Tipping the scales

Hmmm...study....blog? Study........blog??......bl...o...g...ok fine, I win. But the books aside for a minute and update a race report. I sure got spoiled during May- travel, race, sleep for 10 hours....EAT, spin my bike, watch Flight of the Coocoos.....sleep another 10 hours. I gotta figure out a way to do more of that!! (next year- watch out!)

So I guess I'm back to racing short XC races for awhile. This shot shows me holding a smacking twenty dollars that I won getting 4th place against the pro girls. Too bad I'm not racing singlespeed class... or sport! I think they got some dern great ebay swag.

But it was.....FUN!! Or something very close to it. We had a Time Trial on Saturday and I started off HOT. Way too hot for having come off a break in riding my bike...I'm not one of those super off-the couch racers....quite the opposite. So about 15 minutes in, I blew up spectacularly. If it hadn't hurt so bad, I probably would have enjoyed laughing at myself. Ha, ha ha-ha, bang, bang, bang. I managed to finish, but about 10 seconds behind a podium spot. Oh well. I was in it for Sunday, anyhow.
Off the start of the XC race, Natasha (see above the #1) wrecked against a tree. Whoops. Major props to her for picking up and pulling into first place. Gotta love a tough lady. I was tailing the other two for a good little while, but dropped off after one particularly nasty little pitch. Which I may have been able to compensate for except for all the miles of flat trail. Truly, these 3-4 ish miles per every 9 on the Clemson course were the only bummer. Fortunately, I was able to recover enough and spin on to finish 4th overall and 1st in the expert class.

Far more refreshing than the race, was the bathwater we swam in afterward:

Try not to get hit by boats......

On the homefront, I have taken up unicycling and internet surfing. Let me re-phrase, I have taken up falling off a unicycle and watching real riders do it on YouTube. These are fabulous ways to prevent myself from going into a study coma, and can be done for minutes, (or hours) on end. No pics of me on my loaner unicycle yet- maybe after I can let go of the wall long enough to get a shot. But on the internet surfing side, you should check out the Hell Ride at

http://www.santacruzbicycles.com/hellridefive/voteforpedro.php

and vote for some crazy fool. I know Arleigh from back in the day, and I think Chad is a fellow SSer. One recent evening I found myself surfing da net, I mean studying, and had to laugh out loud at someone who refers to herself as "The Butcher." She makes quite a case for wrecking on a trainer and bacon.