Hello and welcome to An Altitude Problem, where the focus of the week is racing. Race season is official. It's here. It's big, and bad, and here. I am a nervous wreck. I just want to train, train, train, and never stop.

The weather is beyond nice. Maybe still a bit windy, but nothing like those horrible windy days of early and mid-May. About four trails are dry enough to ride, but one of those is the three and a half mile loop outside my door.

Yesterday was the BolderBOULDER. I ran with my friend, we stayed the night before the race with a couple we know who live in Boulder, close to the action downtown. I slept light because I had a bad feeling that I was going to go to sleep, forget where I was, forget that my friend a few feet away was not B, and I would wake up spooning her. Or worse, I would not wake up, she would, and would not know how to go about telling me to stop snuggling her while keeping both of our dignities intact. Add that to the excitement of the event and a comfortable, but strange bed, and having hydrated way too enthusiastically the day before, and you have me, lying there for hours in the dark. I actually tried counting sheep, visualizing one sheep running across the pasture, then two sheep running across the pasture, then three sheep, and so forth...I got all the way to twenty before I wanted to start killing the sheep. Finally, at three a.m., my friend sneaked out of the room to use the bathroom, and I followed her, meeting her in the hall and giggling together at the absurdity of the fact that we should be sleeping, not peeing. Back in bed, I finally drifted off and dreamed that I missed the race, except it was on Keystone Mountain and I had lost my timing tag and took too long brushing my teeth and for that, I was livid. And then the dream was cut short by her alarm ringing at 6:00 and she bailed out of bed to shut it off and collapsed on the floor against her two-year-old's crib, her leg asleep, numb and lifeless. The kid started whimpering, she started laughing, I was asking if she was okay, and there was no more sleeping for us. We went to the kitchen, ate breakfast, pinned our race bibs on, and headed out the door, our host giving us a ride around many detours to the race start.

We found a pace that was comfortable and finished in 1 hr, 10 minutes. Not exactly a race pace, but we had too much fun to really want to pick it up. We might have finished a bit faster had we not kept having to change our pace to match the bands every few blocks, skipping and clapping, shaking our hips, whatever we could manage that matched the music while maintaining our forward momentum, high-fiving bystanders, zig-zagging those slower than us, running across the entire street full of people just to get hosed down by a water gun or a sprinkler, grabbing at marshmallows and bubbles and other odd bits of food and miscellany as it flew over our heads. We bypassed the slip-n-slide and kiddie pool that others were flopping down in on their way past, and whooped and yelled at the great costumes. It was a great day for people watching, and the chatter was loud and entertaining. At the end, we picked up our pace and charged into Folsom Field, flying around the runners who didn't quite have a finish sprint left in them, and crossed the finish line, high-fiving and just generally high. It was a fun day, a fun run with over fifty thousand runners, and over almost as soon as it had started. Our starting wave was 8:33, and by 9:43 we were done and wondering what was next. We caught an RTD bus to an intersection as close as possible to the friend's house we had stayed at, and walked up the hill from downtown to their house, showered, threw our clothes in the car, buckled in her two year old, and hit the road for home. We stopped in Golden for lunch, a falafel in a sunny courtyard, being watched by a great dane tied to the table next to us, then took the canyon back to the interstate.

I got home and was greeted by Andy, thrilled that his mommy was back home after a night away, and beyond ready for a bike ride. We both begged until B decided to come along and rode the loop by our house, then a loop down the the pond a mile away from our house, where Andy swam and retrieved a homeless flip-flop that he found in the grass and raced in excited circles and shook himself all over us. We got back home and I fell asleep, exhausted from the minimal sleep the night before and the excitement of the morning.

This morning, I awoke determined to not do anything. Nothing at all but hang around the house, maybe work a little, eat healthy food, drink lots of water, and be ready for the bike race tomorrow night. That was before I remembered that I really knew nothing about the race course, and that it was probably marked by now. I arranged to meet a friend over in Frisco to go ride it together, just a leisurely ride... Then another friend called. Would I like to go for a quick ride in the Ranch? She never calls, and she really sounded like it might be important to her because she rarely gets out of the house, and it did sound like fun. We met at 9:30 and rode a loop together, then I came home, loaded my bike and Bobby's bike (which he had reluctantly agreed to let me ride) on my car, grabbed my grocery bags, loaded Andy, and went to Dillon where I dropped off my bike for a pre-race tune-up, bought groceries, ate a quick lunch of bing cherries, strawberries and raw cashews, then hit the road for frisco, where I drove right to where my friend lived...and it wasn't her house.

I actually wondered if she had neglected to tell me that her landlord had painted the place and put a different entryway in. I was positive I was in the right spot. I have driven there a half-dozen times. I have walked there in the snow after last call, then raced through the snow the next morning to catch the bus home in time to see Bobby, who had so nicely let me go out for girls night. I know where this chick lives, but her house flat wasn't there. I drove around the block. Nothing. I drove around the next block. Nothing. I finally called her. "Why can't I find your freaking house??" I demanded. She laughed and gave me her address. In my defense, I was only two blocks over, and all those streets off of Main look alike. I still don't know what wires crossed, but that must be what is feels like to lose one's mind. That totally helpless feeling that nothing is as it should be and the things that should be familiar are strange to you and your friend's gray townhome with steps up to the front door and crescent windows and a sloping driveway is now a cream and green townhome with a ground level entry and square windows and a flat driveway.

I got there, unloaded B's bike, and we hit the bikepath for the Frisco Peninsula, Andy making me proud by trotting obediently beside me, barely even noticing that his mommy had forgotten his leash, sitting at stoplights, staying a nice two feet away from me as cool as a cucumber just as if he had been leashed. We rode a few pointless circles, wasting a mile or two trying to find the starting line and finally, with the help of my friend's iphone map, found it and rode the race course. I am a little worried about it. I am going to have to do two 6.8 mile laps, and the elevation gain felt rather significant to my legs, a bit sore from overuse lately. And I am racing with tougher broads this year than last year. I decided to ride in the Sport category.

Andy was limping a little when we got back. I inspected his pads, and saw a little bit of pink on the bottoms of his front feet, where the skin was rubbed thin. He flinches when I press on them. He may have run a little farther that he should have on the rocks and pavement. He is such a happy boy, and so fiercely loyal and eager to please, it is often hard to miss the warning signs that he is overdoing it and literally killing himself to please us. Now he is passed out on the windowsill. Poor boy. He has gone on a 14 mile ride with me already this year and did not act like it hurt him, but today was a warmer day and the ground conditions were rougher and the 11 or so miles we did today wiped him out. I feel rather terrible about that, and have kissed his head and scratched his ears and promised to be more careful with my sweet boy many times already this evening. It is hard to believe we are so attached to and have so much love for a sixty pound bundle of muscle and fur and silky ears and gentle brown eyes and toothy grin, with a permanent worry wrinkle on his forehead as he tries so valiently to understand us and protect us and discern our every need and perform his duties for us that his little doggy brain almost overheats.

And now, I should go to bed. B has not yet emerged from his home office, where he has been other than for the ten minutes it took him to eat dinner, since he got home from work. There will be no riding for me tomorrow, until the race at 6pm. I need to work tomorrow so I am not even tempted, and as luck would have it, there are arrivals that need my attention. Wish me luck, faithful few. Tomorrow evening, 6pm. The moment of truth...

Tomorrow also markes the passage of another year, bringing the total to eight years since that hot, windy June day when B drove me to the church, all distracted by his Cinderella dressed in yellow, yours truly still under the impression that life was like a fairy tale, we wed, drove into the sunset, didnt stop driving until we hit the ocean, and finally began getting to know each other. We plan to celebrate all the good times we've had since that day this weekend. (Cheering from the sidelines and two free beers and hanging out with stinky bikers is not our idea of romantic. Too many skinny people in spandex tend to ruin the ambiance.) Our half-formed plan involves a cabin in the woods, hot springs, a hiking trail or two, and no men with shaved legs and no women in smelly polypro.

Right, bedtime...