pretty easily, and I can use a buddy pass when there are any available. (There aren't a lot of buddy passes given out, so we don't use them very often.)

Last minute, clearly. We get to the airport on Thursday morning for the 6am flight, and suddenly there's only one seat leave. Brad shoves me down the jetway, and I proceed to Minneapolis. Three full flights later, I'm sitting at the Mall of America, and Brad's finally getting on a plane. Phew! We both made it.

On the drive to Wisconsin, we saw this car....wow. That's all I can say.


It's extreme all right...


It was a good weekend. Brad's parents were there, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins. Lots of delicious food (I gained 2 lbs, not of muscle I assure you).

Played a bean bag game.


The boys.


Rode the pontoon and fished.






Plenty of drinking. Pretty much my only weekends of drinking every summer are those at the cabin.






Loons:


I tried to get on the floatie, but kept failing. Brad found it hysterical and kept taking pictures.

Ok, I'm partly on.


Now, to try to roll over.


Aftermath: Um, I'm not on the floatie?


Again:




And again, this time got on my belly...






Hah. The whole boat was dying with laughter...and I was happy to provide the entertainment.

Brad decided to cannonball me.


On a brief serious note, I got some rough news partway through the trip. The short version is that my mom called on the 4th of July to tell me my dad was in the hospital. He'd been helicpotered out of the lodge (in Alaska) and had to have emergency surgery. It was a bit dicey there when my mom called me. He was in the hospital for about a week, on an IV then clear liquids then finally food, and lost almost 30 pounds. He's fine now and is even back fishing (though can't lift anything for a while), and got his staples out a couple days ago.

I knew he would be ok, but still had a bit of a hard time with it, and ended up living on the couch for a day being a worrier and drinking a bottle of wine. For those of you that know how often and how much I drink (not often and not much, maybe a glass every month), for me to drink the equivalent of 4 1/2 glasses of wine over a 6-8 hour period is a TON. This is me afterward, kinda funny - I was smiling under the pillow:


But back to a lighter subject, it all came to an end much too quickly, and before we knew it we were back at the airport, hoping to get on a flight in time for work Monday. Luckily, we got on the first flight we tried, and home we went. Fun times, and a great de-stressor.