Sunday

saw us join in the relay race. Just as any relay, the pain - I mean fun - is shared around. As this is a social event, it was held on an abbreviated course of 4km, of which my partner and I had to do 5 laps. I won the rock-scissors-paper battle, giving me the choice to ride second, he started out with two laps, then I brought home the bacon with the final three.

This race was good fun, but a real anti-climax for me after the dramas of saturday. I just went out and rode as fast as I could without hurting too much, and in fact I walked a lot more of the hills today, just because I could. I even wore my camelback (hydration pack - backpack with a tube coming out of it so one can drink on the fly) and baggy trail riding clothes. The beginners course had almost all the hard (ie fun) bits taken out, but it was still a ball to blaze around.

My only real goal was to catch one of the elite women riders - actually a junior, but having no other competition her age she raced with, and destroyed, the senior women - who started her three laps about 5 minutes ahead of me. I got her after a lap and a half, but she seemed to be taking it really easy, perhaps she was feeling her win of the day before. Oh well.

So the three laps passed by uneventfully, and then we had quite a wait for the beginners to come in, but once they were the results showed that we'd won the pairs category, and were 4th overall. My times were pretty good, seemed that the walking hadn't hurt my result at all. My partner was pretty amazed, I was quite happy, it was nice to be out in the sunshine riding bikes. I did get a bit too much sun, hope my wrinkles don't show too much...

The highlight of Sunday for me was taking this photo of some Japanese death bug, one of my favourite pics. Make sure you click on it to get the full size and full-effect pic.


Cheers