Love. Flying. Gratitude.

Love. Hundreds of times every year I drive across the Howe Bridge. Each time I do, I look to the river below with longing. The American River parkway is a treasure.

I try hard to exercise my soul in ways of goodness as much as I can, so I begrudgingly think this, knowing that I am being bad in doing so - but, I think it anyway. I am selfish when it comes to that trail. When people think Sacramento is a cowtown and express they have no desire to live here, I am secretly elated. I love the thought of keeping our beautiful, serene, nature laden trail all to ourselves.

Love. When I had both my boys, I considered myself overwhelmingly, lucky. I had what I call, postpartum elation. I would look at them in total awe, amazed they were mine. Luke races now as a pro in the mountain bike world of endurance racing, and is currently training an Iron Man team down south. Joe oversees Lucca and Roxy, is an artist and taught mom to kayak last year. For many reasons, I am still in awe of my boys.

Ten days after Joe's 27th birthday, he and I along with my kind of adopted kid, Cameron, raced as a team along the beautiful gorgeous, even though that day, sweltering, American River Parkway in the 2009 Eppie's Great Race.

Joe did an excellent job as always with the kayak, the coolest part of the race both figuratively and literally.

Cameron, who also celebrated his 23 birthday the night before, ran a good race, though with the combination of the after birthday beer blues and the high humidity, loudly cursed his way through the last mile and for a half hour afterward, or so I heard.

But I am grateful for Cameron. Because he ran, I got to ride.

Also racing that day for Team Lucca, was our really fast team of Dale with the run, Craig on the bike and Jeff in the kayak. Dale is always one of our fastest guys with any race and did the 5.8 mile run in around 38 minutes. Craig rode like the wind on his brand new Trek Madone. Jeff did such a great job with the kayak. It is just a matter of working the transitions and finding each other faster to make this one heck of a great team next year.

Flying: I was beyond happy that I got to ride my bike. Before my birthday last year, I decided to buy myself, for the first time, a present - a beautiful all carbon, light as can be, Cannondale Synapse SL3 road bike. Riding this bike is like flying.

Even though I am now happily back to commuting to work, riding around 100 miles a week, I set out on that Eppie's course with great trepidation.

You see the bike is pretty great, the rider not so. Last fall, the week before Thanksgiving, I crashed, broke my elbow, tore my tricep and didn't ride again for 3 months.

Regardless, I gave it my best shot and while a far cry from Craig's 28 minutes of flying down the trail, my 39 minutes was for me, sheer joy.

Gratitude. I am so thankful that we are lucky enough to live in a place with such a truly lovely bike trail. Thank you Joe for racing with mom. Thanks Dale, Craig, Jeff and Cameron, you guys are all wonderful. Love having you all at the restaurants. Love that you were willing to get up bright and early and come race with me.

More race pictures of Eppie's Great race in photo stream