Race Day...

A day in which I did not race, sad to say. I rode the course with Nate the day before and had to walk a good 2/3 of it. I was physically not quite up to all the steep climbs, even though most of them weren't terribly long. And a few of the downhills were too steep for me as well. I'm out of practice since last summer!! :-) But, I gave it a shot and did the best I could. Did I mention that, what with all the walking, it took us nearly two hours to make around 5 miles? It IS a difficult course from all I've heard, but still...the race itself was 2 1/2 laps for beginners.

Waiting to start...

Joshua got in a lot of bike riding this weekend. Here's the top of a lovely steep hill down to a creek crossing (I ate in on this one the day before :) when the hill is slippery and you start sliding sideways you have to let go of your brakes to straighten out...I managed just barely on the hill before this one when I started to slide, but it's awfully difficult to convince my fingers to move when they are hanging on to the brake levers for dear life... ;-} )

Joshua loves to cheer non-stop for all the racers--he takes after his Papa:D

Nate, halfway down the hill to the creek

And coming up out of the creek. I did not have the right angle to get pics IN the creek, other photographers (not toting semi-littles) having been there before me;)

Brannon, just hanging out enjoying everything

Janis

Hanging out with new friends

Final stretch

Super muddy and tired...

Our adventure of the day was when I had followed Nate to the van after the race and Mom was watching Joshua and Brannon play. Joshua kept looking for steeper and steeper hills to ride down. He zoomed down too fast to stop and became rather too close friends with a fence, resulting, thankfully, in nothing more than a black and blue knot on his chin and a bitten lip. Needless to say he was Done for the day and wanted nothing more than to go sit in the warm van. Other than some exhaustion from trauma and difficulty chewing his dinner he seemed to recover quickly though and cheered up after a short nap in the van.