Greetings from the 1st ring of Hell

Sandhell. Pinehurt. Call it what you want, but today's race was no joke hard in a painful, energy sapping kind of way. The course was modified from that of the past few years and it was an improvement to what was already a stellar course. For the first time in the series, barriers proved to be a definite technical issue due to their placement at the beginning and end of a sloped u-turn. Numerous (really numerous) deep sand sections(several of which had to be run to maintain speed and position) and a torturously long, deep sand run up added more than enough spice to this bouillabaisse of pain. Our merry band had a decent day with Chris Behrman 2nd (CX4), Howard Hesterberg 3rd (55+), Jeff Welch 4th (35+), Bob Pugh 4th (45+), Jack Brown 13th (CX4 and an unknown placing in 35+) and me, somewhat ignominiously, 28th (CX4) and 27th (35+). Yep, I just can't get enough of that painful stuff, so I gotta go and do the double up racing back-to-back. My 7th, 8th and 9th trips up the sand run up were the very definition of pain. A lady was talking to me, telling me to "keep up the pace". I said, "Ma'm, this is the pace".

Thanks to everyone for cheering for us and thanks to my teammates for the post race libations! I'll post pics when they are emailed to me. Thanks, too, to Jenna for coming with us and helping out with all of our race needs and for also putting up with our numerous pee breaks on the drive down!