My Second Race

Last Saturday (the 14th) I participated in my second cross country mountain bike race! Yay! and all that fun stuff:)

The course was 4.5 miles up, then 4.5 miles down. I think the longest I've ever climbed at once is just over a mile. Needless to say, it was a very long climb for me. As I was pedaling (and walking when I had to) up that climb I was thinking, "Why is this fun?" Not in an "Oh my gosh, WHY am I doing this?" way, but in a truly curious way. How can something so painful be something you want do again. And again. And again...

I did enjoy it, truly. Around the moments I was thinking it would be really good if I could stop now. Fortunately those moments were very few :)

I mentioned last time my disgruntlement with standing on a podium and accepting congratulations I didn't feel I had earned. I was feeling that way again. I sat down next to Natalie (one of the ladies on team Pistis) and we were chatting. She helped me change my mind about that podium. (Me=second of two this time) She said who cares if there are only two or three ladies. You earned it because you came out here and finished a race and no one else did. And I thought, well you have a point there...

And so I felt quite a bit better about getting up there. I was still nervous in front of the crowd though and didn't carry myself very well, but...Oh well. :) (Ok--I stayed on the podium the least possible amount of time and hopped down, forgetting to look to see if the first place gal was on her way up or not. DUH!! A number of people had left already and there were a few empty podiums, and it was a little walk for most of the crowd to the stage...somehow I had it in my head that she was not coming. Whatever.)