Charge!

Saturday was Pickett's Charge, the 5th mt bike race in the Oregon XC Classic Series, and I was helping out at registration and timing...as usual. And boy was it HOT!!!!! I didn't burn like several years...but we roasted. Pickett's is usually waaaay more disorganized than the Chainbreaker, but it all works out in the end. Getting set up for morning registration was a bit of a mess, but finally we were ready. Here we are after the initial crush.

Here is the last wave of beginners waiting to start.
And here we are trying to get out of the sun while we wait for finishers. For those not familiar with how we do it, all riders have two pull tags pinned to their back. After they cross the finish line, we're waiting down a bit and pull off the pull tags. One then goes to the official timer, and one goes on that white board you can see in the back, so that people can see their placements immediately.
Like I said, it was HOT HOT HOT!!!!!! Over 90 degrees down in the flats below Phil's. I continually slathered on 50 block sunscreen, but I still got quite brown. Attendance was way down, and I'm not really sure why. Chainbreaker had more, but that attendance was down too. Interesting.

Sunday was the Heaven Can Wait breast cancer walk. I've done that every year, and despite my legs I wanted to try. So I met Cheryl and Rachel and we headed down. There were over 2,600 people there, a 10% increase over last year. I started off OK...but it quickly became apparent that it was going to hurt. I made it the entire way (5k), but man it hurt! I cannot wait to see Dr Smith on the 15th and get this surgery show on the road!!!