Cohutta 65, The Short version of the "Shorty"

Yes!!! I did it. I took care of all my little and big mistakes from the Ouachita Challenge and everything turned out just as I had hoped. Starting out, I knew I would be racing some really fast women and I said I would just be happy with 3rd place. Then, when we lined up (all the fast women lined up at the front, does anyone have a photo?) I decided it would be tough to get in the top 5 and I would be happy with 5th, haha. I was lined up next to Danielle Musto, Lisa Randall, Ursula Sandefeur, and there were also some unknown fast ladies from Wisconsin. Well, it turns out that after 65 miles I had to sprint for the finish and ended up winning the sprint for 2nd place. Ursula finished 2 seconds after me---she is such an impressive racer. After I passed three women out on the course and was working to hold my 2nd place, I knew if anyone was going to come back to reel me in it would be Ursula..and it was. She really made me work to keep it. Congrats to her, and to Danielle for 1st place. It was fun and I was really happy to not be racing the 100 as the skies just opened up about 5 hours into the race. That made the finish times a little longer than expected but I know some people doing the 100 miler must have had a tough, epic day out there. Thanks to Barb and New Leaf Adventures for the great race! Also, congrats to Amanda Carey (recently Wobble-naughted, also ;) for killing it in the Women's 100 mile race.

I will post a more complete race report with photos soon. For now, I need to catch up on schoolwork!