The first NW CUP race of the season went well. The trails for practice were fairly dry on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Thursday I made 6 runs, 5 on Friday and just two on Saturday (a rest day). We had one pre-race run on Sunday before it started to rain. The course was very muddy for the actual race with over 120 riders on the trail before we (Cat II women) raced. The Cat II Open Women's class (ages 19 and above) had 22 riders. Winner's time was 3:29:68. The last person's time was 4:52:77 (about a 1 min 23 second spread). My time was 4:14:85 for 14th place. I was very pleased with my time and happy to be in the middle of the pack. I didn't have a very good race run. The trail was slower than I expected and I lost a lot of speed in several spots and had to pedal hard to try to maintain a descent speed. What I did well was corner in the muddy tight corners and my rolling drops were excellent with plenty of speed. Another great thing was that Fox was at the race, and they fine tuned my fork and my shock; thus the bike rode amazingly well (almost like a brand new bike). I'm looking forward to the next race