Dawn to Dusk

Once again, Norma and I teamed up to participate as a coed duo. Unlike last year's, the weather this time was really nice, except for a little chilly start but nothing that a pair of arm and knee warmers couldn't solve.

The plan was to have Norma do the first lap, then I would two back to back and so forth. Coach had recommended to do the first two laps at race pace then settle into Zone 1 or 2 for the rest of the race.

Here is Norma in her pink jacket at the start of the race

Norma's first lap was a little shorter because we exchanged at the team area, which was about 2 miles before the start. I used that portion to get warmed up then let it rip for the rest of the lap. The gradual climb was really busy with traffic starting their second lap, so I did a lot of passing, usually on the least rideable portion of the trail, so that completely toasted my legs. Actually my legs were already toasted from the gym exercises that week, so I only had somewhat good legs for 3/4 of a lap. The gradual down hill was fun however after going around a few times it got kinda old going over the many logs on the trail.

Norma went on her second lap while I tried to recover from the all out effort. Initially I thought I would have a hard time staying in the prescribed zones, however when I went on for my 3rd and 4th lap, I discover that I was so tired I could barely hit those Zones. Needless to say those two laps were slow. Norma kept her lap times pretty steady, so we had plenty of time for me to go for one last single lap before the cutoff. Surprinsingly, my legs partially came around on that last lap.

It got chilly again as soon as the sun went down

In terms of results, we never know where we were. At first they had us in the wrong category which I asked to fix about half way into the race, however we never checked the results again. We just knew we weren't in the top three, however Art and Wendy did as they were racing in our same category and scored a 3rd place. Congrats to them and the rest of the Adrenaline Team out there. There were at least 15 of us in the race.

Here are Dan, Darrin, Art, Wendy and Robert relaxing and recaping stories after the race.

On Sunday, we checked the results and realized we finished in 7th place out of 15 or so starters in our category. Not too bad considering our goal was to have a good time and get a few hours on the bike. Not to mention we did double the laps from last year for a grand total of 8.

During the awards they also recognized the winners from each category from the Dust Devils Series and Norma had won hers, so get got a pretty cool gear bag. We'll see if she ever let me use it.

That was probably our last race of 2008. The next season gets underway early in January with the first MBAA race just five weeks away.

For now, I just have a few more weeks of leg draining work at the gym then it's time to focus on the bike 100%.

Pura Vida!