Gophering & Soaking

I joined a couple friends, and a bunch of their friends that I didn't know - 18 to be exact, for a little exploring adventure around the lava tubes down by Fillmore and Meadow, Utah. It was kind of fun to explore those tubes, hike through the caves, see the moss growing on the lava rock, and see all the lava tubes that had collapsed on themselves. But it was kind of scary to have that many people running around! They were all diving into holes and popping out of them like gophers. I was nervous someone would get stuck in a hole somewhere and we wouldn't know about it until we got down the road and realized we didn't have everyone. But thankfully that didn't happen. We got home with everyone. We also swung by the Meadow hot springs and soaked for a little while. It was a pretty nice springs, but I hated the moss. I think I'll take the sulphury-stinky Diamond Fork hot pots for the moss that was slimy and slid across my back every few minutes at the Meadow hot springs. I did make some new friends though!

Robyn Came to Town

.... with VIP passes to Snowbird! Teri, Kelly, and I are really getting spoiled by her and Doug who get these passes for us to go skiing.

Robyn picked up Teri on her way down and arrived in time Friday night for all of us (Robyn, Teri, Jen, and I) to go to dinner at Guru's and then we went to the Carl Bloch exhibit at BYU's Museum of Art. The night wasn't over after that! We watched a movie too - Morning Glory. Then off to the VIP skiing at Snowbird. We met Kelly up at Snowbird and we also invited my old roommate, Jen, and her husband to join us since we had 6 passes.

Highlights from skiing were:

• Putting our boots on in a warm, plush locker room in the Seven Summits lounge and storing our stuff in lockers.
• Watching the Freeskiing World Championships - amazing! 
• This photo I took of Robyn and me while we watched the championships and ate our burgers for lunch... she'll be real happy that I posted this pic. But it's the only one I took the whole weekend! And it's hard to take a self-portrait photo with my cell phone so the timing wasn't as ideal as I would have liked! 
• Teri taking a big, bad face-plant that put her out of commission for the rest of the day. :( 
• The worst white-out conditions I have ever skied in.... everything was white! If it wasn't for gravity, we wouldn't have known which way was down. 

Then Jen, Robyn, and I topped it off with Thai food for dinner and two more movies Saturday night - Life as We Know It and Ever After. I have to document the movies we watch when Robyn comes into town for skiing, because that's part of our tradition! We always see a chick-flick. In years past we watched Valentine's Day and Tristan & Isolde. I now own both of those movies. Of the movies we watched this weekend, I think I'll buy Life as We Know It (I already own Ever After). :) We also got these bracelets to commemorate our girls weekend!

First Race - St. George

I decided to race this weekend and I'm so glad I did, despite being sick, low on energy, and not exercising for the past couple weeks. The weather was beautiful. The social scene was fun - to gab with all my biking friends and feel the energy of a new season starting. I just love the energy at a race!

Kendra, Heather, and I pre-rode the course Friday afternoon and it really kicked my trash. I felt really light-headed after making it up and out of the first wash with a heart rate at 197. But it was my first time on my mountain bike since I think August and then not too mention all of the other reasons listed in the paragraph above. So we took our time and enjoyed the weather and the ride.

But then I feel pretty good about the race! My pace was about the same as when I was pre-riding, but I didn't stop at all. I guess I have just enough competition/adrenaline in me to do that because I passed a girl in my category just as we were coming out of the first wash. I was able to stay on my bike and do the technical stuff while she was walking it and then I wanted to and was able to stay ahead of her for the rest of the race. So I felt great! That was a vast improvement from the 24 hours before.

So I got 10th place out of 12. For some reason I thought there was 16 in my class, but 12 is still huge! I'm used to racing with only 5 or 6 other women in my category.  Here is a pic with me and some of my teammates (from left to right: Heather, Dorothy, Gayle, and me).