Well, the stiches came out last Tuesday and I was given the ok to ride. Had to wait for the rain to break and finally got back on the bike Friday. I was so happy to be outside riding that I burnt my legs out which definitely affected by XC race on Saturday.

For the XC Race we had intermittent cloudy skies and a brisk temperature. I felt good on lap one and actually passed a few people, but I ran out of pedal power on lap 2. The last grueling climb almost did me in and I had to focus on one pedal at a time. By the time I got to the fun swoopy singletrack, it was hard to stand up while my legs where shaking. I managed to finish in 3rd place, so even though my time was a few minutes slower than by 1st race, It was till a great feeling of accomplishment.

And then there was DH practice. Headed up for some practice runs and found that there was alot of pedaling on the course, including the infamous wall (which was not including in round 3). Got my lines all dialed in and finished the day with a smile.

On to Sunday, where upon waking, I find that it is still raining (it had started the night before and never let up). Got to Southrdige, but our bikes in the shuttle line and then dressed for riding in the rain. I had bought a new pack of tear-offs and sadly misplace them so we had to beg, borrow and scrounge until we found some. I now understand why they good ones are laminated as the ones we attempted to use were not. I think we ended up with more mud, sand and water in between the lenses and tearoffs than we would of had without them. :-)

So practice was interesting, and the track just got slimier as time went on. I ened up doing 3 pracitice runs and was never able to clean the uphill saddle. For my race run, I opted to take it easy and to be smooth and I only had one mistake, where I hit the G-out and lost my footing. My run felt solid other than that, but my time was quite slow. I am thankful to have stayed upright (and so are my recovering stiches).

Great weekend of racing with great friends, see you at the Finals in 2 weeks!

I opted not to race XC this round so I would have plenty of legs left for the wall. To my surprise, the DH course would not include the wall this round!!

Off we went to practice Saturday and I had some good runs. Later in the afternoon, I snagged a tree and ended up in urgent care and came home with 22 stiches in my left forearm. No bike riding for me for 10 days!!!

Saturday practice (pre-injury)

Sunday we ended up with the camera and the cowbell to cheer enveryone on. Congrats to everyone who raced!