I have been mostly off the grid the last 9 or 10 days…. but I have been having SOME fun!  We were heading to Lake Tahoe for a bike ride…. Sierra to the Sea…. a week long 420 mile bike tour,  but more on that in another post.

Since I was going to be in Tahoe all day Saturday, the day before the ride, and since they happened to be having a half marathon…. well, you know… I had to do it.

The race was a point to point race from the top of a grade north east of State Line, Tahoe, back into town. The forecast was for cold but it was actually just a little cool waiting for the start of the race.  Clay, who had come to Tahoe for the ride, rode up the hill to meet me….

I signed up for the course thinking that it would be a downhill course… I was half right.

As I was enjoying a nice fast pace down the hill, I noticed that at mile 6 I was suddenly looking to my right at the water…. at my level.  Uh oh, that means the rest is UP and down…..

I felt really good all the way through the race I felt strong.  My legs felt like they had more to give even on the uphills, but my lungs could not keep up…. strange for me…. I blame the elevation. I pushed as well as I could throughout and finished in 1:46:38.  As I stated before, Clay was riding along and he stopped from time to time and snapped some pictures:

Additionally, one of the nice features of the race is that they included free downloads of their photographers’ pics. They automatically uploaded them to my facebook account:

Of  course I was a bit  concerned about the effect of racing 1400 ft downhill on the subsequent ride…..  but more about that later…