I tried...

It is snowing...again. I try not to complain about the weather and I feel like I am pretty realistic in my expectations. For example, I expect that April will have its fair share of cooler weather. In fact, I anticipate that there will be some cold, wet days and even the occasional snow shower through June. I would like to emphasize the words "some" and "occasional".
April has been unexpectedly cold, not just cool, but cold in my opinion. And wet. (Those May flowers had better be phenomenal!) Thus riding has been pretty hit or miss. And it has seemed more miss. That could be primarily that the hit days landed on what turned out to be more of a miss or partial miss day due to my schedule.
On a hit day, though Chris and I were exploring the trails above Timpanagos Park to see what was dry and ridable. We continued up from the altar on the Great Western Trail (?). The trail was in good shape and then we ran into a big old pile of snow that someone dumped in the middle of the trail. We had to turn around. Luckily almost everything else has dried out...or was.

Snow on the trail

A little perspective on the amount

(Girl)Friends

I work for the company that is (was now) the title sponsor of the Women's Expo this weekend. They have been sponsoring this event for the last couple of years and so they offer free tickets. At first I was like "eh" about it. But this year, I thought maybe I would try to go. Then I started thinking of who I might have accompany me as I am pretty sure you don't go to one of these events by yourself. I started thinking of my friends and realized that maybe I don't have so many. Well, at least not of the female persuasion who live in the area, would be in the area (and not riding bikes), etc. I did come up with a couple of names of some neighbors (i.e. ward members) but it would not be convenient for them to work around my riding schedule.So alas, I had a more typical "women's expo" for me this weekend--MTB riding.
I had the great pleasure in attending the first race of the Utah State Championship Series. It was held at Lambert Park on a short, but incredibly fun course. Dangerously fun really. Being as fast and flowy as it was, there is some danger around lap 3 and 4 when fatigue starts to set in. I was safe, but I did see a spectacular crash from a gentlemen on a high end Trek FS. He bounced up though and was okay (or the adrenaline did not let him know otherwise).

After awards where Sarah got a check that was almost as big as she is, she, Kelsy, and Nick joined Chris and myself for some more UT county riding. We hosted them on the Dry Loop which was anything but dry. After picking up some food and eating it on the way, we hit rain in Orem. Son of a... But they had driven down and were troopers.

Nick, Chris, Kels, and Sarah at the iconic altar

Chris, Nick, Kels getting ready to descend

Sarah getting to the top

See I have friends they just happen to live in Ogden... or Vegas... or be in Moab riding bikes.

Excuses.

As a MTB racer, I feel I should offer some excuses for my performance on Saturday. I probably should have laid some ground work before the race. None the less, here is what I have come up with (including some commentary):

1. It was uncharacteristically warm. But then again, it was probably hot for everyone. Even those from Vegas commented on the heat.
2. My bike still has not fully recovered from the previous weekend. My rear derailleur is limited not allowing access to my biggest cog.  I am not sure I actually needed this cog as the course was pretty flat
3. My water bottle popped open and let's be honest we were all conserving every drop on Saturday. That had to have cost me 15 seconds at least.
4. I got tangled up while trying to pass. Phast Dan was there. Or was that Terd Ferguson? Again losing up to 30 seconds. 

Honestly though I had a good race. My heart rate was higher than I have seen it for a while. (I think my recovering strategy is working.) It also remained relatively high throughout the race. I even led for a bit-after

Kathy took a wrong turn and Erica got some nasty chain suck. I kept quoting the line from Rat Race, "I'm winning. I am winning!" I reveled in it as I knew it would not last.
So now, I need to figure out how to get truly fast because right now I am not.Or maybe I am at that point in my career where I should turn into a single speeder.

Erica (2nd), Kathy (1st), Me (3rd), Jill (4th)

After the race, I attempted to do a cool down lap. I stopped to fill my bottle and then started out on the course again. I could not grab my handlebar with my left hand. My palm hurt like crazy. I thought it was odd and I assumed that due to the heat, my hand was cramping. OK, so I may have been oxygen deprived, dehydrated and hot. I shook it out after a few minutes, but could only grasp the bar gingerly. My palm was swollen and sore for a couple of days afterward. It just slowly got better. It was weird though.