Cara! You're doing... pretty good.

The title of this post are words spoken in a special cheer given to me yesterday.... Special, in that anyone bothered to cheer for me at all! [thank you, melanie, you rock. I mean it. You told me to pedal in that spot I wasn't pedaling in, and because of it I came within 1 second of fourth place. If only I had pedaled sooner!]

But it still is a pretty funny cheer. Because the few races I've bothered to do in the last month, well.... I've not been particularly good, by my gold medal standards of "yesteryear," that indefinable period of "not this year." :-)

So let's go backwards in time, a month and a half almost! Halloween 'Cross was smurftacular. No, not the women's race, in which I finished a disappointing 14th not even out of breath (Andy suggested I might want to "try," or something), but I didn't even get a moment's peace to throw a pity party because Andy made me throw down my bike and hop on the tandumb so we could race for Tandumbmonium glory in the Tandem class!

A costume was a must, so we dressed up as our current favorite cartoon characters - Garu and Pucca.

I think we did a smashing job on the costumes!

Looks a lot like the cartoon

and for the second year in a row we managed to bring home tandumb glory, besting some fabulous teams which included a former teammate/current BFF and a schwinn stingray with chrome fenders. We snagged some cash and the best handup yet this year - a can of SPAM! Which was very difficult to figure out where to put during the race, and now I don't know what to do with it....

And then we zipped home to do who knows what.

And then I can't remember the next weekend, and then November 12th or so I was hopping a plane or two to go see my Grandpa and family on the UP for a fast weekend of happy fun.

Totally lucked out on the weather (high 40s/low 50s instead of 7 inches of snow) AND the awesome happenstance of a 'cross race within a mile of our house AND someone being nice enough (foolish?) to loan me a bike to race! (really, I couldn't believe how nice these people are! I made two new facefriends!) 

After 10 years of racing 'cross, my mom has never seen me in a race? She was super excited, and the kids in the family really wanted to play on the playset at Tourist Park... with weather in the low 50s it was a great day to be outside on the UP, although the locals were disappointed there was no snow. Not me, no how!

look at those HOTT arm warmers - apparently very helpful in identifying me

Anyway, I borrowed a super awesome Giant TCX, but didn't pay careful enough attention to the saddle height and consequently felt like I was driving an underpowered boat during the race. The course was totally old school low key - flagging instead of tape in most places, and we didn't even have numbers to pin on! But the crowd that was there was fiercely loyal to having fun, and I was bummed I couldn't hang around afterward to heckle the hipsters and the lumberjacks who raced the A race. It would seem that "fast people" exist all over the country, and dagnabbit two stayed ahead of me the whole race. So, 3rd it was. Mom and Dad still seemed proud so that's what counts. And I got in an awesome workout!

And I'm all typed out. I really just started this post so I could show off a thank you note I wrote in 1983 to my Grandma and Grandpa, unearthed as my sister nosed around some stationery boxes. Wasn't I a thoughtful little 6 year old?