This past weekend was another busy one. Friday night we were off to Denver to catch the last Roller Dolls match of the season. The Bad Apples were squaring off with the Green Barretts for the title, and I wanted to be there to see who won! Jessica and I met up with Jesse and Brittany and we grabbed ourselves some front row seats down on the floor. The girls lined up for the first jam of the night and we were off!

The ladies battle to control things;

But more often than not, it was the Bad Apples that got their Jammer through first!

You never know what you are going to get at halftime, and that's half the fun. From weddings to competitive jump roping, to disco-roller skating... and this time it was passing out a huge number of hula hoops to anyone that was willing to come out on the floor and twist their thang! Jessica gladly jumped up and of course I wanted to see how fast she could get going;

Back to the action, and we're going to need a clean-up in turn number 4!

The match was never terribly close, and I was glad to see the Bad Apples take the trophy home for this year! Congrats ladies!

It would have been fun to go out and celebrate the match with the ladies, but there was racing to be done the next day. Saturday's race was up at the Xilinx course, which tends to offer up a pretty good venue. And the gang at Blue Sky Velo did a great job of putting together a quality event, including a course with lots of different features. It seemed insanely long, but at the same time, it was a little easier, when the lap counter was a lot smaller!

I had signed up for both the 35+ race and the single speed race. I figured I'd do the 35+ on the geared bike, mostly as a warm-up...and warm-up it was! I misjudged, and got to the race a bit later than I had hoped. And before I knew it, I realized that I was heading to the start line without so much as a single lap of the course!

Sadly, the sensations I had all week, were still spot-on when race time rolled around. The legs were no where to be found. I pretty much just rolled around the course, feeling uncomfortable, and unable to get into a good groove. The legs just weren't into it, and they convinced my focus to do the same.

I was worried while riding the geared bike, that this was going to be an ugly course for the single speed. But after a lap, I realized it really wasn't that bad, in fact, I think I preferred it. You had to give up some speed on the pavement, and were a bit over-geared in one section, but that's pretty typical with one gear.

Once again, they insisted on starting us barely a minute behind the 3s, and once again, we caught them within the first 1/4 mile of the course. The legs felt slightly better and smoother this lap, but FAR from good. And with all the traffic to deal with, on a course that was tough for passing, I didn't make much progress through the field. Even less after a huge group seemed to crash in front of me in the sand pit the first three times through. Ugh... frustration and crappy legs means riding around without focus again. I'm not sure why... but once again the single speed was way more fun though.

We didn't stick around for the Open race, since it had already been a long day, and we were off to Craig and Jeff's for some party time! Jeff had recently done some home improvements, and that served as reason enough for breaking out the jello shots, the grill and the pump for the keg.

The evening started with some relatively quiet games of beer pong;

And before we knew it, a very heated game of flip-cup was raging! But our team took off at the start, without looking back, and claimed a solid win!

The ladies had some heated games of beer-pong themselves;

Another great party at Jeff and Craigs... and as usual... that also meant Sunday was mostly spent trying to recover, rehydrate and clean out the system to get it back to normal operating parameters. -it was a long process.