Billy Ray Valentine, Capricorn.

Lyna and I had plans to wake up early Saturday and head to Park City for the 26th annual Tour Des Suds, end of summer race/party. A fun 7 mile hill climb starting at the City Park. The wetaher was supposed to clear up for it, so i was excited, having missed it the last couple of years. Woke up Saturday a.m. to clouds and cold in Salt Lake. Lyna bowed out, choosing to hit the shoreline for 3 hours in the afternoon, so I headed up solo. I-80 up Parleys was nasty, like a pond covered in ice, once I got to the summit i got better, but the snow on the Mountains looked a bit troubling. I decided to go on and see if the race was on. I got to the city park and saw that people had number plates, so i went and registered. I wanted an hour warm up at least, but chose to sit in the heated car instead, just like everyone else. The turn out was low, due to the snowy weather, the costumes were not as exciting as years past, but at 10am about 70 of us headed up the mountain.

Wanting to warm up quick, I took a flyer up the road, turned left towards Main Street and about halfway up looked back to see a sizable gap, i was not maxed but let off a little. Some unknown came by e first, then Sager, then Kenny Jones. Shannon made it up to me by Daly's then dropped his chain. Sager, kenny and Unknown took a bit of a wrong turn so I caught back on right before we crossed the Gyuardsmans road heading towards the Mid Mtn trail. The unknown guy dropped off the pace at this point.

At this point the Cyclocross workout began. Most of the trail was ridable, even though it had upwards of 6 inches of snow on it, however some of the switchbacks were too tight and you would just slide out, so dismount, jog, remount. After a few of these my cleats just had blocks of ice on them, expended energy trying to get back in the pedals, then gave up. We popped out onto the Guardmans road, which was covered in slush and ice, I was in 4th at this point, while stopped trying to de-ice my cleats, Shannon cme by me, i gave up again and remounted, on the last straight away I went hard and passed shannon for 4th place. Ouch.

The worse part of the day was the cold, wet ride back to the car.

Sunday am had a nice early CX workout at Wheeler Farm.