Weird racing and a dog cake

We did two races last weekend, starting with the Tour de Dung in Sequim. This race was put on by Ted's team, so it was good for us to be able to go and volunteer. The fields were small - the 1/2/3 women's race had 8! Ted attacked from the gun in his race, and ended up in a 36 mile break that was eventually caught.

The women's race was weird. An attack went in the first few miles, leaving four of us off the front, and all four teams represented in the break, if you could call it that. None of the ladies behind were chasing, so it was pretty boring. It was not long at all before we had minutes on the others. Three of us in the break were working very well together, rotating through and keeping the pace fairly high. We also had one woman who sat on and refused to work. I have never really raced with her before, but apparently she did the same thing a couple weeks ago. She offered up a variety of excuses, including the fact that she has a job and goes to school, which prevents her from training a lot. I could not believe she said that! None of us are professionals, all having jobs and lives.

She told us she was going to throw up and was not strong enough to pull through. Our repeated attempts to drop her showed that she was definitely strong enough to be up with us, so we knew she was capable of pulling through. I had no doubt that she would sit on for the whole race and sprint at the finish. No understanding of etiquette at all. We eventually forced her to pull through by sitting on her wheel, but she continued to sit on regularly. If she only would have tried, I think we all would have been fine with it, but she thought it was fine to just sit on and do nothing. We were all incredibly annoyed and worked together against her, eventually dropping her. She is definitely creating a bad taste in the women's peloton, and will soon have very few friends to race with.

The race came down to a sprint for the three of us, and I ended up at the front for the final kilometer. Oops. I knew I was the weakest sprinter out of the three of us, and I ended up 3rd.

We headed south to Woodland, Washington for the Piece of Cake road race on Sunday. I woke up Sunday morning with a horrible sore throat and was not enthusiastic about racing. I opted to do the cat 3 men's race with Ted in the morning, rather than waiting until the afternoon for the women's race. I try to support women's racing, but it was very appealing to get home at 7:30 pm, rather than 11:30 pm, so I did the men's race. It was a pack of about 70, and I opted to sit in. With how I was feeling, I was just happy to hang in. Ted attacked a couple times, but found his legs unwilling to respond, so he sat in too. This weekend we have the luxury of racing close to home in Cheney, which will be really nice after a few weekends of driving.

Monday marked one year since I adopted Hitcher, so I had to mark the occasion with a cake, of course. I also say it is his birthday, since we really don't know how old he is. He even got a small slice of cake, and he almost never gets human food. Speak of the devil... I think someone needs to go for a walk before I head to work, as I have now been brought two shoes and a sunglass case. That's my cue.