Short Track Finale: Another One Bites the Dust.

My knees and calves are breathing a huge sigh of relief. As of Monday night, Short Track 2009 is officially over. It was a fun evening...I had a decent individual race, anchored our team for the relay race, made the series podium for the Cat 2 U35 women and...won a f#*&ing bike frame. Unreal. Now I can't say that I never win anything at raffles.

The individual race was nothing to write home about. I wasn't going to be able to win the series and just needed to finish in front of Sarah T. in order to hold my spot on second place. I hit the deck hard in the first lap (see photo from prior blog entry) and, after that, rode just hard enough to stay in front of Sarah once I caught back up to her two laps later.

Here I am attempting to look serious about racing while we waited for the team relay to begin. It is, however, hard to look serious when covered in dirt, with a grease spot on your boob.The relay ended up being a lot harder than I thought it would be. Because I was the last rider, I had to ride a lap, then an extra half lap, of the motocross course--at full speed. By the time it was my turn, my legs were stiff from standing around and the sun had gone down. Since I have a hard enough time staying upright with good light, I was flirting with disaster by going balls to the wall in low light. But there were no crashes or debacles and HV finished somewhere midpack.

Then it was time for awards and raffle. My teammates are awesome-most of them stuck around to watch my three minutes of glory on the podium. Brooke McDermid won the series. Its too bad she's got a bum knee, she'd be a helluva cross racer.

Sarah and I with our Second and Third Place medals, pretending to be excited that we have to be Cat 1s next season.

After my podium, we sat around for a bit and debated about sticking around for the grand finale of the raffle. The debate took so long that by the time we had decided to leave, we decided that we might as well stick around.

And then we waited...and waited...and waited. No one from our team had won any of the big deal prizes. Which was surprising, because the only folks eligible for those prizes were those that had raced 5 or more races and there were at least 5 of us who had sacrificed life and limb at least that many times.

The grand prize was a Niner mountain bike frame. They pulled one, two, three names of people who had left early. Then they pulled my name. And, yeah, sorry for ruining the family event by yelling, "Shut the FUCK up" at the top of my lungs.

I'm now the proud owner of a beautiful, shiny 29er bike frame. But, as you all know, I need another bike like I need another hole in my head. So the decision has been made to build it up for Christy, so that the Blonde Ball of Hate can bring her special brand of fury to the dirt next year. Watch out, ladies. She has a mountain bike and isn't afraid to use it.