Brrrr

'Bone Shaker'

We celebrated the last day of May here in Ontario with some snow flurries!!!? Fortunately for me because the MTB race on Sunday was doubling as a Canada Cup race as well as the Ontario Cup race, my start time got moved to the 1:45pm slot and I had beautiful, sunny, and almost warm weather. (Well warm enough that no arm or leg warmers were required.) It also meant that all the expert women from Junior through Masters all raced in the same wave so there was lots of great competition and the start was insanely fast. As a triathlete I don't ever have to worry about sprinting the first couple of km's of the bike and boy does it hurt especially since they start you straight uphill to spread everyone out before the singletrack starts. I settled comfortably into about 5th but hit the dirt early on the first lap on a stupid little root and lost touch with the top couple of girls. 2nd lap I moved back up to 3rd and thought I had a pretty good gap but got reeled back in on the 3rd lap. I ended up winning the Senior Expert division with four of the Master Expert women placing in front of me. Overall a great race as really all I am looking for from these mountain bike races is a great hard workout and having to use my technical skills at race pace. I rode all the technical sections really well, especially all three goes at Boneshaker, but lost concentration and hit the dirt twice on some easier sections.

Even more exciting is that my calf seems to be pretty well healed up so it is a go for the Xterra race this Saturday just outside Coeur D'Alene, Idaho. I got three solid runs in last week and besides the legs feeling a little flat, everything felt pretty good. This is another one of the new races this year so I have no idea what the course is going to be like. I do know that the water is rumored to be FREEZING, so I am desperately trying to find my thermal hood which is effectively hiding somewhere. Hopefully it turns up before wednesday.