I was relieved to return home and spend time with Sabe who was back for a brief stint from her bike guiding job with Trek Travel.  A new local women's mountain bike racing group, Mountain Moxie, collaborated with Little Bellas to put on a advanced mountain bike clinic.  Retired professional cross country racer, Audrey Augustin, World Cup gravity racer, Joanna Petterson, and myself taught the clinic.  Audrey Augustin was my first mountain biking coach of my career so my experience had really come full circle to be leading a clinic with her.  It was a blast.  We worked on climbing (and then descending) the infamous wall at Catamount.  We talked about pacing, race nutrition, and mental race preparation.

Today, we had our second Little Bellas Vermont summer session.  In three short words, it was awesome.  I always enjoy 'getting the band back together' and seeing the mentors, and I really enjoy seeing what the girls are going to bring on the particular day.  The weather gods were smiling on us today (thank you to whomever is listening up there), and the pouring rain stopped for our two hour session.  There was only one obvious thing we could do with the recent precipitation, we had to have a 'mud off'. Whatever group got the muddiest would win.  My group of youngsters, ages seven to nine, were completely game on for the challenge.  We stopped at a mud puddle and they picked up handfuls of mud and started rubbing it all over themselves, on their pj pants, jackets, faces, and legs.  Our mentors were quick to point out that people pay a lot of money for this spa treatment.  Our group of mud monsters took home the big W.