This week has gone by really fast. Last weekend was the big WORS Sheboygan race. Unfortunately, I developed Hives the friday before the race and was unsure if I would race on sunday. It's a 7 hr drive from Duluth to get to Sheboygan. Luckily, Scott planned on racing as well and we met Doug part way there to ride share. It gets to be a long drive and Doug is pretty talkative. I always like it when Scott comes along. It's much harder to travel without Scott, as Doug has found without Anne. When Scott and I were first married, I rarely traveled with him to races, and then I would only go to races if I were racing (which back then was not often).

I was still itching sunday of the race, but decided to race anyway as we had traveled so far to get there. I didn't feel great at any point in the race, but I was able to hold on and win. The race course was a little different this year than last. They added some singletrack and a stream crossing. The leadout wasn't as long before the racers hit singletrack. They had added a section early on in the race. It created a bottleneck early on. The elite women only started 15 seconds behind the elite men. When we got to the singletrack there was a line of men waiting to get through. I found a line around the group and had passed around 10 men within that first section of singletrack. The stream crossing had a steep hill coming out of it (last year we rode a bridge across the stream). The hill was really slick and then all the momentum was lost to get up the longer hill on the other side. I would have liked to have felt better and push it harder, but I was pretty thankful that I wasn't trying to get out of my skin during the race. Afterward, I started itching again. I still have hives, although they are slowly getting better. Turns out I am allergic to oats and that is what seemed to cause it. Oats are in alot of foods, especially powerbars. I told myself no more racing until the itching stops, but there is a CX race at Spirit Mtn in Duluth tomorrow that I may just race anyway. Because of a tatoo convention at Spirit, the race will be held at the bottom of the hill last I heard.

It has snowed off and on for three days and is finally accumulating. They sure like to use salt in duluth! Scott and I were almost going sideways up Mesaba when we hit a patch of ice on our way to work today. We had to finally turn the heat on in our house. We could almost see our breath inside yesterday. I usually have to wear a hat and scarf, along with a wool sweater in our home. We should be getting our wood pellet stove hooked up and ready for use next week.