Race report:

The race was... not fabulous. What should have been a great course (and was when I rode it on Wednesday) had turned into a boggy mess of mud by the rain we had on Thursday and Saturday. Thick, deep, slidey mud. It was also freezing cold so we were all miserable. I came in 11th out of a field of 21. I'm fine with that and its consistant - I'm usually somewhere in the middle.

There is such a difference between an dry trail and a wet trail. When it's warm and dry I feel like I have wings and can just fly through all the twisty turns and up steep hills. Add boggy, cold, wet mud into that and you have to work twice as hard to go half as fast. Wet roots pull your back tire out from under you. Slick hills are impossibly hard to climb. Muddy descents are an exercise in disaster. All of this is being negotiated while you're simultaneously being passed by faster riders and trying to keep your own competition in site. Add in a perpetually runny nose and frozen fingers and toes, and you have a bike race. It was a tough 12 miles. Mud? Does not taste good.

There was one point in the race, sometime during my second lap, when everything fell away and my whole world became movement and trail and bike. Nothing else existed and my world shrunk down to nothing but survival. Wow, that sounds melodramatic, but it's really what happens. Like, my body was working so hard to keep things going that my brain was forced to shut down all but the bare essentials. Fun. Or something. Definitely or something. It really wasn't fun.

Good things: The race organizers managed to wrangle some massage therapists to come out and give free massages after the race. That was GOOD. I feel bad for the therapists, though, because we were not the cleanest bunch. They didn't seem to mind. Kenny and I were pretty much useless for the rest of the day and we spent the afternoon lolling on the couch, stuffing our drooling maws with fatty foods. That part was good.

Here's a picture from the race (not of me - I think this is a junior rider? It's a good shot) which does not convey AT ALL how steep and muddy this hill actually was. I had to race down a hill, across that tiny bridge and up, up, up the steep muddy hill twice. And, there were four (I think?) such bridge crossing bits in all, so eight of those, total. At full speed. Did I mention the mud? Okay, sorry, the picture:

Edited to add: Here's a picture of me, probably on the same hill: gritted teeth

3 chatty monkeys