This Weekend's Race

The next adventure race in the Extreme Heat series is this Saturday and 'Team Buck-I' will be back to avenge our last minute mistakes from here. This time, the course consists of mountain biking and trekking and is slightly longer than last time ~20k. I am excited because Tom and I have been practicing our 'stay on our bikes while cruising down rocky and loose dirt hills' skills this whole summer. We should be better off on this portion of the AR as opposed to adventure tubing from last time where we had no measurable talents other than swallowing dirty river water. I went up to the Phoenix Mountain Preserve last night (location of the AR) to practice riding the trails and get landmarks in my mind. It is so fun there... tons of rocks, climbing, and fast downhills where my no-suspension back tire tries to throw me off. Good news is that I conquered every downhill and almost all uphills without getting off the bike (as opposed to last time I rode there where I got off my bike in the form of flying over the handlebars). So my technical skills are definitely improving. This is not to say that I am good...hah not even close.

But I am looking forward to the race this weekend for no other reason than I will for the first time be pushing myself on a bike in competition with others. I hope this bike race will be the first in many more.

Plus the Desert Pirates are going down (our friends Ryan and Sarah who beat us last time due to a misjudgment in navigation on the LAST checkpoint). If we lose to them again, I will blog on Sunday about how they are the best team ever, and we bow to their superiority. It's not going to happen... I am like Rasheed Wallace in guaranteeing a victory.