The Union Jack Quilt

I finished my Union Jack quilt! Isn't it darling? I'm really digging these smaller quilts. They don't take nearly as long!

Little Red Riding Hood 2012

Four years in a row now. Four times! I've ridden the full 100-mile century ride at Cache Valley's Little Red Riding Hood Century Ride event. Three of them have been with Teri! The past two years, she and I have ended up on our own most of the time and finishing somewhere around 7 hours of ride time. This time, we finished just a little over 6 hours of ride time. The difference? We drafted off my teammate, Kendra, and a few of my other friends. Drafting is really quite crazy because those in the back of the pack don't have to pedal all that much to keep up with everyone. The slipstream of the riders ahead of you suck you in and pull you! So our full pack of friends consisted of me, Kendra, Teri, Kari, Jenn, and Emma. Jenn and Emma decided to do the ride just the day before. Kendra and I know Jenn from mountain biking, and Emma lives by Jenn but is the daughter of Teri's neighbor, Jean. It was quite comical when we were loading up our bikes Saturday morning with the intention of meeting Jenn and her friend (who I didn't realize was Emma - who I did know was Jean's daughter) at the start. Jenn and Emma started to leave before us, but drove by Teri's house and noticed us. We had a great laugh when we realized they had been next door the whole night before when we were coordinating the meet-up.

At mile 25

Jenn and Kendra were the entertainment of the ride for sure. Them and their booby/booty shots for the cameras were driving me nuts! If you were to look at Jenn's Facebook photos, you would see that most of her photos are of her doing her booby pose. Good grief. The girl has no propriety! Ha ha! In fact, she tried to do the pose for our lunch photo, but I put one hand on her stomach and one on the back of her neck/head and pulled and pushed my hands to prevent it. Ha ha! The pose wouldn't have been quite so embarrassing if we didn't have men taking all of our pictures for us.

At the lunch stop

Me in the process of preventing Jenn's infamous "booby" pose.

Overall the ride went really well. Kendra pulled our draft for the entire 100 miles. Before lunch, which was at mile 50, we averaged 17.5 miles per hour. After lunch we weren't quite as fast since Kari bonked pretty bad, but she was a trooper and rode through her bonk. We had a little stretch of head-wind that didn't help her bonk, so Kendra, Teri and I created a geese-V around her to keep her riding but she could still only hold 10 miles per hour. Once she had a chance to the use the potty and eat some food, she looked a lot better for the last 15 miles but she was still very tired. Even with the slower riding after lunch, we averaged 16 miles per hour for the entire ride. Teri and I were quite delighted that neither of us bonked this year. Although, Teri did have some mechanical issues for the first 25 miles until a mechanic at the first stop we stopped at fixed it.

At the finish line. (Emma was MIA)

Me and Kari

Memorial Day Adventures

Friday night for Memorial Day weekend, I joined David's mondo-sized camping trip. I'm talking 60 people were there. Not all of them stayed the night though. I thought the weather was going to be terrible, but it ended up being beautiful! And the Jambalaya that David made for everyone turned out really well despite my doubts.

Yep. I'm Paul Bunyan's Lady.

Janie, Carrie, and Wendy chillin'.

David, the Jambalaya King

Our beautiful campground up AF canyon.

Me, Janie, and Chris - fireside goofballs.

On Saturday, Josh took Janie, David, and me 4-byin' in his Toyota FJ-40 rig, that he's named Clifford. We had such a blast! He took us up a very rocky road that ended at a forest lake - or more like a spring runoff collection point. When we got to the "lake" it started to snow and rain - it was that cold of a weekend! The bad weather just delayed itself. But it also made the roads muddier. One mud hole that we skirted earlier in the drive ended up eating us on our way back down the mountain. Clifford was tipped at a precarious angle in the mud hole - if you can tell by the angle of the trees through the windshield. But Josh has a winch so David climbed out the back of the rig and hooked up the winch. Once we were straightened out, Josh drove through the mud hole like it was no big deal. It was crazy awesome! Once we got out of the mountains, the four of us went to lunch at Cafe Rio as the cherry on top. It was super fun!

Clifford!

Josh, me, and David at the forest lake

Me, Janie, Josh, & David

Stuck in the mud hole! We were tipped 45 degrees.

Then Monday morning, I had my next mountain bike race in the Corner Canyon area of Draper. Janie joined me to support Jen, Tim, and I at the race. It was fun to have her and to hear her cheer me on at the beginning! There were seven ladies in my category, so it was kind of a big race! I passed two of the ladies on the two-mile shake-out loop: one was kind of slow, the other struggled at the first rocks and thankfully I was able to get past her. Then I passed another lady who was having trouble with her tire going flat. And then believe this!: I passed another beginner lady on the shake-out loop when we had to do it again at the end of the race. I saw her and noticed that I was closing the distance. I couldn't believe it! So I ended up taking 3rd place out of 7!! This was a long course too: 12.5 miles. Normally my races are only 7 miles. But with doing 34 miles at Mesa Verde and 12.5 at this one . . . I'm nervous all of the other ICUP mountain bike races will feel short now!

Looking strong on my 5-mile climb!

51 MTB Miles in 36 Hours

51 mountain biking miles in 36 hours. Yeah, I'd say that is my best accomplishment for the 12 Hours of Mesa Verde race and weekend. Jason and Patty joined me on my 3-person co-ed team for the 12-hour relay race. We had a load of fun. We drove down Thursday night and stayed in our stinky smoking room since it was the last one available with two queen beds. Then Friday morning we dinked around on the 17-mile race course with Wendy, pre-riding it, practicing some of the technical spots, taking pictures, etc. Afterward, we ran over to Mesa Verde National Park with Wendy and Dorothy and checked out Cliff Palace and Balcony House. We had a great time! Patty scrambled up the 32-foot latter of Balcony House like a bat out of he** since she's a little scared of heights, I got in trouble for sitting on one of the walls, Wendy sat in the car for one of the sites, and I had to pull teeth to get Jason to smile in pictures. Yeah, it was a memorable day before the race. 

Wendy and Jason on the course

Pre-riding the course

The race began at 7:00 am with a foot-race around a barn to the bikes. Patty liked the idea of not having to deal with all the faster riders passing her so she did the first lap. Jason went second and I went third. All three of us were going to get two laps in so I figured I would be riding at the hottest times of the day, but I lucked out! My first lap ended with a little storm sprinkling on me and my second lap had a nice, cool breeze. Patty got the rain and mud on her second lap. Jason probably got the perfect packed trail conditions after Patty's muddy lap, while Patty and I got the dusty ones. During my first lap, Wendy rode out with Dorothy and then ended up waiting for me and was my little "carrot" and cheerleader for the course. In between laps, we'd hang out with some others from the team: Jen and Tim, Gayle and Paul, Tiffany and Shauna, We'd change out of our sweaty, first-lap biking clothes into dry clothes, eat, hang out for a minute, then change into our new biking clothes and go hang out at the transition point for the rider to come in. All of us felt like the second lap took it out of us, but we had fun. We ended up in 19th place out of 27! Then we topped the night off with some spaghetti and meatballs from Lotsa Pasta and a soak in the hotel hot tub. 

Pre-riding the course - on Tuffy Rim

And instead of bringing home sore muscles, I brought home a cold that has laid me up for these past two days. Boo. But I'm going back to work tomorrow, and I'm getting massage tomorrow. Sweet. 

Wendy, Dorothy, me, & Jason at Cliff Palace

Patty, Dorothy, me & Jason at Balcony House

Me and Patty climbing through the tunnel of Balcony House

Jason in the transition area after his first lap

Lambert Park Race

I raced in my first Utah State Championship Series Race yesterday - at Lambert Park in Alpine, Utah. I love to ride Lambert Park so that was a no brainer to do - especially since the race is $15 cheaper than the normal Intermountain Cup races that I do. It was a lot of fun! The loop was only 3.4 miles so I had to do two laps. There were six ladies in my category (still beginner category) and everyone of them took off from the start line and left me in the dust. But then I quickly caught up to two of them and passed them . . . on the climb! Then we had a long downhill, during which I passed the other three ladies! So I was in first place, but I didn't get too excited because I knew I had another long climb coming up and a second lap to do. Sure enough, two of the ladies I passed on the down passed me on the climb and I never saw them again. I tried to catch up to them on the down, but didn't have the luck. I held my third place position until the very end so I took it and got a little gift certificate to a local bike shop. I think I'm getting faster at riding! And I have to say, I think it might be because of boot camp and strength training. I'm going to have to remember to keep up the strength training when boot camp is over.

Where's April?

April seemed to really fly by - more so than other months. Maybe it's because I had a big group project, finals, a new boot camp session start up, a trip to Boise, and the Easter holiday. Holy frijole. So here's my little April recap (through Friday, April 27).

The big group project didn't go so well since we got a 75% on it. Boo. But that didn't prevent me from getting an A in the class (Non-Profit Management). I rocked every other assignment and exam and his grade philosophy was awesome: the top quarter of the class would get As, second quarter A-s, third quarter B+s, and bottom quarter Bs. Not too bad, eh? I did well on my finals and rocked the semester with another 4.0. Now that my Spring Term class, Legal Issues, has started, I'm now wishing that I would have had it during Winter Semester - it's going to be a beast. In our first week, we've had 12 legal cases to read and debrief so that we're ready to be called on to have a one-on-one 20-minute discussion with the professor. Great.

I also took a little trip to Boise last weekend to see the family and go on a blind date that my mom brewed up. Mom and I visited Robyn at her house where she took us on a tour of her backyard plans for the upcoming nuptials of Justin. I also went for a mountain bike ride with Jill, Mike, and Chandler (Parker ran on the trails) - we had to get Chandler's new mountain bike out on the dirt! He had a grin from ear to ear. It was a blast! The date was pretty good too. Ha!

Biker in the Spring

I've been going crazy with biking this spring. I love it. But I have to train! I have a big 12-hour mountain bike race coming up on May 12 and then I also have the Little Red century on June 2.










I went for a long ride the morning of General Conference Saturday with Kendra. We went up to what is known as the altar . . . and I decided to be a little irreverent and pose kneeling at the altar and praying - but I wasn't really praying. I did think it was pretty funny that I was up at the altar on the morning of General Conference. Ha ha! Love me some biking! I'm so excited it is biking season again. :)