What More Could A Girl Ask For?: April 2009

I love spring for so many reasons. The grass turns green, the trees begin to bud, and the sun stays up later and later; basically, it means summer is on its way. And the one thing I love about summer is that I get to ride my bike in the sunshine!

I was very fortunate to have two opportunities to go to warm, sunny locales this winter to ride my bike: Maui in January and Phoenix in April. What a blessing those two trips were! The Iowa winters seem to get to me more and more every year. They seem to get longer and progressively more brutal the older I get (maybe that's just a sign of me turning into a grumpy old lady, too, but I'm just sayin'). Between those rides and a bunch of early Saturday mornings spent riding at the Garage (where the walls would literally drip with condensed sweat) with 20+ other tri geeks, I feel like I have put down a pretty decent foundation to build upon in the coming months.

After ending last year's race season on a couple of high notes, I've spent 6 months jonesin' for another mountain bike race. A couple early season possibilities were ruined by rain, so both Cam and I were looking forward to getting back to the Quad-Cities and racing at Sylvan Island.

We arrived at the race site on Saturday afternoon to check out the course and give me a taste of the tight, twisty, turny course that Cam described to me as Sylvan Island. After about 30 seconds on the course, I realized he was not kidding in the least! I continue to be so thankful to have him to show me around these places so that I don't have to do it alone. Cam is extremely patient and does a great job of talking me through some of the more technical sections on the one recon lap we do together. I know that it probably kills him to have to crawl through these courses at my speed when he could just as easily tear through them without a second glance. Just one of the many reasons I love him...

We were pleasantly surprised to find the course in great shape as it had rained quite a bit in the days leading up to the race. More rain had been forecast, but everyone was holding their collective breaths that the rain would either hold off, or at least be less than predicted.

We spent the rest of the afternoon visiting my mom in the hospital following her knee replacement, then had dinner with Royce and Randy before a quick stop at Whitey's on our way to Cam's sister's place for the night. We enjoyed having some great "conversations" with Kennan (who turned 2 on April 26), and Cam played "Toss the Toddler" (Kennan's favorite game to play with her uncle Cam) to burn off the Whitey's malt calories.

On Sunday morning, we were excited to see that the rain had not started overnight and the roads were dry! That only lasted until about 9am... Cam's mom's race (does YOUR mom race a mountain bike???) started with just a sprinkle of rain falling, but picked up in intensity throughout the race. Over 70 beginners showed up and looked to be having a blast in the rain.

After seeing Cam's mom have such a good time in the rain, I couldn't not do the race, so I got dressed and had my turn at things. The rain kept increasing in intensity and we raced in basically a deluge! Cam's pre-race instructions to me involved reminders to go my own pace and to not get into a situation that could put me in harm's way. The other 90% of the instructions involved how to minimize damage to the bike while riding in the crappy conditions!

I did end up going at my own pace, which put me way back in a place where I "raced" by myself the whole time. I still had a lot of fun getting messy and muddy, but I was not setting any speed records... After two of the prescribed three laps, the officials pulled me from the course. I was pretty disappointed because I was having a blast and really wanted to finish my race. I was WAY more disappointed when I learned that the other female a couple of minutes behind me was allowed to finish her third lap. We are still not sure what happened there...

The earlier races had pretty much destroyed the course for the finale of the day, the Expert Race. Cam got dressed in the Jeep and prepared his bike in the Jeep, and pretty much hung out in the Jeep (and out of the rain) until the last possible minute before his race. Cam's mom, sister, and niece and I weathered the rain, cold, and wind to take some photos and cheer on our man.

Cam finished in first, with about a one minute margin over second. He was literally coated from head (in his eyes, ears, nose, etc) to his toes with mud, and there was no place to clean off the humans or the cycles. I tried to help clean Cam off enough to get him into clean, dry, warm clothes sometime before hypothermia set in, but it was a challenge, to say the least.