After a hectic week of preparations, we headed out to Coleman Alberta for round 1 of the Canadian Enduro Championships!  After sweeping the series in the ladies class last year, and committing to the ISDE this year, I decided to step it up a notch and bash bars with the guys in the "A" class!  The "A" class races on the same time schedule as the Pro class and does the same amount of laps.  In Alberta this would mean 3 laps of a loop approximately 47 km's in length.  If 6 1/2 hours of racing up rocky hills and bottomless mud pits isn't good practice for the ISDE then I don't know what is!! The Alberta guys did a great job organizing and setting up Round 1 of this year's CEC's, and after finishing my first day in 19th place out of 31 guys in the "A" class I felt great!  I could tell shortly after the race that my carpal tunnel was planning a massive attack on me!  I iced my wrist and took un-humanly amounts of advil, but after hitting the hay at 10 pm, I was up at 1:00 a.m. and in a good deal of pain.  I spent the next 3 hours eithing standing up inside our travel trailer trying to get the feeling back in my arm, or walking outside under the power lines.  The bright side of this however is that I got an amazing view of the stars above the rocky mountains at a time of the night when most people are snoozing away.  The scenery is some of the most beautiful I've ever seen.  Around 4:00 a.m. I went back to bed, but only managed to sit up in bed and got no sleep.  6:00 a.m. rolled around way too early, and it it was time to get up and get ready for another long day of racing.  Day two would definitely prove to be a challenge, making three laps on 3 hours of sleep.  My test times where okay through out the weekend.  I would have still managed to get first place each day in the ladies class had I been racing it.  The course was challenging, the days were long, I stayed on time the entire weekend, and ended up in 17th at the end of day two!  Battling the carpal tunnel during the day and night and not being able to ride my bike in between races for practice makes challenging races like the Alberta CEC a little tougher to get through, but in the end its a real sense of accomplishment at the end of the day.  I'll spend the next week babying my wrist back to a functional state before the Shane Watt's riding school Thursday and Friday, and then it'll be another weekend full of racing fun!  After the CEC in Penticton I will finally get my carpal tunnel surgery July 13th and the healing process will begin!  Look for an update about the Shane Watts riding school and techniques that I learn after Thursday and Friday!