Guns, Bikes and Pain

Last night was the Soldier Hollow Biathlon.  It was fun to get out and try something new.   

The course started on the pavement for a short climb, followed by another short climb on some grassy double track before turning into mostly downhill single track for the rest of the lap.  At the end of each lap (we did 5 laps), you'd shoot five targets with the pellet gun in a prone position.  If you didn't miss any targets, you would then ride straight to the next lap, but for every target missed, you'd have to ride a penalty lap.  Typically I would miss one of the 5 targets but I think on one lap I missed two.

I have no idea how I finished as the race was fairly chaotic, but I certainly wasn't near the front.  I was still feeling sluggish and sore from the Monday ICUP race and multiple crashes (check out this video of my second one) and didn't feel like sprinting too hard off the line.  Plus, read on and you'll see my other excuse for not wanting to kill myself.

Here's the trophy* that each of the category winners received:

*isn't that a road bike? 

I got skunked on the raffle this time, although they had some great prizes they gave away including an ipod, a set of Crank Brothers pedals and a nice wooden/stainless steel floor pump to name a few.

Group Ride up AF Canyon

I won't go into much detail, but I will say it was a great morning for me on the Alpine Loop.  I rode with the fast guys and was able to hang with them until just after the Tibble Fork turnoff when Rick attacked and I was quickly dropped as we started climbing the steep grades up to Pine Hollow.  As the group pulled away, I just kept a good steady tempo right at my threshold.  I wasn't really paying attention to my time until at the last hairpin turn, I noticed I was in good shape for a PR.  I ended up at 58:04, six minutes faster than my previous best.

You'll have to check out the entertaining write-ups that Rick, Mark and Adam wrote on their respective blogs.

Here's the group at the top: