Sunday Smack-down

On your marks....

OK, in your best TV announcer voice:  Sunday, Sunday, Sunday....Smmmmmackdown!!!  This is how it happened:  I was talking to Steve on Friday and I told him Sonja and I were planning on a Shadow ride Sunday.  He and Anthony were going to ride Shadow too so I suggested we all ride together.  He said no: we'll give you 20 minutes and the losers have to make us lemon bars (assuming that Son and I would be on the losing end of this deal).  I, of course, said:  Bring it. And then called Sonja knowing that she would never, EVER, turn that kind of challenge down.  

Troy (PIC's awesome hubby) volunteered to be the official starter....and at 8:10am this morning we were off.  As an added bonus, Tyler Boo Yah started 8 minutes ahead of us.....we had a rabbit.  PIC and I discussed at the beginning of the ride that all we needed to do was match our awesome ride of last week, our own personal smackdown of 3:30 for the Shadow Loop.  We didn't need to go all out from the start or anything silly like that.  We were completely on the same page.  Except that we decided to start our 2 minute pulls 8 minutes into the ride.  Uh-huh Smackdown.  All I can say is that 30 minutes in, I was solidly in my race-pace heart rate zone.  

Up Deer Creek.  Up High Grade.  Down High Grade.  We gained a couple of minutes on Tyler - how did we know you ask?  

I think the S&M for me and Son is really only fitting....

Troy was keeping tabs on all of us (Tour-style naturally except that he wasn't on a motorcycle)!

Up Shadow, working together and working hard

We last saw Troy at the bottom of Shadow.  I thought our time was limited now only because Steve-O had sounded so confident when he said he would catch us up Little Cub.  But up, up, up Little Cub we went with no signs of Steve and Anthony.  Sonja was feeling great at this point and I was struggling to keep up....but my awesome training partner said no worries, we can do this.  She started taking longer pulls and kept tabs on me and we got to the top.  Now the fun starts with a pretty long and curvy downhill.  No stopping.  No talking.  Just riding.  And then we were at Deer Creek and still no sign of the boys.  At this point we both knew we could do it.  And crush our 3:30 from last week.  We passed our normal point of letting up and cruising to the cars and kept at it (much to my surprise)!  And then we were done.  No boys in sight.  Tyler was waiting for us at the bottom - he cruised in at 3:22 (by himself!!).  As for the girls???  3:17. And Steve and Anthony:  3:08.  Well within the 20 minute smackdown range.  

So really, the only question now is...What do we win?  Lemon bars do sound pretty tasty at this point but I also like the idea of domestique duty for the rest of the year - hauling water bottles and food, pulling us up Epic and Shadow etc.