A very interesting weekend.

We left Salt Lake at around 7:30 Thursday night to head for St. George. At 11PM we were cruising 75MPH down I-15 and I plowed the car into a rather large deer who decided to jump in our way. No injuries and the bikes were fine but the car is a wreck. The deer blew up the front end of the car and destroyed the radiator. We chilled at a truck stop till 1AM when the tow truck finally arrived. The driver dropped us a motel in Cedar City and dropped the car at a body shop. Rhonda's mom picked us up from the motel in the AM and we somehow piled my bikes and all our gear in her Taurus for the trip down to St. George. After arriving in St. George I put the finishing touches on my 29'er and we headed to the race course for a pre-ride. Rhonda ripped through the pre-ride and dropped me on the DH while I fought through a rear tire that did not want to seal and tried to figure out how to ride a hardtail again. We had all our ducks in a row for race day but somehow Rhonda still only had time for a 15 warm-up before the call up. Time seems to always get away from us on race day's and we need to work on that. Rhonda set her AM problems aside for the race and rode "her race". She concentrated on keeping a smooth pace on the climbs and aced the downhill. She beat last years time by five minutes and took 3rd, 8 seconds behind BK's wife Tasha and not too far behind Dot Verbrugge who tore the course up and took the win. The whole women's 35+ field was fast this year. The winning time was a couple minutes faster than last years winning time. It was a great day for everybody I know who raced. Travis won the men's 40+ race with a personal best time and he'll be moving up for the next race. Greg and Christan both beat last years times by 5+ minutes. Megan killed it in the sport women's category for her best finish ever in the that category at 4th. Bob knocked 6 mins off his personal best for a 5th place finish. We didn't stick around for the Pro race since the people I was with had limited time and wanted to get some more riding in but you can see a recap here. After the race we did 20 miles on Church Rocks/Prospector which was in perfect condition and finished the day off nicely. For today we had a plan to ride Hurricane rim but 40+ MPH winds put and end to that so we did a loop on BCP, Stucki, and Barrel instead. Tomorrow I am doing a 60min recovery spin around Bloomington to prepare for some big road miles this week. I forgot the PC cable for my camera so no pics this week.