They grow-up so fast. ~sniff~

Hey people. It's pretty close to Penny's birthday. I got her just about exactly a year ago. Last weekend she rode in her second race-- her first for real one with an actual racer on her-- let me explain.

You may have heard me mention awesome girl racer Sam before? Her bike broke during the race, flat tire I think-- so anyway-- she was in a pinch so I let her borrow Penny. Sam had major skid marks all over her legs from her wipe-out, but hopped on Penny and finished the race.

Some of you guys tend to think I'm really out-there or athletic or whatever for doing the stuff I do, but seriously, if you met the actual racers like Sam-- you'd quickly see I'm just a civilian for sure (so far).

I talked to a couple other racers Sunday (girls). One was injured, but her lap time-- riding hurt, and just "for fun", with stopping and checking stuff out, not being in any big rush, is the same as my having a heart attack panting and drooling lap time-- 55 minutes. Another racer, who is admittedly "fast", was disappointed in her double lap time of an hour twenty minutes.

That's going twice around the whole course! Taking no more than 40 minutes per lap!!!

I will have to work like mad to get my lap time down to 45 minutes. And that's only going once around!

To give you an idea of how hard core & insane these people are: The top finishing "advanced men" racers finished w/in 2 seconds of each other. (One is the guy I told you about last year who tied in a race because he waited for his competitor to change a flat tire on the course.) The day before, they both raced in a 100 mile race. Yes-- 100 mile race.

After taking first and second going two laps at the nearly eight mile very hilly trail, they RODE HOME something like 45 miles (they're friends who live near each other apparently).

So, uh-- yeah. I'm not hard-core at all. :)

But I will still keep working at this and having fun, and maybe, MAYBE feel fast enough to go in another race by fall or something. After all, Penny is now one up on me!

Next post will be about my awesome junk finding / artist lair exploring day. ~score~