First race of the season.

My boy, OH, hey-o, my finance (what!? see here if you missed the story), used to be a major mountain bike racer before he started school over here years ago on the rainy side of the mountains at Bastyr to get his degree. He's continued to ride bikes but has since decided to road bike race and April 9 just happened to be his first race of the season (a crit, which I'm told is a criterium... and I've been told about 2,000 times what this means and I'm still a little unclear. I think it's sort of like a time trial? Or a means to get "ranked" for road racers?) Anyway, whatever it was, I didn't have to work on yet another Saturday (BIG DEAL!!) so I got to go.

Here he is waiting to sign in. He complained about this as he never had to do this mountain bike racing because he was a rockstar and someone always did it for him... since he's relatively new at road racing, he has to start at the bottom and work his way up....which is what the crit race is for (I think...) 

And getting ready. OH, did I mention? My stubborn, lovely man had been very sick all week with a fever, cold, cough and no voice. He woke up this morning with a high fever, sweats and generally felt like crap. BUT, he decided that the adrenaline would be enough to get him through the race. Let's just say we had differing opinions about him racing this day but I was the supportive girlfriend. I will say, though, that I did get to hear those special words, "Jenn, you might have been right." Oh, you don't say?

All decked out and ready to warm up.

And again. He doesn't road race for bud light (oh the memories of bud light years ago in the midwest...), I think that used to be one of his mountain biking sponsors.

And his number... all official. Everything made me sort of want to race road bikes. It was weird considering how much I HATED the dumb bike when I was restricted to it trying to get over my achilles injury and broken foot. But something about it made me want to get out there on a bike and kick those girls' butts. I KNOW. I couldn't believe I wanted to race bikes either. Who knows... maybe one day I'll just try it. 

On the track and warming up. I got to walk around and enjoy the non-rainy, beautiful morning.

And at the start line... ready to go... He's somewhere in there. It was a pack.

A view of the lake that I shot while walking around while he was warming up.

And one more with the space needle in the background. He did GREAT considering that he had over 100 degree fever and felt like crap. Not sure when his next race is but hopefully he won't be sick for that one. When he was done, we headed home as we had 4 teenage boys staying with us (Bailey and 3 friends). They came over to go to the sounders/mariners game and crashed at our place. So we made them all breakfast and heard funny stories about Bailey and then they were off to the game. We spent the rest of the weekend laying relatively low... which, at the tail end of busy season, is all I really wanted to do anyway. Wouldn't have had it any other way.