The 55-miler 60-miler

When I first started road biking in June, Lorna mentioned a charity ride she wanted to do for the Make a Wish Foundation. You could choose between the 100, 60, 30, or 10 mile rides, and Lorna wanted to do the 60. I kind of latched on to the idea and kept it as my training goal as I rode all summer.

So last weekend we headed down to St. George and made a Brower girls trip out of it. Natalie flew in from L.A. (with her cute little pregnant belly!), and we all drove down together Friday morning.

Little side note, on the way down we drove through Kolob Canyons. It's right off I-15 (somewhere past Cedar City) and you'd never even know it was there. Take the 15-minute detour and see it sometime, it's beautiful:

We made it to St. George and dropped off our stuff at the house, then got back in the car to drive the 60-mile bike route to see what we'd gotten ourselves into. BAD idea. We kept driving up hill after hill and all started psyching ourselves out. I'd never ridden more than 30 miles, and 60 miles of hills sounded like a terrible idea.

Another side note, but an important one: This was not a race. They didn't have anyone timing the event, and it was just a charity ride. But the Brower boys are very competitive, and weeks before the ride Daniel and Kevin turned this into a wife race. Dan was always telling me I had to beat Malorie, and apparently Kevin was telling Malorie the same thing. And then Mark put $100 on the line for the winner...

That night we had dinner at a restaurant called Xetava. Delicious seafood and amazing bread pudding, yum. We spent some time in the hot tub chatting, then went to go call our husbands before we went to bed. Malorie and I couldn't get a hold of Kevin or Daniel, turns out they were talking to each other. Then they each called their wives and gave us pep talks on how to beat each other.

Saturday, race day! Here we are ready to go:

Apparently I didn't know what was going on.

Getting ready to start:

After the first 15 miles, we all felt great. The hills that looked so bad in the car turned out to be long and gradual, so they weren't hard at all. We got to the halfway point, which turned out to only be a little over 27 miles instead of 30. I don't know how they left off 5 whole miles from a 60 mile ride...

Lorna, Mal and I stuck together for almost the entire race (with Karen not far behind!). It was fun to ride and talk. But 5 miles before the finish line, I decided to make my move. I started sprinting up a hill, and never stopped. I came pretty close to puking, but for $100 it was worth it.

Did I mention I'm a little bit competitive?

Here's us after the race. 55 miles in 3 1/2 hours.

After recovering at the house for a while, we went to the Anasazi Steak House. It was the perfect post-ride meal. Cheese fondue, steak and shrimp (that you cook yourself on a 700 degree slab of granite) and chocolate fondue for dessert. If you are ever in St. George, I would highly recommend it. It was deeeeelicious.

It was such a fun girls weekend! And next time, we're totally doing the 100-miler.