Race Report: Fivemile Pass. Intermountain Cup mountain bike race series race #3

Rhubarb
This post is about racing my bike, but first, I need to share the bounty of rhubarb.  Last week I harvested 16 pounds of the stuff from a plant I started from a cutting brought back on the airplane from my Mom's plant about 6 or 8 years ago.  After being uprooted during the move from my old house to Drew's place, then nursed along in a pot for a year before finding a home in the ground, it is finally producing profusely.

So I put on my Salt Lake Valley Pie Queen crown and made rhubarb crisp on Tuesday night, which Drew and I ate.  So Wednesday night I made a strawberry rhubarb pie, which we ate and shared. Friday night I made a double batch of rhubarb crisp to take to the race on Saturday.

Racing
Saturday the weather looked really, really bad.  I thought it would be a repeat of last year. But after driving through snow and rain to get to Fivemile Pass, I was surprised by partly cloudy skies and a dry course.

Sometimes you can tell the course conditions by the environment in the green growlers.  See, this year was dry

as opposed to last year.

Just because it was mostly clear all day, did not mean it was warm. It was cold. Cold enough that on the hike-a-bike up Yellow Page hill, I could hardly feel my feet.  But by Yellow Page I was firmly in about 4th or 5th place in a field of 10, so I just plugged along.  I felt decent the whole race, but not spectacular.  The course was rocky, as usual, but the bobsled slalom canyon on the back side was rutted and loose to the point of being dangerous.  Luckily, most were taking this section slow, which helped me out since I'm not very speedy on that kind of trail.

Anyway, after a long race (44 miles for the pros, 23.5 for me) in which I clocked in at 2 hours and 2 minutes, team Revolution/Peak Fasteners had some good finishes.  Our new team member Bart Gillespie took 2nd wearing all white shorts.  Maybe that was Blake's inspiration for our new way-to-white team uniforms.

Bob S. took 5th even though his brain was already checked out to Hawaii.

And I made the podium taking 3rd!  Hooray.  A podium finish was one of my goals for the season, so I am pleased to have accomplished it so early in the season. 

Teammate Alison took home 6th.

The hardy racers that stuck around after the race shared some tasty rhubarb crisp with me.  Not a bad way to kick off the May-Madness racing block.