I called Ross right after the race in Richmond to tell him the good news. He was just making his bottles on the West coast to go out for a fun ride when I had finished racing on the East coast. He was super excited that things went well because the two of us had been so mystified by last weekend. So my last words were, "Have a good ride honey, see ya soon in Heathrow!"

Unfortunately, the evil trail at the end of our road that ate my brand new arm and legwarmers has now claimed another victim. Ross's crash was pretty horrific and I have to send my heartfelt thank you and hugs and gratitude to Trish Sinclair, Ann Yew and Day Deans-Buchan for being by Ross's side for more than 24 hours while I raced home to see him in the hospital. We are also so lucky to have so many good friends so to start the list thank you to Paul, Lisa, Brent, Walt and Bill so far. All of the rest of you who are sending happy thoughts and wishes I am working on trying to thank you all in time. Read on for some photographic evidence but I warn you it ain't pretty.....

Ross is featured in Inside Triathlon this month ripping up the trails in Alabama (from 2007)

Well I didn’t leave QUITE yet for Alabama. There were a number of compelling reasons why I changed my flight to leave a week later and skip the BUMP mountain bike race all of which added up to a change of plans. I was pretty stressed out getting ready to leave for six weeks of racing and when I up and decided to make it five weeks it suddenly became much more manageable and a lot of stress lifted. Mission accomplished. It was unfortunate to miss the BUMP race but that mountain bike race didn’t really help me last year given I LOST the XTERRA after I did it.. ha! That was not why I didn’t go… I really did need to stay in Victoria for the weekend because we met a half brother Ross and his siblings only recently found out about. It was very cool. So besides lots of family stuff… here is how I spent my extra bonus week in Victoria….

Welcome the new 2009 Fox F-Series fork to the program...

That is the plan for the next six weeks. This Thursday I leave for a long trip that will include some Southern Barbeque, some Civil War statues, some bad English weather punctuated by hilarious jokes from Ross’ uncles, some delicious Czech pizza (yes, Czech pizza tastes good because of the beer) and some nice French wine down by the Mediterranean. I am pretty stoked already. This past weekend was all about adding the last dash of spice to my training soup, with some intergalactic heart rates and record setting times….

Then seven days of antibiotics. This was the sickest I have been in a long, long time! That is what it took to heal the bronchitis and asthma symptoms I have been dealing with since Sea Otter. I have one more antibiotic pill to take and then I will be clear to go racing - just in time to ramp it up for Temecula.

I bet this was the best possible thing that could have happened….