My feet stink.

Something that I have discovered about being an intern is that it's one of the most dreadful experiences of my life. In the few months that I have been labeled with such a (what I have discovered) demeaning title, I have found that such entails being treated as an intern when it comes to judgment of competence (which, let's face it, I agree with that most of the time) so few responsibilities are allotted and observation is expected, but the definition of "intern" disappears when it comes to scheduling expectations. August isn't far off, right?

I have yet to write about my race last Saturday. My brain kind of flies everywhere and I don't really get anything written down other than little tidbits of my cognition, but I'm okay with that. Saturday, we woke up in the wee hours of the morning, got dressed, and went outside to pack up our bikes and stuff. To our dismay, it was raining, cold, and showed no signs of stopping. Park City is a good 45 minute drive from our house, and it would be insanely disappointing to get there to find out the race was cancelled, and with gas prices as high as they are, I was reluctant. Fortunately, when we got there, it had stopped raining, so we weren't getting rained on, but we did have to deal with the results of the moisture on the trails. It was cold, very cold, and we found out it had snowed in Park City earlier that morning. I was pretty excited, still, and got ready behind the starting line for the race. I talked to the other girls in my category (all two of them) and learned a couple of important things. The first was that one girl had been mountain biking for at least 8 years ("It's been about eight years since my last official race") and lived down the street from the trail we were about to race on. The other girl was riding a Specialized Safire. Now, my bike is pretty good, but the Safire is uh MAY zing. I felt pretty confident, though. The race was 7 miles long, and I bike that regularly to work, so it won't be a big deal, right?

They sent us off, and my thoughts were, "I just don't want to be last." The race started with two very steep, very long climbs, and after the first one, my goal changed to, "I just don't want to have to get off my bike and walk." Well, the two climbs were divided by a flat area filled with switchbacks and lots of mud, and I fell down. A lot. When I got to the second insane climb, I got off my bike and thought, "That's okay. I just don't want to have to stop and rest." I made it to the top of the climb, walking my bike, and couldn't even see the next person in front of me. I actually kind of liked that, and resolved to just race against the mountain instead of against the other two people in my group.

The rest of the trail was absurd. I fell down more times than I can count, and one of those times resulted in me landing in a tree. I had no problem pulling off to the side and letting the pro riders lap me (they had to do two laps, while I "only" had to do one). Pretty soon, my goal to not have to stop was abolished, and I decided I just wanted to finish the race. About two and a half miles into it, though, I was actually praying to get a flat tire. If I had a flat, then I could not finish and no one would blame me. If I didn't get a flat, then I had to deal with falling and bruising and crying and screaming, "WHO THE DEVIL DECIDED THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA?!" I had to climb a mountain. I had to climb an actual mountain. I got to the top of it, and saw that the rest of the trail was just going back down the mountain on the other side, and became very frustrated with the pointlessness of racing. Why did I climb the mountain if where I need to be is at the bottom? It seemed to me like a complete waste of time. So I made my way down the mountain, slowly and carefully. I had never experienced a switchback in my, oh, one month of mountain biking, and I learned that my lack of skills required me to either get off my bike and walk them, or to attempt the switchback and end up with my entire body on the ground (or in a tree, as an instance would have it). As I was making my way, I heard the announcer at the finish line say into the mic, "Rider, 426!" and I did a little victory dance on my bike for Bobby, who had apparently just finished his 11 mile race (which started 10 minutes before mine, was four miles longer, and here I was, still on the freakin mountain). Not long after, I heard a "click click click click" with every rotation of my tire. I got off my bike and saw a stick in my chain ring. Bobby has told me time and time again to trust my bike, trust my tires, blah blah blah, so if there's something in the trail, just run over it. It's not going to throw me off my bike and kill me. With that in mind, I ran over a stick (more like a branch) and it had tangled itself completely in my chain ring, pushing the chain off the ring. Going down the mountain, this would not be a big deal, but there is a gradual climb afterward to get to the finish line. Without a chain, I can't pedal, and I certainly was not going to walk to the finish line. I wrestled the stinking thing out and had to guess when it came to sticking the chain back on. The wrestling took a good several minutes, but with the finish line so close, I yelled at my bike. "NO! I AM ALMOST DONE! YOU WILL WORK, GOSH DARNIT!" When I got to the bottom, there were some volunteers working the race that were directing people where to go, and they looked kind of surprised to see me. I just laughed and said, "Guess what? I DIDN'T DIE!" and headed off on my way. When I got to the finish line, I saw Bobby run up and start hollering away. Apparently, in the twenty minutes since he had finished the race, he had convinced himself that I was lying dead somewhere on the trail. He gave every first aid person he saw the third degree, asking if they saw anyone in a full face go down. He told me he was proud of me, and yanno, I'm pretty proud of me too. I certainly didn't do well (the person that finished before me finished 37 minutes earlier), but I wanted to quit so badly, and I finished the race. And because I didn't quit, I still got last in my category, but that still meant third place!

After we checked the results to see how Bobby ranked, we went back to the car and Bobby started putting the bikes on the rack. When he got to mine, he paused for a second, and then checked the rear suspension lock. "Oops." When he was putting my bike on the rack that morning, he had to turn the lock on the back so the bike would fit on the rack better, and had forgotten to unlock it. So not only did I finish the race, I rode the entire thing hard tail (hence the many falls) with all of the weight of a full suspension bike. That pretty much makes me a super hero.