Karla!

Oh, Hai!

2011-01-25T16:51:00.001-06:00

just thinking about reflections in the stream, and talking to this bunny and these little birds...

Marla + Kate = Karla

2009-02-19T11:46:00.000-06:00

So, cyclingnews.com scooped my blog - not so impressive, considering I update my blog 0.0723 times per day on average. But more impressive is that they not only called me "Marla" during their live feed, but also called me Kate Kingsley in my byline. I guess Marla + Kate = Karla?

But anyway. Hot damn, the past few days have been quite a whirlwind. Last Tuesday, Liza Rachetto (SugarCRM Director extraordinaire) calls me with some good news.

Liza: "So, Karla, we have a guest rider for SugarCRM this weekend."
me: "Um, cool! I like guests! Who is it?"
Liza: "Laura Van Gilder."
me: "haha, funny. yeah. so... who is it?"
Liza: "Laura Van Gilder."
me: "no shit. really?? Does that mean she'll talk to us?"
Liza: "Yes. Even YOU, Karla."
me: "amazing. HOLY CRAP YOU'RE NOT KIDDING!! This is going to be so COOL!"

The proverbial sun continued to shine on me on Thursday, when Liza called me to let me know that my Blue bike had arrived. Excellent. Friday, I headed down to Liza's Los Altos pad, where I met LVG and my new bike at the same time!! Wowzers. It was almost too much excitement for little me, but I contained myself, and got the bike onto the rollers to give it a try. Yikes, I kinda suck at riding rollers. I used to be good, but I left that skill in Minnesota. Whatev.

Saturday morning came after Friday night, like it usually does, and Liza, Laura and I piled into Liza's car to head to the race. I was riding in the passenger seat, so Liza put me in charge of her crackberry for the trip. The thing was vibrating constantly with texts and calls from the team:

Starla: "Hi Liza?"
me: "nope, sorry, it's Karla."
Starla: "OK, where am I supposed to be?"
me: "uhhhhhh, hold on. Liza, where should Starla be?"
Liza: "in the pro parking? by Steve? Almaden ave and 4th."

....

Mary Ellen: "Hi, so where are you guys? How do I get there?"
me: "ummmm, yeah. We're on 280. You should be in pro parking I think."
Mary Ellen: "Karla, you useless piece of crap, stop wasting my time and put Liza on the phone."
....

JV: "We can see where we want to go, but we can't get in there!"
me: "do whatever you have to do. we're having trouble ourselves. at this point, it's every car for itself. good luck!"

It was rough. As soon as we finally pulled into the right parking space, I tossed the phone back to Liza with a new level of respect. So... warm up, talk, meet, blah blah. Then all of a sudden Liza was CUTTING A HOLE IN MY JERSEY! WTF? That's a new jersey! But she told me that's how you do the radio action. Alright.

Somehow none of us really felt like we got in a good warm-up, but at least the sky was pretty clear as we toed the start line with about 50 other women - Tibco, Webcor, Proman, Touchstone and Colavita were all in the mix. Our team’s job was to cover moves going up the road, to make sure SugarCRM was always represented in the mix, but ideally have the race come down to a field sprint so that LVG could do her thing. I was feeling OK during the race, but not great, and when a couple of raindrops started to fall, I was less than thrilled. Coming around the 180-degree corner of the course, I was positioned behind Brooke Miller and Tina Pic, when the newly slippery roads got the best of us and we all three went down. Fortunately, no one was hurt, and we got back into the race. But after that, my head wasn’t in the game. And bike racing – sure, it’s a physical game. There’s bumping, sliding through the pack, technical skills, and so much raw strength required, but it’s also a mental game. It’s so easy to forget that if your head’s not in the game, there’s no way your body can be.

So while I was sort of sucking, hovering around 20th, Laura, Erin, Liza, Mary Ellen, and my other teammates were doing a much better job. And ultimately, we came down to a pretty intense field sprint, which Laura managed to WIN - just ahead of Gina Grain and Brooke Miller. Nice job, Laura!

After the race, we goofed off for a bit, and then packed up for the drive up to Santa Rosa. Liza had organized all of us to be in 3 different host houses, and they had prepared an awesome dinner for us that night. It was nice to just hang out and relax, not to mention the carrot cake and sorbet. Sunday morning I rolled out of bed to the sound of raindrops falling on the rooftop. It was rainy and wet, with no signs of letting up, which I came to terms with over a bowl of steel cut oats. However, our supremely awesome host's workplace was actually right on the course, and she let us warm up in the lobby. Amazing. There was even a real flush toilet! (A novelty at a bike race).

After a solid warm-up, we got out onto the course to get a feel for the corners and the botts dots in the rain. After a couple laps, I was still SUPER happy with my Blue. It felt great in the rain, and after I got soaked through, I really wasn't that cold or grumpy anymore. I just kept telling myself: “If it’s a downpour for me, it’s pissing down on everyone. If I’m wet and cold, they are too. If I can’t see shit, they can’t see much either. If the botts dots on the course are in my way, they're there for everyone."

And before I knew it, we were on the line peeling off our jackets and waiting for the gun. Our overall strategy was similar to the day before – cover moves, keep Laura comfortable near the front, and do anything to string out the field and help free up her position coming into the final sprint.

The race started fast and frenetic off the line. After the first lap, I knew that it would be safest somewhere near the front, so I moved up into the top 20. I could see that LVG was also sitting comfortably, and several of my teammates were nearby. After just a couple laps, I saw a couple riders attack off the front of the pack and get a sizeable gap. Pretty soon, a couple more launched in hot pursuit, and seeing that none of them were SugarCRM, I figured I better get my ass in gear and get up there with them. I jumped at the exact same time as a Value Act rider, and we quickly bridged up, with a few more riders joining us. Pretty soon, we caught the initial break and looking around, I saw that we were about 12 girls with a sizeable gap off the field. Seeing as it was only about 10 minutes into the race, I didn’t really think we’d get very far, but all the major teams were represented – Tibco (Meredith Miller and Lauren Tamayo), Columbia (Kim Anderson and Emilia Fahlin), Value Act (Robin Farina and Kristin McGrath), and Touchstone (Sarah Bamberger and Olivia Dillon) each had two riders, and there was one from Webcor (Katheryn Mattis), Proman (Rachel Lloyd), and Colavita (Kelly Benjamin).

I just needed to hang tight in the break and not get dropped, since SugarCRM had Laura Van Gilder back in the field. And I can honestly say that I had the time of my life doing just that. I could hear Beth and several other people cheering for me around the course - always nice (so thanks!) Riding in the break was a pretty nice situation for me - I followed the repeated attacks from Tibco, Value Act, and Columbia, and tried to just stay comfortable and calm. At one point, my heart rate probably just about hit my max when I almost landed in the gutter after having to take corner two a bit wide.

Finally, after about 45 minutes in the break, it was two laps to go. On the final lap, Meredith Miller put in a huge attack, and we were strung out single file for the rest of the race to the line. I tried to get into the best position possible, and then sprinted for the finish, behind Emilia, Lauren, and Rachel. Fourth place in an NRC race! I couldn’t believe it. Seriously. I was basically just laughing, not really believing it, but then Beth came over yelling "KARLA!!!!!" And she even was willing to hug my wet, sweaty, snotty, spitty, dirty self. Now that's a good friend. Not to mention - she threw down over at Goldsprints after the women's race and won herself a bike! Maybe my racing efforts were focused in the wrong place...but no, crit racing is my favorite game these days. Now I just have to figure out how to get myself to any or all of the upcoming NRC races. And maybe I'll get some photos posted up soon, but we all know that blogging's not my strength so don't hold your breath.

Unintentional CX workout

2008-09-08T20:01:00.002-05:00

I had a great weekend with 2 fun races, more on that in a sec, so I wasn't quite ready to head back into work on Monday. I walked into the building at 8am to find some signs kindly letting me know that the elevators were broken and I would have to use the stairs. All the way to my 10th floor office. So I shouldered my road bike, CX style, and started hiking up. On the way up, I passed several red-faced forms leaning against the stairwell gasping for air, and I tried not to hit them with my bike. Mid-morning, I had to go down again to help a co-worker bring down some boxes to her car (they weren't light boxes). The lobby of the building was an interesting scene. People would walk in, look at the signs, stop. Look at me, standing there, look at the maintenance guy, look at the signs, walk over to the stairwell and look up it, incredulous. Then they would ask, as if the signs were just a joke, "really? really? I have to walk up 16 flights of stairs?" And our wonderful, ever-calm maintenance man would explain that there was a fire-sprinkler malfunction, and that yes, if they wanted to make it to their office, they would have to walk up the stairs. Just about every person acted personally offended that they would have to take on that task. I was amused.

I had to help carry several boxes today, meaning that I went up and down the 10 floors five times! And I even counted the stairs - 196 per time, which makes 980. I'll probably do 20 more, just to make it an even 1000. But I'm not complaining. It was pretty amusing to see everyone's reactions. The smokers were really struggling - the need for a cigarette pitted against the prospect of climbing the 10, 12, or 16 flights of stairs again? Tough call. Especially when they faced a good chance of heart failure on the way up. As far as I know, no one has suffered any serious injuries, and I'm going to count it as a CX workout.

Oh and the races!
Yesterday was the Benicia Town Race - a crit, with a nice roller on one side, and a downhill to a flat sprint finish. I liked the course, but last year I crashed out at this race in the 2nd to last corner and dislocated my shoulder, so I was a little wary of that. Once the race started though, I didn't think about the crash any more, my thoughts were only focused on getting a top three finish, in order to get the points I needed for my cat 1 upgrade. I had awesome teammates in the race, and everyone knew what they had to do. I went up the road with Mel Metzger in an early break, but we got pulled back in a few laps. Then there was a counter attack and a break formed with Mary Ellen in it. Eventually that break came back too, and the field got antsy again. I managed to grab a prime in there somewhere, and I think it was right on that lap that the next break was established. I was a bit cross-eyed trying to hang onto a wheel, so I didn't quite notice, but then I looked back and the field wasn't there anymore. So off we went, a break of 6. We rode hard for about 3 laps, but then settled down, and I knew my teammates in the field wouldn't be chasing.

Pretty soon it was 2 laps to go, and it was time to think about sprinting. I sat 4th wheel until the last corner, and then moved up on a perfect leadout wheel. With a couple hundred meters to go, I jumped and sprinted hard, just barely beating second place to the line. It was a great win for me, and got me the rest of the points I needed for the upgrade. It's now been submitted, and I'm just waiting for it to be official...

Thanks so much to my team - they all were totally committed to helping me win the race, and we pulled it off!

Criterium Nationals!

2008-08-17T15:31:00.009-05:00

A week ago, I decided to go to Crit nationals in Downers Grove. Last weekend, I raced the Carrera de San Rafael on Saturday, and then the Howell Mountain Challenge on Sunday, and then at work on Monday, my brain started scheming about trying to go to Crit Nats. I checked in with my teammate, Mary Ellen, to see if I could share host housing with her, booked my ticket to Chicago, and got myself registered. We flew out on Thursday to give ourselves a day to spin around before the "warm-up" race on Saturday - the national championship race is on Sunday, but they are on the same course and most of the women do both races.

Two years ago, I did the Saturday warm-up race as a cat 3, and hung in for about half the race before getting shelled. The course is in Downers Grove, a Chicago suburb, and it's a blast - a figure 8 shape with a false flat on the finish, a nice little riser on the back side, and then an awesome sweeping downhill into the final critical two corners. Many people have said that it's a sprint to the second to last corner on this course - it's hard to make up much ground after that, because of the way the curb comes out into the road, blocking a wide outside line, and then it's only 150 meters from the final corner to the finish.

Of course, I was a tad nervous before Saturday’s race, and my nervousness was intensified by the fact that girls were pretty aggressively pursuing a spot on the line. As soon as the men’s race before ours was over, everyone rolled right to the start line and stopped, creating an impenetrable mob of bikes and wheels and girls. The officials had managed to keep one side of the course clear to get the car through, but they wanted the whole road clear, as our race wasn’t starting for another 10 minutes. Two of them were standing there literally yelling at this clump of girls that wouldn’t budge. One official actually posited the question of whether or not we were all completely deaf. Finally I decided to heed their instructions and took a lap on the course, and when I came around, they had started lining us up at the 50-meter line, which meant they made the rest of the eager field actually turn around and get back there.

Meanwhile, I was like, hello? I thought this was a warm-up race? But, yeah, I guess everyone wanted to be in that early break. So they started us off, about 80 girls, and I still wasn’t sure whether I should expect to be dropped within 5 laps or whether I would be fine. I was fine. I rode near the front, in the top ten, and went with a couple moves that didn’t go anywhere. When the break went, it was one Advil-Chapstick, one Aaron’s, one Colavita, and one Tibco. I was a few wheels back, unfortunately, behind a couple Aaron’s and Colavita riders. I made a half-hearted attack, but since we were on the downhill part of the course, it was hard to get a gap and Aarons and Colavita got on my wheel. They sat there, of course, and there was no one else coming through at that moment to help. So I soon decided that, as a piddly super-amateur type critter, I wasn’t going to ride around on the front anymore, and I settled back into the pack. The pack pretty much lost interest in chasing, (I think most people were saving their legs for Sunday), so we diddled around for another 30 minutes, and then all of a sudden it was 3 to go. Shites! The pace picked up a bit, but not enough to avoid some tricky mushrooming action at the front. In the last lap, all the sprinters made their way up to the front, and I just tried to hang out with them and not get involved in any dicey situations. It was all good, and I got 10th in the field sprint for 14th overall. Mary Ellen hung out safely in the pack for the whole race and rolled through with a solid finish – 28th out of 62 finishers.

Post-race, we went and got some take-out Indian food and a DVD and watched it in our super-sweet one-block-from-the-course host apartment. After a restless sleep, we hit up the Caribou Coffee first thing in the morning and picked up our numbers, before heading back to the AC of the apartment to set up our trainers. Nice.

The Championship race started at 11:00am with 86 girls. We were to do 31 laps of the course, 50K. Again, I moved to the front at the start of the race, followed some moves ambitiously, and then had to remind myself not to do more work than necessary. I didn't expect any breaks to stick in this race, since all the teams have super sprinters that would duke it out in the field sprint. So I hung out for the most of the race, sitting in the top 20 most of the time. It was definitely faster than Saturday, and a pretty aggressive race, but I felt good and didn't have any trouble until 6 laps to go. The field slowed coming into turn one, and we took the corner about 8 wide. In the straight stretch after the corner, a couple girls right in front of me bumped each other and weren't able to stay upright. For a split second I considered trying to bunny hop them, but before I could complete that thought, I was on the ground too. And then a couple more girls landed on top of me. I got up quickly, remembering that we'd had 6 to go, and could take a free lap up until 5 to go. I checked my wheels, put my chain back on, and jumped on my bike to head to the pit, only to discover that the left side of my handle bars had snapped, and was hanging there uselessly by a carbon thread. (Note to self - replace those with aluminum bars)

So I run into the pit, thoughts running through my head:
"Dammit, I felt fine, and now I'm not going to be able to finish this stupid bike race. This is why I came here! I didn't fly halfway across the country to break my handlebars in a crash and not finish. Especially when I'm not even hurt except a little blood on my knee. What the hell. I don't want to see the results posted on cyclingnews.com without my name in them. And my mother is here watching! Put me on one of those yellow neutral bikes."

Which I vocalized simply as: "I need a bike, I need a bike!"

The Mavic guys were great. They asked what size bike I needed, plucked it out of the rack, calmly took the pedals off my bike, and transfered them over to the size 52 yellow neutral bike. Then they pulled out their tape measure and got my seat height adjusted, checked the brakes, etc. Meanwhile, I was there practically jumping out of my skin, trying to help them (HAHA), since I only had one lap to get back in. The pace car came by with 5 to go before the bike was ready, so I looked at the official, and asked if I could get in the other side, even though that would technically be at 4.5 laps to go. (Since the course passed the pit on each side, you could rejoin the race at either point). She nodded, and I got set up and ready to go, and only then noticed that I would be using SRAM shifting for the first time. OH, WHAT FUN!

I've been wanting to try out the SRAM doubletap shifting for a while, but during the last 4 laps of the national championship criterium was not the timing I had envisioned. But there was nothing I could do. The mavic guy pushed me back into the peloton and I spent the next 3.5 laps trying to get used to the shifting and handling of the bike. I never really got my head back in the game, and I wasn't comfortable enough on the new bike to corner confidently, so in the last lap, I just wanted to hold my position and stay safe. I did, and rolled across the line in 25th place. Only 52 of the 86 starters finished the race, so I was right about midway through the finishing group. Mary Ellen also had a great race and finished in 41st after just barely managing to avoid a nasty crash in the last corner.

All things considered I was pretty happy with the whole experience, and I can't wait to race at Downers again. Next time, I hope I'll have a whole team to work with - it was pretty impressive to watch the way the larger teams were working together.

In the end, Brooke Miller took the win, with Teresa Clif-Ryan, Jen McRae, Kat Carroll, and Lara Kroepsch filling out the top five. Nice job, Brooke!

Superweek - Ray Basso Memorial Crit 1

2008-07-16T09:01:00.003-05:00

I'm still walking on clouds the morning after my first Superweek race of 2008. I first raced Superweek in 2006 as a recently upgraded cat 3. I had a great time, and a couple placings in the money, and since then I've always tried to come back. This year, I'm doing four of the women's P/1/2 races - squeezed into a vacation where I'm also visiting home. I did the Downieville classic on Saturday (also amazing, and a pretty grueling MTB race) so I wasn't sure if my legs would feel recovered enough by Tuesday, but I decided to race anyway, since I'm only here for four days.

The race started with probably 50-60 women lined up, with several large teams - Hub racing, Team Revolution, Verducci Breakaway (team of Teresa Clif-Ryan - 2006 Crit Nats Champ and World Cup bronze medalist), America's Dairyland, and HPC. Joining me from Norcal were Minty Ali and Starla from Dolce Vita. We lined up together and they gave me the low down on the peloton. We were to do 50 laps of the 0.8 mile course, with sprint points on laps 30, 20, and 10. (I didn't really consider going for the sprints, since I'm only going to be here for 4 or the 7 races in the series). We took off at the gun, and I heard a crash in the first 200 meters. That was enough to motivate me to get to the front and stay there. I hung out in the top 8 riders, mostly just surfing wheels and following surges. I felt strong and was tempted to attack several times, but I reminded myself that I was a solo rider against a bunch of teams - not to mention that it was a long race (40 miles), and it was HOT - so hot that we were allowed to take feeds on the backside of the course. At one point, I found myself in a break of about 10-12 girls that had separated off the front of the field. There were four girls from one team, but somehow people didn't quite coordinate and we got pulled back.

About 25 laps in, I had decided that it wasn't likely a break would go. People had been trying all race, and nothing was sticking. They rang the bell for the sprint points at 20 to go, and some girls contested it pretty aggressively. As soon as we reeled them in, a Team Revolution rider (Katie) counter attacked. I was in good position, so I went with her. I had heard someone comment on one of her earlier moves "that could stick..." so I knew she must be a strong rider. We quickly opened up a gap, thanks to the fact that two of her teammates were on the front of the pack when she attacked, and soon I heard one of my friends on the sidelines telling us that it was 20 seconds. We worked really well together trading pulls evenly and kept putting time on the field. Soon our gap had increased to 40 seconds. At 11 laps, they rang the bell for the sprint points, and I told Katie she could take them, since I wasn't able to contest the sprint jersey. Soon after that, coming around one of the technical corners on the course, I was on Katie's wheel when she took the corner a little too hot, and slid out. I screamed like a little girl and rode over her rear wheel, but managed to keep myself upright and continued on the course alone. Yikes - 9 laps to go, and I was out there alone - Could I hold it? On the next lap around, I saw that she had gotten up and was headed towards the pit, and she yelled encouragement as I passed. I put my head down and kept at it, just going at my threshold. When I came around with 8 laps to go, I came by the wheel pit, and Katie was being pushed back in! Amazing - she crashed out hard, and still got up and got back into the race. I was grateful to have my break companion back with me, and we got down to business working together again. At that point Katie told me she wasn't going to contest the final sprint either, so I started thinking that there was a chance for a win. (I never have these thoughts, because they are a sure way to lose. Like when I flatted out of a winning break with 6 to go - no free laps - in a crit last year)

With about 6 to go, we came around the course and could see the field up ahead on the straight stretch - we were close to lapping! Kristin was yelling at me from the sidelines not to lap the field, and I agreed that it wouldn't be such a great plan, so Katie and I throttled back ever so slightly, and rode out the 5 laps in a nice smooth rotation. With half a lap to go, I came around her and actually won the frickin race. I still can't believe it. It's not my first win as a cat 2, but it's definitely the biggest one so far.

I was like a little girl after the race too - cycling news came to interview me and I was almost struck dumb, but managed to stutter something intelligible I think. And then they gave me a white stage-winners' jersey! That also had me pretty excited, and made me realize that I am such an amateur. Pros actually don't blink an eye at any of this stuff, but I was loving it.

Hopefully I'll get some photos up here soon.

I can't wait for the races today!

About my new team....

2008-05-14T00:16:00.006-05:00

I just realized that with my blog in this vegetative state, I have never properly introduced my new team to my readership of 1.7 people. This year I'm racing with a seriously awesome group of gals on the Easton/SugarCRM/Specialized team, based in the Los Gatos Bike Racing Club. Wow, that is a mouthful. But I'm pretty good at talking, so it's OK.

We've been racing together for a couple months now, and things are feeling good - it's great to have a strong group of cat 1/2/3 ladies to race, hang out, laugh, and hurt with. Two weeks ago, I had a pretty intense crash, and it felt so good to have a handful of teammates all pretending to be my mom. A few highlights: Lori picking me up off the hot pavement, because it was so painfully hot to stay there. Holly letting me lay my head on her knee while I was whimpering like a baby as they cleaned my road rash. Bri taking care of my bike, and telling me, "no, Karla, you will not ride it back to your car. NO. It's NOT rideable." Then finding it already packed on top of my car ready to go thanks to Mary Ellen. And everyone helping me change my clothes without showing my backside to the world for a second extended period of time. It was good. I've got a couple good photos of the road rash - one just a day after the fact, and then one a week after it happened (thanks to Steven Woo).

Anyway, we keep our team blog pretty well updated, so mosey on over there sometime too! And there's my post for May.

Almost like blogging myself

2008-04-17T10:15:00.002-05:00

The brilliant Beth has interviewed me on a number of topics. She's quite good, perhaps an aspiring Velonews reporter.

Redlands!

2008-04-09T00:56:00.005-05:00

Warning, this post is WAY too long. It's cool though, since no one reads this blog anymore, and I know at least my mom will enjoy it. And, you can pace yourself, since chances are good I won't blog again for another year.

xoxo,
Karla

When Laurel asked if I wanted to do Redlands, my first thought was, "sure why not?" Then I talked to some people, and the overwhelmingly common sentiment was, "Wow, that's a hard, hilly race." So I thought again. But finally, common sense was suppressed fully, and I told Laurel that I'd be up for it.

She kept me up to date as she pulled together a flock of 7 other composite team riders from all over. Mary Ellen, my teammate in the Bay Area; Elis, another Oakland resident and pillar of the NCNCA; Denise, a Canadian junior sensation; Devon, a Chicago grad student and fellow Dartmouth grad; Kristin, an experienced midwest racer on her comeback kick; Madelline, a rad racer training in Georgia; me; and Laurel, cycling's amazing jumble of knowledge and experience all in one sensitive and considerate lady.

On Tuesday, Mary Ellen, Elis and I left our respective workplaces and met in Oakland to load up the Golden Rod. (My gold Toyota Echo). We packed eveything in, and were on the road by 7pm. Yes, which meant that I got straight down to driving for 7 hours, and we finally reached our host housing at 2am.

The next morning, unfortunately, I managed to break the coffee maker at the host house, and then we somehow found our way to registration in Redlands before seeing a coffee shop. At this point, it became clear that my tendency to drink coffee every day is not a habit but an addiction. There were some crabby moments there, until I finally got some coffee upon arrival to the second host house. We then pre-rode the time trial course without any major issues, other than noticing that the hill was freaking steep. In the evening we all started to gel as a team, settled into our two HUGE host houses, and made sure we were fed (people) and lubed (bikes) and in good working order (both).

Day 1 of the Redlands Cycling Classic was the individual time trial. We all met in the designated parking a couple hours before the start, and I was just a touch overwhelmed. It was similar to my very first bike race experience, as a 17-year-old. At that time of my life, the bike was strictly transportation - I showed up to the race in volleyball shorts and a cotton T-shirt on my fully-rigid, flat-pedal mountain bike. Everyone else had their spandex, jerseys, clipless pedals, full-suspension bikes, sports drinks, etc. So the feeling was one of, "Crap, I'm a bit out of my league. But I'm here, and there's no turning back now..." And, it was about 10 times better because I had the reassuring presence of our most awesome team.

We borrowed some trainers from Team Type 1, and promised them some treats the following day... before I knew it, it was time to report to the start and get in line. They weighed our bikes at the start to make sure the were UCI legal (not less than 15 lbs, I think?). Ha ha. The official grunted as he heaved my bike up onto the scale.
"So, uh, is it the heaviest one of the day?" I asked. "Well, uh, yeah, 8.6 kilos." he said. Which would be almost 19 lbs.

Awesome. Just what I wanted to hear before my uphill time trial. In the end, I didn't think about it, I just rode. And it hurt. But 13 minutes and 40 seconds later, it was over. I felt like I did my best, and in the end it put me in 67th out of 99, and that was just fine with me, considering the caliber of teams in the race (High Road, Webcor, Aarons, Cheerwine, Colavita, Tibco, etc).

Day 2 was the "Circuit Race" - 4 laps of a 17-mile circuit. It had some good flat sections, false flats, and then a solid climb, nice technical descent, climb again, technical descent, and then long straight slight descent. I really enjoyed the course. I sat in the pack comfortably for the first half of the circuit, until about halfway up the climb. With the KOM at the top, there were some attacks and the field started splitting apart. I grouped together with a good group on the descent, and we all caught back on to the main pack. Same exact thing happened on the second lap, and each time, there were more people being shed off the back of the pack that weren't able to catch back on. Going into the false flat section on the third lap, the stronger teams started to DRILL it at the front to reel in a break that had gotten away, creating some carnage in the pack - gaps opening up all over and me getting popped off the back. Ouch. So I started up the climb by myself, feeling just DONE, and probably looking it too. My glasses were covered in sweat, water, and dust, and I was weaving a bit as the caravan cars slowly passed me. Soon I noticed a neutral medical car passing, and I flagged them down. "This may sound really gross, so I'm sorry, but would you mind wiping off my glasses?" I asked them. And they did! So thank you to the lovely young man in the white polo shirt in the passenger seat of that medical car.

So I kept climbing, and pretty soon, grouped together with some other girls that were off the back of the main pack. We worked together for the remaining 1.5 laps, quite smoothly, really. Pros know how to ride at an even pace in a tight paceline and make it work! So that was good. Finished out the race about 14 minutes down on the leaders, which was well within the time cut (if you take longer than 115% of the leaders' time, you don't get to continue in the race), so we were all good to go the next day. Overall, I placed somewhere in the 50s, and 15 girls dropped out of the race that day. A couple gals on our team realized that it just wasn't their race, and dropped out before the end after helping out where they could to pull Mary Ellen back into the race after she flatted. She and Elis worked together for the whole race, but unfortunately they finished just outside the time cut, and the officials just weren't willing to bend the rules. Kristin finished with another group, inside the time cut, and so she lined up at the crit the next day, along with me, Devon, and Denise.

Day 3 was the downtown Redlands criterium. The course was phenomenal - a "figure eight" type course, with several tricky corners that were more than 90 degrees. Pretty technical, and almost flat, just a slight rise along the finishing straight. As I warmed up, my legs felt OK, but weren't exactly itching with energy. We lined up, and the officials told us that in order to make the time cut, we had to finish 40 of the 60 minutes before being lapped by the pack. So I kept that in mind. We started out fast, and I felt comfortable in the pack, sitting pretty far forward, but after about 15 minutes I started to fade a bit as the race got even faster. 20 minutes into the race, I wasn't at all sure I was going to make it. I was just thinking... "I'm halfway done, halfway to 40 minutes." At 30 minutes, I was still hanging in, moving forward in quite a few of the corners, slipping back in other places. Then I was thinking, "OK, 10 more minutes, I can do anything for 10 minutes, it doesn't hurt that bad." Then I started to feel a bit more comfortable. I'm not sure if the pace eased off, or if I just settled into the pain, but I made it to 40 minutes without a problem. Then it was, "alright, I'm not going to get time-cut, now just 20 more minutes, and I'll finish the race." So I kept hanging on, until finally, I heard 3 laps to go. Amazing. I can do three laps. The pace definitely ramped up again at that point, and I stayed on the pack until the last lap when there was a crash in the first corner. Such a bummer, but everyone was ultimately OK. I got gapped a little bit off the pack at that point, and didn't catch back on, rolling across the line about 20 seconds down.

All in all, I was really pleased to have hung on. Devon also hung on until the end, and Denise managed to stay in the race for 40 minutes, so the three of us were good to line up for day 4. The crit turned out to be another decisive stage though - only 66 people finished within the time cut.

Day 4 was the last day of Redlands, and as I started warming up, my legs most definitely did NOT feel good. Heart rate wasn't going up either. After driving the course the day before, I could tell it probably wasn't exactly my type of race. Very little flats, it was basically: "neutral" uphill rollout, then onto the circuit - a bit of good downhill, a long climb, a bit more downhill. Climb, descend, corner, climb, descend, corner, etc. For 9 laps. In order to "finish" the race and get a final GC placing, you had to finish 3 laps of the course before getting lapped. And being completely honest with myself, that was my only goal - to get a GC placing. The race started downtown and started climbing soon after. Our neutral rollout was actually a brisk 20 mph on an upward slope, at about 320 watts. Crazy. Some people were off the back before we hit the course. I stayed with the pack about halfway up the climb, but then joined the ranks of riders straggling off the back. Usually riders off the back tend to group together, but it didn't happen as easily in this race, because you don't get much of a draft going uphill, and the skill levels varied quite a bit on the descent.

At one point I caught up to one woman who will remain unnamed on the descent, and came around her. She got on my wheel, and then rode up on my left for a quick chat. Unfortunately, she didn't know the course very well and it wasn't entirely clearly marked, so she attempted to make a right turn where the course went straight. Yep, she was on my left still at that point, and turned into me and crashed me out before I even realized what was happening. I went down, picking up some nice road rash, and losing a couple pieces off my bike. I sat there for a while with a stream of bad words running out of my mouth, until I surmised that nothing was broken, and I may as well continue on. We both did so, and she was quite apologetic and sweet, so I couldn’t hold it against her. We separated on the next descent though, and I worked hard to catch a couple of the women that had passed me as I sat on the asphalt. The three of us worked together after that, until a moto-ref came up to us on lap 7 and said that we would be done after that lap. I was not at all sad to hear it. We pulled out at the firehouse, and were placed in the GC at that point. Success!

From that moment things went on a slightly downhill trajectory for me. I realized that my hip was throbbing, and it would be a good idea to get it bandaged and iced. So, I approached the friendly firemen, and they took care of me. However, the ice and cooling sweat kind of chilled me, and I knew that it was still about a 3-mile downhill ride back to the start/finish, and I didn’t want to do it without getting more clothes on (it IS California, but the day was chilly!). So I decided to wait for Laurel and the team car to come down from the feed zone with my clothes, not realizing that they would be redirected on a different route. I sat there for about half an hour, thinking to myself, “hmmm, I only ate one gel that entire race. Seems like I should be hungry now.” Totally ignoring the fact that I should have been eating and drinking right away.

The team car didn’t come, so finally I decided to just shiver my way down the hill in my sugar-depleted state. When I finally found the team down at the start/finish I started bawling like a baby and they wrapped me up in some warm clothes and put some food down my throat. Everything got better from then on. What a great team to race with! Each one of the eight of us brought something different to the team, and everyone's personalities gelled so well together. It was just an amazing privilege to have raced with those women.

Somehow we got the Golden Rod packed with me, Mary Ellen, Elis, our gear, and our bikes, and started the drive back to the Bay Area, since we all had to work on Monday morning. On our way down the Grapevine, Laurel called to report that I had finished 56th in the Road Race and 57th in the GC. Considering the caliber of the field, I am completely happy with that – it was truly an honor to race with all the pro women, and with the amazing ladies on my composite team. And that's it. If you made it this far in reading, congratulations!

Track is crack

2007-12-12T16:54:00.001-06:00

PICT0633
Originally uploaded by kjane1

Not that I really know what crack is like or anything, but track is damn addictive.
Riding the drome at ADT was incredible, as was watching the pros and red-hot-fast amateurs battle it out at Encino for 400 laps.

Hot damn. I might write more on it soon. But for now, I am just scheming about my next trip...

Vegetable

2007-12-07T00:04:00.000-06:00

It was subtly pointed out to me today that my blog sucks. Thank you Super-Rookie.

I was actually shocked when I saw a comment, because I had completely forgotten that I have a blog. Maybe my blog is dead? I don't yet want to officially put it to rest yet, though, so I'm simply recognizing that it's in a purely vegetative state. Luckily, this has nothing to do with my status as a human or anything else. I've been riding my bikes lots, racing very little. But that's because, hell, crits start in February here and I need a tiny bit of time off.

Tomorrow, or rather Saturday, however, will be a big day. I'm heading south with Alicia, Beth, and Hanan to ride the ADT Velodrome in Carson! Certification and all that jazz in the morning, and then some low-key racing in the afternoon. I'm pretty psyched. Then on Sunday it's off to the Encino velodrome to watch the big-shots battle it out for the big-money.

Should be an adventure.

Crappy Crashing

2007-09-10T15:08:00.000-05:00

My blog's been outta commission, but now I'm outta commission. Hopefully not for too long though.

Dislocated shoulder at the Benecia Crit, but an awesome guy, Steve, popped it right back in before I even knew it was out. Hurt like hell, but no worse than the road rash on my leg and elbow.

The arm is in a sling, but I should back on the bike CXing in a couple weeks!

Thanks so much to everyone at the race that helped out. I'll see if I can get some pics posted soon :)

24 Hours of 9-Mile

2007-07-30T19:19:00.000-05:00

Yep, I did it! To my surprise, I actually managed to ride my mountain bike for 24 hours. Why? Good question. (Warning: this is a long post. If you don't want to read it, don't. There's a little summary at the bottom for the short attention spans among us)

I guess it all started this year at Sea Otter. I went to see 24 Solo, all about Chris Eatough, and that was when I decided I wanted to do a 24 hour race solo. Then when I did the Coolest 24 in May on a team it was confirmed - I had a great time (and a great team!), but was a little bit jealous of the solo riders. I decided I wanted a flatter course for my first attempt, though, and Wausau, Wisconsin is pretty close to home for me, so I knew I'd have some support. So I signed up. I actually had to choose between two categories -- the National Championship Women's 24 race, or the non-championship Solo "Freak" women. So I signed up for the non-championship division, thinking that I better aim for a more reasonable level of competition for my first stab at the 24 hours.

So it was decided. My dad Terry and I drove down to Wausau on Friday - the race would go from 10AM on Saturday till 10AM Sunday. My friend Mark was extremely generous in loaning me his Trek Top Fuel for the race, and fortunately, we had some other friends from the U.P. also participating in the race - a 4-person 12-hour team of Adam, Adam, Eric, and Ben; Nel and Mel doing a 2-person 12-hour; and Chris doing a solo 12-hour. So we all set up together, with pop-up tents, coolers of energy drinks and food, folding chairs and all sorts of miscellaneous bike stuff.

3:30pm, Friday
I did a pre-ride of the course on Friday afternoon with Mel. It covered most of the same trail as last year, with a few variations for a total distance of about 14 miles. I LOVE this course as it has a ton of flowy, twisty singletrack through the woods, some really fun rocky sections, and some fast two-track. Almost all of it is shaded, and there are no monster climbs to dread on each lap (although some of the minor climbs started to feel monstrous in the wee hours of the morning). I was pretty psyched.

7:00pm, Friday
Dinner at Noodles, followed by Cold Stone Creamery, followed by a trip to the store for tylenol, ibuprofin, and Bengay.

8:00pm, Friday
We all picked up registration packets, and prepped our bikes. I wanted to make sure everything I would possibly need was ready for my dad to grab quickly during the race, so I had a box stocked with: Perpetuum, 8 waterbottles, a camelback, my Light & Motion light, tylenol, ibuprofin, Bengay, E-Caps, gels, bars, chain lube, chamois butter (2 varieties), rags, towels, tools, an extra saddle, spare shoes, a ton of extra clothes, Rockstar, Sobe, and Monster (all highly-caffeinated energy drinks) plus a bunch of food that I might want.

7:00am, Saturday
Three hours before the race found me bleary-eyed, begging my dad to see if he could find some coffee, while I put down a couple bowls of cereal. The coffee helped and I managed to get my act together in time to put my bike into the corral, and mill about with the other riders, waiting for the LeMans start (where you start off running for a quarter mile until you reach the bike corral and then grab your bike and go). Here's a photo of me with my dad before the start. Notice how clean and happy I look:

10:00am, Saturday - Lap 1, 1:19:45
I gotta say, it's a pretty funny sight watching hundreds of spandex clad cyclists running along at the start of the race and then the confusion that inevitably ensues when people can't find their bike, take the wrong one, fall over trying to hop on, etc. I've been avoiding running like the plague lately, so I wasn't exactly shining during this initial part of the race, but at least that meant there were fewer bikes to confuse me by the time I got there. I grabbed the right one and hit the trail. The first lap was a pretty solid string of people for the first half - there were some major bottlenecks getting into the singletrack sections, but I wasn't in a huge hurry, with 24 hours left to go. The first lap was pretty uneventful - a good start, and I scoped out the sweet jump that some guys had built at one of the checkpoints on the course. Basically, they hang out, play music, build jumps, and holler wildly every time someone hits the jump. These awesome volunteers also offer support in the form of food for needy racers, encouragement, first aid, etc. They make the event awesome.

11:20am, Saturday - Lap 2, 1:20:12
Not too memorable. My basic plan was to drink two bottles of perpetuum for every lap. Each bottle would have about 130 calories, giving me 250-300 calories per lap from perpetuum. Contrary to what might seem to make sense, it's not a good idea to try to consume enough calories to replace what you're burning - at my size, my body can probably only take in and convert to energy about 250 calories per hour. Much more than that and my digestive system would have to work too hard, diverting blood from my muscles and causing cramping. Interesting, eh? So I figured that I'd eat a couple bites of food each lap when my lap times started to get longer. Plus at least 3 E-caps per lap to make sure my electrolytes were replentished.

12:40pm, Saturday - Lap 3, 1:26:36
Mmmmm, cold bottles were nice at the start of the lap. Terry told me that I was in the lead after the first lap by 3 minutes, in the non-championship solo 24hour women. I decided to hit the jump on this lap. Yeah, it was a good call. The hollering of the checkpoint guys gave me a huge mental boost.

2:10pm, Saturday - Lap 4, 1:24:05
Four hours into the race, I was one sixth of the way done. Ouch. I did a saddle switcheroo, and continued on my way. Then, I had the highlight of my entire race. Nat Ross (eventual 2nd place solo male) lapped me early in the lap, speeding by like I was standing still. But I just continued at my own pace, and decided I better hit the jump again when I came to it. So I did, and rode on, moving over when I heard someone coming up behind me. It happened to be CHRIS EATOUGH, and as he passed, he tossed over his shoulder, "nice jump!" At least I think that's what happened. I could have been hallucinating at that point, but I don't think so. So I was psyched.

3:30pm, Saturday - Lap 5, 1:30:48
Ate some cantalope, yum. Terry let me know that I was increasing the lead so that was good.

5:00pm, Saturday - Lap 6, 1:32:42
Seven hours down, 17 to go. DAMN! I was lagging a bit on this lap. My legs were feeling tired already. I popped open one of the Rockstar energy drinks and infused some caffeine into the equation, thinking, "Dammit. If only I had entered the 12-hour event, I'd be over halfway done." But that was last year.

6:30pm, Saturday - Lap 7, 1:30:57
We were required to have lights on starting at 6:30, just for good measure, so Terry and Adam were all over it as soon as I got into the pit, attaching lights to my handlebars. The helmet light would come on the next lap, when I really started to need it - but not before, since the extra weight puts a strain on the neck.

8:00pm, Saturday - Lap 8, 1:31:28
I was starting to feel a little achy in my back coming into this lap - which I had expected. Last year, in the 12-hour event, my lower back totally seized up after the race and I couldn't move for hours. So this year, I tried to prepare a little more by doing some core strengthening in the months coming up to the race. Of course I didn't actually get a gym membership or anything crazy like that, but I did get out the ole exercise ball. The scene at my apt in the evening was often: Dan, my roomie, sitting on the couch comfortably watching TV, laughing at me as I writhed around on the ball, trying to watch TV and do somewhat effective exercises at the same time. I usually ended up sweating, so I figured it was working. Anyway - the back was a little achy, so I tried to be extra conscious of stretching on the bike when I could, AND I had Terry rub on a little bit of the Bengay. Yikes, that stuff is TINGLY. But it seemed to help.

And we put the Light & Motion light onto my helmet this lap. Quick plug for Light & Motion - they rock! They have been totally helpful when I get in touch with questions, and made sure I had what I needed for this race. Of course, my light is super-quality and bright too. By the end of the lap, night had definitely fallen.

9:30pm, Saturday - Lap 9, 1:53:09
My first complete night lap was where I really slowed down. I don't think it was because it was night, it was just that something in me decided to SLOW down. Mentally, it was hard too, because I knew that I had done 9 laps last year, in the 12-hour race. I was basically riding on about the same pace as that, but this time I wasn't going to be anywhere near done at the end of the 9th lap. I wasn't ready to toss in the towel though, so I kept plugging. When I came into the pit, Terry was a little worried, since he'd expected me 20 minutes earlier, but I assured him that I was just "taking it easy." HA. By this point, things had quieted down a lot - the 12 hour racers were done, most of them asleep in tents. I was feeling pretty crappy, and I got off my bike and sat down in a chair for the first time. I had some PB&J, and cracked open another energy drink. Fortunately, someone told me to get my butt back on the bike and get going, so I didn't get more than a 10 minute respite.

11:25pm, Saturday - Lap 10, 1:54:16
Ouch. Ouch. Lap 10 was really hard. This time, it wasn't my back. My back was holding steady with just a little achiness, but not bad. It was my hands, of all things. Since the course was pretty technical in some sections, and some parts quite rocky and bumpy, my hands had been taking a beating. My fingers were cramping from gripping so much, and the heels and palms of my hands started to feel deeply bruised and tender. My right thumb was feeling strained from the continuous shifting I was doing, up and down the cassette to try to save my legs. I never would have imagined my THUMB would be the limiting factor in this race! This lap was the first time I REALLY let myself think that I might not be able to keep riding for the whole 24 hours. I relaxed and rested my hands as much as I could, and tried some creative gripping. When I made it back to the pit, Mel and Terry encouraged me to get back out there, so I headed out again.

1:20am, Sunday - Lap 11, 1:41:23
Somehow, my race seemed to turn around on this lap. My hands actually started to feel BETTER, as did my back. At this point, I started to marvel at the wonders of the human body and brain. I wondered if my hands had actually stopped hurting, or if I had just stopped feeling the pain, or if my brain just refused to acknowledge it. Either way, I was happy - I actually enjoyed the night riding, and the full moon above us. It was a beautiful night. I decided, at this point, that I would be happy if I managed to complete a total of 14 laps.

3:00am, Sunday - Lap 12, 2:00:27
Things are definitely hazy. Can't say I really remember this lap. But I got 'er done, nice and steady. I do remember that I started to feel a bit nauseous, not sure why. I was drinking less, since it was cooler, and eating more solid food. So I don't know - maybe I was eating too much and having trouble processing it? Or maybe I wasn't getting enough fluids? Or maybe I was just getting sick of the taste of Perpetuum? And then thinking, f*** this, how am I ever going to do two more laps?? My hands were still hurting a little more than was comfortable.

5:00am, Sunday - Lap 13, 1:58:29
Again, I don't remember much of this one, except that it got lighter and lighter, and then I realized it was morning. I made it through the night! That was pretty rewarding, mentally. When I came into the pit, the whole place was starting to wake up a little more, and people were out to offer encouragement. I told myself, "just do one more, and that will be the end, you'll have reached your goal." At the time, I knew I still had a pretty good time lead on the 2nd place woman, but I hadn't lapped her yet, so the race definitely wasn't won. What I didn't realize was that she had started gaining back a couple minutes on laps 12 and 13.

Here's a gem of a photo of me at this point. Notice the unstable stance, closed eyes, abundant dirt, SWEET headband, and apparent lack of direction. This was normal.

6:55am, Sunday - Lap 14, 1:46:48
I set out telling myself that this could be the last one, even though I knew that I would probably have time for two more laps. It was better to just lie to myself. In the second half of the lap, Rebecca Rusch came up from behind, lapping me for the second time. I picked up my pace just a tad to stay with her for a while, and managed to follow her for about 20 minutes without pushing too hard. She won the Championship in 2006, and came in 2nd this year. What an amazing athlete she is - it was inspiring to be racing at the same time. It also picked up my pace a little, and I started to feel...actually...GOOD again. How in the hell I felt GOOD after everything I do not know. I came into the pits smiling after that lap, until Terry and Chris gave me the DL on the race situation. The second place woman had passed by about 15 minutes earlier, heading out on her 14th lap. So if I decided not to go out for another lap, there was no guarantee I would win. Said Terry, "Well, it looks like you'll have to do another lap!" with a grin.

8:45am, Sunday - Lap 15, 1:26:02
I was pretty motivated starting this lap, since I knew it was FOR SURE going to be the last one. It was downright crazy how good I felt all of a sudden. It was like I had fresh legs, my hands didn't hurt, my back was fine, stomach felt settled, and my thinking was even sharp (at least relatively). I had some extra encouragement from Ben and Adam on this lap, keeping my pace up. But seriously, looking back at it now, I am truly awed by what my own human body was doing. How is it possible to feel SO MUCH BETTER in just the space of a few hours, without resting, and while continuing the activity that made me feel crappy in the first place (mountain biking for a ridiculous amount of time)?? I don't get it! I guess it goes to show how much was probably mental barriers, and the physical feelings were just manifestations of that? Or am I just totally full of crap? Probably both.

10:17:07am, Sunday - Done, after 214.2 miles. I crossed the finish line for the 15th time, and that was it. I couldn't believe I was finally done. I sat in a chair and stared blankly ahead for a while. Terry ran up exclaiming that I would have come in 5th in the women's National Championship category. No shit, eh? I should've entered that category. I guess there's next year.

10:25am, Sunday - I staggered into the shower, where I proceeded to get dizzy and nauseous all over again. Great. But at least this time I was clean. I made my way back towards our campsite, where I ate two bowls of cereal and nearly fell asleep with my face in the milk. That would have been ugly. Instead, I ended up on my back in the tall grass like a piece of roadkill while Terry singlehandedly packed up all of my stuff. Amazing. He was the awesomest support possible for my debut 24-hour race.

The aftermath - I went straight to Minneapolis to catch a Monday flight back to Cali. I'm back at work, and feeling somewhat recovered already. I'm going to bet that this wasn't my last 24-hour race. And I think that's enough for now.

The promised SUMMARY:

Race Category entered: Non-National Championship Solo "Freak" 24-Hour Women
Place in Category: 1

Race Category I Should Have Entered, in retrospect: 24-Hour Female National Championships
Hypothetical Place in Category I Should Have Entered: 5

Hours on the bike: 24, give or take a few minutes.

Miles of trails covered: 214.2

Longest time off the bike during the 24 hours: About 13 minutes.

Bottles of Perpetuum ingested: About 22

Approximate number of chamois butter applications: 9

That is all.

Track in Blaine!

2007-07-21T13:38:00.000-05:00

I arrived in Minneapolis as planned, and went straight to Paula's house (my old house!) for the night. We caught up until it was too late, and then finally went to bed. My mom and I took a nice little ride the next day around the Lakes. I found myself amazed at how extensive, smooth, and functional the bike paths are in this city - I had totally forgotten.

Then, I finally got to race on the track at Blaine again Thursday evening. Wowzers it was so fun. I got up there early to get a rental bike and try to fiddle around with the gearing a bit. Gilby got there too, and we decided that since the bike had a 48 on the front, I would warm up in the 16 that was currently on it, and then switch to a 15 to race. Good plan.

So I started the pre-race routine, and everyone started showing up - Strats, (dis), super-rookie, Don, Tom, Phil, the Little Guy himself, Tuffy, Smithers, Skibby, HWood (spectating), Timmer, and lots of women racers too - Sara B, Jessica, Barb, Megan, the Dahlman sisters, and a couple others too. Holy blogger-land.

The women's first race was a snowball - sprints every 4 laps for different point values - 12, 6, 6, and 8. It came up faster than I expected, so Gilby and I barely had time to change my cog and then I raced up to the rail to line up. Something didn't feel right, and there were some funny noises going on with my bike. They sent us off the rail, and it soon became clear that this just wasn't happening - my chain was slipping. I came off the track, and the lovely officials delayed the start so that I could get the bike put together. A bunch of Grumpy's guys came running over with tools and extra wheels, etc, and we discovered that the problem was that the rental bike had a road chain and didn't fit any of the cogs. Shit. So we threw the 16 back on there, and I went to go and spin spin spin in the race.

I was spinning out on the first sprint and couldn't even move up, so when the pace slowed down, I decided to attack. I got off the front by myself, and managed to stay there for the next two sprints, which was cool, but gave me a solid case of track lung. In the final though, I was left behind - Gilby almost came around for that sprint, but one of the Dahlmans took it. They were wicked fast!

Then we had the keirin. What a funny race. Where did the keirin come from anyway? Who decided one day, "hmmm, it would be a great idea if we had a motorcycle on this silly round oval, and it would be great if we got these funny bicycle riders to chase it on their non-motorcycles." That's what we did. Basically, I just didn't want to draw the number 1 position, because then I would be obligated to take the wheel of the motorcycle, consequently leaving me at the front in the wind when it pulls off with 2.5 laps too go. But of course, I drew the number 1 position, not only for the preliminary round, but also for the final. Who does that? It wasn't such a successful race for me, but Gilby managed a 3rd and I came in after her with a 4th. I also have to mention that I had perhaps the most supreme holder in the entire race.

Last was the points race. I don't actually remember what happened in the points race because I was so busy enjoying the wonderful infield scene of spandex-clad Minnesotans milling about talking shit with each other and watching the hot racing action with stellar commentary from Bob Williams. And also trying to pick out my mother in the crowded bleachers to give her a wave. It was 30 laps though, and I do remember Strats pulling out a big attack at the end of the race to really get the speed going. Afterwards, Dave came up and gave me $10 - not bad for third place!

So it rocked. I'm so glad it didn't rain.
Friday morning, we woke up and headed to Green Lake Wisconsin for my first NRC race. More to come on that later.

Aw, shucks

2007-07-16T11:41:00.000-05:00

Here's what I learned this weekend (actually this morning) - always check the results. I suppose I should have learned that at Superweek last year when I was in a winning break for the entire race, and they still managed to miss my number.

Yesterday was the Lafayette Crit. I wasn't even sure I was going to do it, since I was more concerned with getting lotsa good hours on the bike to be ready for my 24 hours of craziness. I had a nice mountain bike ride in Marin on Saturday - the weather over there can be so incredible. Fog and gusting winds by the golden gate and in the headlands, and then sunny, baking climbs a half hour later just a tad north. And always awesome views. Then, when Sunday rolled around, I decided to ride out to Lafayette for the crit, to get a little extra time in.

When I got there, I found the Dolce Vita gals, who had kicked ass in the cat 3 race earlier - Janelle led out Starla for the win, and then hung on for 3rd place as well. Wow! They were doubling up and doing the p1/2/3 race too, so we hung out in the shade (it was hot) waiting for the start of our race. Apparently there were 41 starters in our field, a pretty good number. The course was interesting - a short downhill a long straight stretch into a nice almost 180 corner, and up a long gradual stretch to the finish line.

For most of the race I felt OK, but not great. Blah. The 1/2/3 races are worlds different from 3/4 races, that's for sure. I tried to stay pretty far up in the pack, but I never got up far enough in the last couple laps to really do well in the sprint. Miss Mary Ellen Ash, however, of the LBGRC team, was KILLING it. She got a couple of primes and then took the sprint at the end by no small margin. Impressive. So after the race I hung out and chatted a bit, and then rode home with Team Oakland Dave. Never even checked the results. Until I logged onto the ncnca racing site this morning to look at pics. Turns out I actually got 10th place - definitely nothing to brag about, but ironically, the prize list went 10 deep. Which means there's probably a $5 gift certificate somewhere that I missed out on. Oops!

Oh well. Happy Monday!

Matters of some importance

2007-07-08T22:26:00.000-05:00

First - I'm finally a cat 2. I gave myself some time to think about it, and waited until I felt ready. And now I've gone and done it.

Second - I'm going to be visiting the Twin Cities in less than two weeks, and showing up to race at the track in Blaine on July 19 (I hope it doesn't rain.) If you're on the fence about going that night, DO it. It will be great to see all the tracksters again.

And racing - Yesterday was the Carrera de San Rafael. Definitely hard, but one of my favorite races of the season.

It was a 4-corner course with a short uphill on one side, followed by a long slightly downhill side, a short downhill, and then a long slight rise into the finish line. We lined up with 54 women in the P/1/2/3 field for our 60 minute crit, and I could tell it was going to be the strongest field I've raced in this year -- Jazz Apple, Proman, Value Act Capitol, Tibco, Velo Bella, and some Advil Chapstick ladies, along with quite a few others.

From the gun, we headed out fast. I started at the back of the field and it was tough working my way up even to the middle of the pack. The primes started soon, which also contributed to keeping the pace high, and after 20 minutes I began to wonder if I could really hold on for a whole hour. The teams were really working hard on the front of the field, attacking, counter-attacking, trying to form a break. But Dan and Aekta (some non-bike-racer Dartmouth friends) had come out to cheer me on, so there was no way I was going to let myself get dropped. I just kept trying to move up where I could and hang on to the wheel in front of me, and finally things started to feel easier. I'm not sure if I just settled into a comfortable rhythm, or if the pace actually slowed quite a bit, but I started to feel good. I was really enjoying the course - the hill was a quick power climb, which suits me, and the downhill corners were really smooth and fast.

Then, about 40 minutes into the race, I felt myself get a flat as the field came through the start/finish. Fortunately, it was just ahead of the pit, so I put my arm up and rolled in, telling them that I had shimano 10. Then feeling REALLY stupid when I realized it was a front flat, not a rear. But the SRAM guys had it all figured out and set me up with a nice Zipp wheel and plenty of time to get in position to get back in the race. The break cruised by first - three gals, and they were hauling. Wow. Then the field came charging through and I was pushed back out to rejoin them. And I was in. Phew. Having a mechanical in a race is still something that stresses me out, even if I do get back into the field.

In the last 20 minutes, the chase was on. There were some strong girls bringing the break back to the field, and we were all together coming into the final lap. Unfortunately, two women crashed on the last time up the hill, but the rest of the field was able to avoid it. Coming into the last corners, I was about midway back, but I started sprinting as soon as I could and managed to claw my way up to 8th place in the end, which I was really happy with. This race really helped build my confidence, and it's great to get experience in a really fast race like that. I still have a lot to learn, and it's so awesome to be racing in a place where there are so many women racers to learn from! I'm already getting psyched for 'cross.

Photo courtesy of Dan Cross-Call.

Catching up

2007-07-03T19:12:00.001-05:00

Lots and lots of racing!

Last Wednesday, I headed down to the Hellyer velodrome for some track racing. Now I remember why I like the track so much. Wednesday night racing has just 3 categories - A, B, and C - they don't separate the women, like I'm used to. So I put myself in C, racing with some of the guys, and a couple other ladies. I was nervous at first, but once the racing started, it was nothing but fun. We had 2 points races, a scratch race, and a miss n out. It felt really good (in retrospect) to be pushed by guys that were solidly stronger than me. At the time, I felt ready to hack up a lung - "track lung" is not limited to Minnesota. It was great. And I clawed my way to 4th place (of 16) in the miss-n-out and the scratch race, and got a couple points in the other races for a 6th in the omnium.

Then, this weekend, Saturday was the Fremont Criterium. It was a fun L-shaped course with a 180 degree turn and lots of wind. My race was a 1/2/3 race (with 3s picked separately), so there were some fast ladies from Proman, Tibco, Metromint, Velo Bella, and some others. We started out fast from the gun and two Proman girls, Shelley Olds and Rachel Lloyd, broke off the front right away. The pace stayed high for the first part of the race as people made attacks off the front, but the field never organized together to mount a good chase. I wasn't feeling great, and there were a couple times that I thought I might get dropped. But I hung in there, and decided to throw out an attack at the beginning of the bell lap to see what would happen, because I didn't feel like I had great legs for the sprint. Here I go:

Photo courtesy of Garrett Lau

I should have tried it about a lap earlier, when people were slightly less on edge. As it happened, I ended up leading out the last lap and getting passed before the line by six or so ladies, ending up 4th in the cat 3s. Ali from Form Fitness won the field sprint for the cat 3 win - she rocked it!

Sunday was the Vacaville crit - what a fun course. It had a nice hill in it, and 8 corners, all different and all fun. I did the 3/4 race and had a great time - lots of solid cat 3 women, and quite a few strong 4s. Lauraleen had a solo break off the front for a few laps, but for the most part, the race stayed together and the pace was low. In the end I rolled across the line in 3rd place.

Tomorrow is the Davis 4th of July crit, and then some more racing action this weekend. And potentially big news soon.

Racing some more!

2007-06-27T00:34:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately, my blog has pretty much become a way to keep track of the races I've done if I ever manage to put together a race resume. Oh well, I'm over it.

So on Saturday, I headed up to Lake Sonoma with the Team Oakland guys to do the Bikemonkey mountain bike race. It was pretty rad - perfect weather and a nice 5 mile loop of all singletrack. I entered the expert category and somehow decided (as the lone entrant) that I wanted to do 4 laps. Which meant that I was the last person on the course, since the Sport men did 3 laps, and the beginners 2. But hey, someone's gotta be the last finisher. Afterward, there was a huge BBQ with hamburgers and gardenburgers. They did it up right.

Sunday was the crit down in Burlingame. My race didn't start till 1:30, so I took my time getting down there, and even got in a good warmup. There were 45 ladies lined up starters for the P/1/2/3 race, and the field looked fast. Tibco, Proman, LGBRC, and Morgan Stanley all had several women out there. The Dolce Vita ladies were also out in force along with quite a few Metromints, and plenty of others. I was thinkin it was going to be fast.

We did start out pretty fast, but then things settled down. It was really just a lot of fun! The L-shaped course had a bunch of corners and a big sweeping turn into the finish line. The race went by really quickly, and before I knew it, we had 5 laps to go. Fortunately, I did a good job keeping track of that number and got myself towards the front in the last few laps. Proman was working at the front, keeping the pace high in the last two laps, which was great - I was able to sit in around 7th wheel coming into the final stretch. We swept around the corner and then everyone started sprinting. I managed to come across the line in 4th place, which I was really happy with, considering how deep the field was.

I'm psyched for this coming weekend - a crit with a 180 on Saturday, and then Sunday I get to do 2 crits. Hooray!

Track at last

2007-06-17T21:50:00.000-05:00

I finally got myself down to the Hellyer track today, my first time on any track other than the NSC Velodrome in Blaine. Hmmmmm, let's just say that my favorite track is still Blaine. Hellyer is a 335 meter concrete track with about 25 degrees of banking, according to the website. I have to say, I much prefer the steeper banking (46 degrees?) and wood surface at Blaine, even if it does give gnarly splinters.

But it was fun to get back on a track again! I headed down with Alicia and Nicole for the timed events day. Timed events are probably one of the more boring things to do on a track, but obviously they are key for benchmarking and gauging fitness. I'd never done them before, so it was a learning experience. I did a flying 200 in 14.52 seconds, in a 46-15. I would have been better off with a bigger gear, but it was still OK. Then I did a standing 500 in 44-something, and discovered that I'm pretty bad at standing starts. That would be one thing to work on. All the people at the track were super friendly and helpful, encouraging and giving pointers - always a huge bonus.

Anyway, I hope to head down again soon for some real races. Hopefully by then, the infield grass will start to come up and the manure smell will fade.

Final words on the subject: If you are a cyclist in Minnesota, and you haven't ridden on the track in Blaine, you should. It's just plain awesome. And I wish we could figure out a way to get a 250 meter track constructed in Oakland soon!

Track envy

2007-06-09T00:25:00.000-05:00

I made someone's power rankings! I just wish I were racing the track at Blaine!

Definitely the best thing that's happened to me this week. In other news, I'm seriously considering/definitely going to buy a track bike at some point soon. Since you all have such great Chamois Cream recommendations, what track bike do you think I should get? How do I decide? What to do?

More Crits and whatnot

2007-06-04T23:35:00.000-05:00

Saturday morning started early for me, in order to get to the Dash for Cash Crit in Pleasanton. This is a disturbing trend I've noticed -- I'm often getting up earlier on the weekends than I do during the week, just to make it to races. Then Monday comes, and I'm like, "woo-hoo I'm sleepin' in!"

But I digress. Even though I got up early and managed to get myself to the race on time, I still didn't quite wake up until the last lap or so. The women's field was about 35 or 40 cat 1/2/3s all racing together, but the 3s were picked separately from the 1/2s. The "Dash for Cash" meant that there were 6 primes for $40 apiece. Not bad! It wasn't enough to wake me up though, and for reasons that still elude me, I didn't go for any of them. Coming into the last lap, everyone was trying to set up their teammates, talking, yelling, positioning. I realized the race was almost over, woke up, and moved up in the pack to position myself on the inside, near the front, for the final corner. We came around the corner with a lot of people going really wide, and everything opened up in front of me. That was nice. I sprinted over the line either 3rd or 4th overall, and 1st in the 3s. So in the books, it was a win. Woohoo!

Sunday was the EMC/Vellum Crit, also in Pleasanton, city of wide streets and corporate parks. Still, I managed to get lost on the way after forgetting my directions on the kitchen table. Fortunately, I spotted a bike on a car going the other way, and quickly whipped a U-turn to get on their wheel. I drafted them the rest of the way to the race.

It was a 3/4 womens race, but it was actually a lot faster than Saturday. People were attacking a bunch, the Dolce Vitas, the Bellas, the Mints, and I tossed in a few too. Fun! There were a bunch of primes too, and I managed to get a couple. In the end, I lost count of the laps, and thought we had 2 to go when it was bell lap. Oooops! The Protech ladies pulled out a great sprint though, and managed to grab the first two places. I rolled across in 11th.

After the race, I headed out for another 4 hours. My official goal now is to do a 24 hour MTB race solo this year, so I figure I gotta do some good training. Now that I've said it on blogger, I gotta do it.

So, what's your favorite brand of chamois cream?

Upgrade Dilemma

2007-05-28T22:33:00.000-05:00

Do I do it?

I raced on Saturday in Livermore - did a 3/4 crit. Had a solid but not outstanding race, ended up winning two primes and coming in 3rd in the finish. Which puts me over the 25 points necessary to become a cat 2 woman. What to do?

Instead of hitting up the rest of the races for the weekend, Mt Hammy and the Memorial Day Crits, to get in some more experience in a 1/2/3 field, I decided to go mountain biking. A nice mellow Santa Cruz ride on Sunday went as planned, with some rippin singletrack descents and sustained climbs.

Today... well, it was awesome, but not as planned. We headed out with 9 people, a bunch of these guys, Mel, two Amys, and me. Everything started out fine, but by the end of the ride we were trickling back to the vehicles two at a time. But all in all we came away without losing anyone, and no injuries requiring hospitalization. Not bad!

So, to sum up the three-day weekend--

Mornings that I woke up even earlier than I do for work: 2 out of 3
Money earned racing in a 45 minute crit: $17
Total PB&J sandwiches consumed: 4
PB&J sandwiches donated to hungry riding companions: 2
BBQs attended: 2
Number of times I heard someone say the words Bar-be-que: 1,849
Number of hours directly occupied by my bike obsession: 23
Indirectly occupied: the rest.

But tomorrow it's back to work!

tra-la-la...

2007-05-28T21:08:00.001-05:00

blog?
what's that?

Golden State Criterium

2007-05-14T23:37:00.000-05:00

Looking back, this was one of the most bizarre races ever. Technically (sort of) it was my first win as a cat 3. But I'm not going to count it. In the abscence of photos from the race, and in order to add something worthwhile to the post, I bring you this gem:

Luckily, I've acquired a new helmet since that day. And now onto my "race" report.
There was a pretty slim showing at the Golden State Crit, probably thanks to the Salinas crit at the same time, and the fact that it was Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day, mom! I came so close to bailing out myself - I almost turned my car around halfway to the race cause I was just so sleeeeeeeepy. But I didn't.

So when I got to the start line after a quick warm-up and a lot of caffeine, there were only 4 other women there for the P1/2/3 race. Wow. I haven't seen a field that small since the Marty road race in Minnesota last year. So we all looked at each other, blinked, looked at the official, blinked some more, and then concluded that an hour-long crit would be super-boring for everyone. So it was shortened to 40 minutes. Then, one of the women, Linda, suggested that we do a "handicap" race, just to spice it up, based on our categories. She was a 2, along with two of the others, and Rita and I were cat 3s.

No one raised any serious objections, so they sent Rita and I off ahead of the three cat 2s, who were then supposed to chase us. So.... blah blah boring blah. She and I worked together, which was fun - we got into quite a comfortable rotation. She rocked! With 4 to go, Rita told me I may as well just head off on my own, so I drilled it as hard as I could for the last few minutes, alone, and "won" the race. Rita snagged a second place. Turns out the 2s weren't able to work very well together, and never caught us. Very interesting race structure. But fun!

The Coolest 24

2007-05-11T00:59:00.000-05:00

So while I normally would have hung out and down some crits this past weekend, instead I had managed to get myself onto 24-hour team. We raced in Cool, California, for 24 hours, relay-style. I gotta say, 24-hour racing on a team of Keith, Sean, Todd, and Keri (race support extraordinarre) is nothing but a good time! But seeing all the solos out there got me thinking that I should try to do a 24 myself to induce a bit more suffering. I'm planning...

We scraped together a few photos:

James Pratt Photography here
Brian Joder here

Madera Stage Race, Continued

2007-05-01T00:05:00.000-05:00

Our Saturday night consisted of the 4 of us gals lying in the hotel room with our legs up against the walls, bellies full of Mexican food, trying to figure out a decent strategy for the road race on Sunday. We came up with some important points/questions:

-- there's an uber-bumpy section, creating some serious ouch potential in some...ahhh...certain areas. Any solutions? (None that were feasible).

-- the temperature is supposed to drop by 1 or 2 degrees, bringing it down to an almost bearable 95 degrees. (heat stroke potential = still high)

-- what are the chances of there being neutral feeds? (we decided chances were slim to excellent, with a large margin of error)

-- how much time will we actually be able to gain (or lose) in the GC on a fairly flat road race? (probably not much - so go for the time bonuses for first, second, and third!)

Sunday, we woke up, thanks to Vera's cell phone alarm - the power had gone out during the night and the alarm clock was blinking. We made it to the race without mishap, and set up our trainers in the barn to do some warm-up. Everyone was plenty warm when our race started, and as we headed on our neutral way to the official start, someone yelled to us - "It's hotter than you think, drink lots!" Awesome. I had brought two bottles on my bike and one in my jersey, and was hoping for the feeds too. Janelle was sitting 5th and I was 4th in the GC, behind Kelli, Olivia, and Alicat. Goal #1 was to hold our places, goal #2 was to try to move up a spot, as I was only 17 seconds out of 3rd place.

The 17-mile course was fairly flat, with a LOOOOONG section of intensely bumpy road. The finishing stretch had some really fun rollers, and the feed zone was on a little hill right after the finish line. We were going for 4 laps. I think everyone was feeling the heat, and racing pretty conservatively. There weren't ever any serious breaks or even attacking. There were a lot of mishaps though:

- Jessica and Breego both got flats in the bumps. I'm sure there were many others!
- There was a bit of nervousness when the road narrowed at a bridge, causing a crash that took out both Janelle and I. I believe everyone was OK though.
- Alicat probably had the most mishap-wrought race though - she's got a report on it. A flat (phantom!) and a stubbornly dropped chain weren't enough to keep her from finishing with the pack though - amazing job!
- On the second time through the feed zone, one of the angels that was giving us waterbottles was taken out - I'm not sure what happened, as I was way behind it, but I think all's well.

There was quite a bottleneck in the feedzone, as half the field tried to grab their water from the 2 people that were giving neutral feeds. So on the last lap, I decided I wouldn't take a feed, but would just try to get by on one bottle, so as to not get caught in the mess.

I rode on past the neutral feeds at the bottom, and as I neared the top of the hill, out of the chaos, I heard, "Karla, do you want a bottle?" I thought it was a voice in my head, like a mirage, how people see water in the dessert. But no, it was real. Olaf hooked me up with an ice cold tall water-bottle. Never have I appreciated cold water like I did then.

The last lap was pretty slow, so I sipped my water and thought about the finish. It was going to hurt. Finally, we hit the beginning of the rollers. Virginia launched a huge attack over the top of the first one, and a couple Promans marked her, along with 2 other cat 1/2 girls. I jumped on their wheels, and off we went. Then Olivia (cat 3) lit it up along the left and got a huge gap. I just hung onto the wheel in front of me through the rollers and then hit the final finishing one as hard as I could. Olivia took the overall win (AMAZING!) and I took second in the cat 3s. I didn't realize it, but the 7 of us had a bit a gap on the rest of the field by the end, so I had gained some time as well as getting the time bonus for 2nd.

So, in the end, I was 3rd in the GC. Of course I'm psyched for that, but Ali had the worst of luck, and I feel like I didn't earn the 3rd so much as get bumped into it. In other news, Virginia got 5th for the 1/2 RR - that girl is STRONG! Janelle got fifth in the RR, and held onto her fifth overall. And Vera, Breego, and Jessica finished out the race even with their mishaps. Nice job to all!

What a weekend! And I'm already looking forward to this coming weekend, when I'll go up to Cool, CA to do a 24-hour team MTB race with some sweet dudes.

Madera Stage Race = HOT

2007-04-30T00:30:00.000-05:00

I did the stage race in Madera this weekend, out in the Central Valley, and all week, the weather reports were talking about how warm it was going to be over the weekend. I didn't really think it would be that hot, but it was. On Saturday, it reached the record high temperature of 96 or 97 degrees. Anyway, the race was a crit and a time trial on Saturday, road race on Sunday. I headed down to the race with Virgil on Friday after work, and we grabbed our room in Madera with Vern and Bruno. (All ladies with man-nicknames, of course.) Saturday morning dawned bright and sunny as we ate our oatmeal, packed the cars, and headed out to get coffee. And then to the race.

The CRIT
Crits are just fun, for the most part, and this one was decently fun, if not very exciting. It was flat, four corners, pretty straightforward. So, the whole stage race was set up so that the W1/2 and the W3 were racing in the same field (for a total of about 35-40), but we were picked separately, which gave an extra challenge to the strategy angle. At the beginning I tried to get in a break with Virg and some others...but we were caught. I threw out another solo attack after one of the primes, but no one came with me. And actually, it seemed like there was a lot of that -- lots of solo attacks that got off the front and were just left to dangle for a while before being sucked up. Trac attacked over and over, as did some of the Metromints, and others. But overall, the pace was pretty low. Finally we came down to the end. One cat 3, Kelli, who is an amazing time trialer, attacked off the front and got herself a nice gap. The 1/2s in the field didn't really need to chase her down, and the 3s (myself included) didn't really get it together enough to organize anything. Plus, she's super-strong. So she stayed out there.

Coming around the final corner I just tried to position myself well so I could be near the front for the sprint. My positioning definitely could have been better -- after the corner, I hesitated in order to get on someone's wheel, when I should have just started sprinting. But I crossed the line somewhere in the first 10 people. So all I knew, afterwards, was that I hadn't won the 3s race (Kelli did), but that I was probably somewhere in the top 5, because most of the other ladies I could see were 1/2s. And Virg won the whole race! She wound up the sprint right from the corner and held the speed all the way to the line. Awesome.

The TIME TRIAL
No results were posted after the crit, so I still had no idea where I was when we headed over to the TT. Oh well. And I totally forgot that my clip-on TT bars were for oversized handlebars, and my bar is no longer oversized. So I crafted some sweet shims for my clip-ons by cutting an old tube into pieces with a cable-cutter. Handy-dandy.

Our warm-up, in the 96 degree weather, consisted of sitting under the tent fanning ourselves and putting ice in our bras. And then rolling over to the start with a couple minutes to spare. My strategy for the TT was just to go out hard, but stay within myself, and then just keep going harder. I was the 3rd cat 3 woman to start, and we were headed out in 30 second intervals. I actually felt pretty good in the heat, and soon I settled into a rhythm. I passed my 30 second lady, and then my 1 minute lady, and it was just open road ahead. I made the first turn, kept pushing it, and pretty soon, I was already 11 minutes in. The funny thing was how much effort it took to drink -- it was sooooo hot that I wanted to keep drinking, even though the TT was only 10 miles. But every time I took a sip of water, my heart rate would go up, and I'd lose just a little bit of rhythm.

Soon I hit the second corner, still feeling fine, and I knew that it was a good TT for me. I kept going, going, until I saw a short rise in front of me. I focused on it, thinking, "click it down one gear, and just keep the cadence up. Up and over the rise, and then click it back down on the other side." Which is exactly what I did. I was focusing so hard on keeping the speed up, that I totally missed the cone on the side of the road that was supposed to mark the corner. So after I flew over the rise, I realized that I had just crossed the rail road tracks. I tried to think back -- had I crossed them before? No.... which would mean that I'm on the wrong side of the tracks.... and that would mean....no. not possible. I couldn't have missed the turn. but, the tracks? Shit shit shit... I couldn't see anyone in front of or behind me, but I swung around and headed back the way I had come, up over the tracks, and then I saw the corner. By that time, someone else was coming into it too. So I turned and hammered as hard as I could for the last couple of kilometers. Ugh. Me = not a happy bike racer after that. How dumb of me! I don't really know how much time I actually lost - probably somewhere between a minute and 2 minutes. Ouch.

Oh well. Vera had the genious idea of picking up a jar of pickles on the way to the hotel - totally delish post-race food, with the nice crispy crunch and extraordinarily high sodium content. Here's a tidbit for ya: just one pickle spear contributes 14% of your daily sodium needs. Beautiful! With some doritos and cheez-its thrown in the mix, we all managed to replentish our sodium stores. And the showers were glorious. After we all lazed around for a while, we decided to head out to Sal's taqueria for some Mexican food with the Dolce Vita crew of lovely ladies. J&J&O&S. Dinner took forever, but we ended up full and happy, so that's all that matters.

And, at the end of the day, when we finally got the results, I found out that I had come out 2nd place in the crit, and 4th in the TT. Yay! Overall, I was sitting in 4th place in the GC. I was pretty psyched for that, considering my oversight in the TT.

And now I'm tuckered out. Hopefully I'll write about the RR tomorrow.

Sea Otter!

2007-04-16T00:07:00.000-05:00

Sea Otter was pretty impressive. Some photos, reports to come.

Copperopolis

2007-04-08T20:03:00.000-05:00

One word to describe the Copperopolis road race: humbling. And a few more would be bumpy, rough, hilly, jarring, hard, long, beatiful, fun, bumpy and jarring. This photo is a soon-to-be-in-pain Karla. The Copperopolis Road Race is refered to as the Paris-Roubaix of California for a reason. The race started at 8:30am, which meant that Shana and I packed up and headed out at 4:30am. We managed to only get slightly lost, and actually arrived with plenty of time to do everything we needed to do. Amazingly, we had no emergencies before the race, and both of us made it to the line with a nice warm-up. Here we are warming up:

We'd heard that the first hill came early in the 21 mile loop, so we wanted to try to be ready for it. Shana's race (the 1/2 ladies) started before mine, and then the 3s (my race) rolled out 5 minutes later. All 11 of us. The smallest field I've seen so far in California.

The first few miles were easy enough, and I started to get used to the rattling. Then we started climbing. At first it was fine, but then a few of the girls started drilling it on the front. I can now say that I'm definitely still not a climber. Near the top, at the steepest point, I popped off the back. A couple other girls fell off too, but at different times, so I ended up alone. I could see the group of about 7 girls up ahead of me, but after the climb was a pretty intense crosswind section, and there was no way I was going to catch back on alone. At this point, I started thinking to myself, "Wow, this sucks. Maybe I don't want to do the Wente Road Race. I think I'll be fine with just the Wente Crit. Yes, I like flat crits. And Sea Otter is going to be brutal...." The rest of my race was pretty boring. It was just me, all alone, pretty much time trialing for the remainder of the 63 mile race. There were some long, somewhat flat, windy sections, another minor climb, and then the AWESOME descent. It was truely amazing.

I didn't think I'd like feeling like I was going to be vibrated to pieces, but oddly enough, I really enjoyed it. This was one of those descents where the corners are wide enough that you don't have to brake, which is good, because my hands were holding the bars in a death grip. I just kept pedalling and didn't loosen up my fingers for anything. Of course, the whole time, I was wondering whether all my teeth were still in my head. And I couldn't really see the road very well, I could just sense, somehow, that it was really really rough, and that it wasn't going to help to try to avoid the potholes because they were everywhere. But by the time I was done, I had a huge smile on my face, and I had convinced myself to finish the next two miserable laps of the race just so I could do that descent again. Amazing.

In the end, I finished 7th out of the 11 girls that started my race. Not at all what I wanted, and I can see now that I have a bit of work to do. But I guess, to look at the bright side, it was good practice in staying focused mentally even when I'm not with other people. And to put the cherry on top, as Shana and I were spinning around after the race, who should ride by but Levi Liepheimer. Of course he won the P/1/2 race.

And here was another stellar tidbit from Copperopolis. Excellent signage.

Thanks to Kris McNeill for the photos and the hand-ups.

Big News

2007-03-27T23:23:00.000-05:00

So big, in fact, that I'm blogging midweek about it! What could it be?

Well, some of you may remember last summer, when I decided to take part in the men's cat 4/5 races at the track. All was good for a while in the nice miss-n-out we were racing, until I ran into Tuffy's wheel. At which point, of course, I slid down the track, picking up a whole slew of splinters all over my back, thigh, and shin. Read my thoughts about it here.

I had a couple different people work on those splinters but there was one in my leg that didn't want to come out. So I left it there. Forgot about it, basically. I'd check it out every once in a while, and it was always still there, under the skin, just chillin. Until yesterday, as I got out of the shower, looked down, and there it was, peeking out! Almost sadly, I swept it up with my finger and immediately started taking pictures, of course.

It almost saddens me that the track at Blaine is no longer physically a part of me. Ha.

Also, I've become one step closer to being able to casually say I'm "from" California. I put the Cali plates in the Luther Hopkins Honda frame, on the Echo. Think I didn't?

And, my cousin visited last weekend. Coincidentally, we both happen to have great hair. I think that's all the news for now!

Santa Rosa Crit

2007-03-24T22:22:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I headed up to Santa Rosa for the corporate crit - it was going to be pretty sweet, because there was a women's 3/4 crit, and a 1/2/3 crit. I managed to leave late from my house, and arrive to the race with less than an ideal amount of time, and got a warm-up of exactly 9 minutes and 34 seconds. Excellent. I got to the line for the first race, and learned that the 3/4 race was actually a 3/4 AND 30+ race. So basically two separate races going on at the same time. And the 30+ women could be any category, so there were a few cat 2s over 30 (including five from the Proman team). There were a lot of women too -- over 60 I think. The official came out and gave us the typical instructions: "This race is 45 minutes long. We'll put up the lap cards with 8 to go. You can take a free lap if you have a crash or a mechanical up until that point. The wheel pit is here at the black tent, and there are neutral wheels if you need them. There are no free laps after 8 laps to go. There will be some merchandise primes. Any questions?" I realize that this spiel may seem very trivial - many of you have probably heard it a hundred times. But these details have never been so important as they were for me in this race. (For those of you not obsessed with bike racing, here's a short article on criteriums that mentions what a free lap is.)

The race started out with some attacks right from the gun, and the pace was high. On the second lap, one Proman woman attacked and I went after her. We stayed off the front for half a lap, and then 4 other ladies caught us, 3 more Proman and 1 Norcal Velo woman. That was the break. It was pretty much a sure thing that it was going to stay off - with four cat 2 Proman ladies off the front of a field of cat 3/4 ladies, it's kind of a no brainer. So I was psyched to be there! After a couple laps in the break, we'd opened up a huge gap on the rest of the pelaton, and I realized that all 5 of the other women in the break were in the 30+ race, and I was the only one from the 3/4 race. Which meant that I pretty much had the win tied up if I just stayed with the break. The pace was pretty high and I was working hard, but I wasn't worried about being able to stick with them till the end. So I was feeling pretty happy. With 4 women in the break of 6, Proman did most of the work, but I pulled through whenever I got the chance, and so did the Norcal Velo woman.

The race seemed to go by pretty quickly, and pretty soon, I saw the official hold up the lap cards -- 8 laps to go! Then, in the first corner after we saw the lap cards, I felt my rear wheel bobble a little bit. I got that OH CRAP feeling, where it feels like someone punched you in the stomach. I looked down and confirmed my fears - my rear tire was quickly losing air. On the next corner, one of the other girls noticed it too. "Make sure you get a free lap, cause you'll win your race," she said. She was super-nice and said I could even take her spare wheel out of the pit if there weren't neutral wheels. So I was just HOPING that maybe the officials would still give me a free lap, since it was so close to 8 laps to go. I rode out the rest of the lap and then rolled into the pit, frantic-like. "Can I still get a free lap?" I asked. "Nope... you'll have to chase," said the official. It was a few more valuable seconds before I collected myself enough to ask for a neutral wheel, and the neutral wheel guy was across the lawn somewhere. He came running over, tossed on a spare wheel, and gave me a push back onto the course. Amazingly, after all that time, the field still hadn't caught up. I think our break had almost lapped the field when I flatted. But now I could see them behind me. Even so, I charged ahead by myself, hoping that somehow I'd be able to hold them off for another 7 laps and still win the race. Some of the spectators told the field that I was out of the break though, so they organized a chase (easy to do, since there were some teams with a lot of gals) and finally caught me with 3 laps to go.

I was super-bummed and upset - the win had escaped me with my flat tire. I briefly tried to console myself by thinking, "Suck it up, this is just a pack finish. This is where I'd normally be in 9 out of 10 races anyway. Work on positioning, and win the sprint." But I couldn't quite get my head back in the game with just 3 laps left. I was still thinking about my bad luck when we came around the final turn and I put in a semi-committed sprint for 8th place. But.... THAT'S RACING. I guess.

I headed back to my car to fix my flat tire and get ready for the next race. I found the offending piece of glass that had managed to lodge itself in my tire and poke through to the tube. I got rid of it, checked the rest of the tire, and put in a new tube. Then I headed out to roll around a bit before the 1/2/3 race. About a mile away from the crit course, and 15 minutes before my start, once again my bad karma was astounding. An industrial sized staple found it's way into my tire, causing me to flat yet again. I couldn't believe it. So I shouldered the bike and ran (in my shoes with cleats) back to the course, with about 5 minutes to spare. Fortunately, the awesome neutral support guy gave me a new wheel so that I could line up and do the 1/2/3 race. The field was much smaller, about 25 women, many of the same ones plus some additional cat 2s. The race was SLOW. Slow. There were a few attacks, and finally one Proman woman got off the front alone. By this point, my legs were feeling like crap. The 3/4 race had taken more out of me than I thought, and the mile run in between races didn't help either.

Pretty soon there were some more attacks, people trying to bridge, (myself included), but ultimately, only 2 more people got away, and the rest of the pack regrouped. It was pretty frustrating after that - I tried to organize a chase, but it's hard when you have no teammates to work with and also the Proman team was doing a great job blocking - they were ALWAYS in the second wheel position, so whoever was on the front would pull and pull, and there would be no one to come up and take over. I think most of the field was content to sprint for 4th place and no one wanted to be out in the wind trying to chase down the break. Oh well. In the end I rolled across the line somewhere in the middle of the pack - I was kinda boxed in, and to be honest, not super motivated. Looking back, I should have raced more aggressively at the beginning of the race, attacked more, and tried harder to get into the break. Unfortunately, I was still letting the 3/4 race get me down and I was basically just riding my bike around the course. So that's a good lesson in mental preparation - I have to stay more positive.

All in all, I ended the day a little unhappy. But as I packed up my car, I heard someone riding around yelling, "YAY, bike racing! Yay for bike racing!" And yes, I still feel that way too.

A crit, a road race, and.... cyclocross?

2007-03-19T00:08:00.000-05:00

Wow, I just went and looked in the mirror, and I look like...a lobster with goggles on. I got way too much sun this weekend for this midwest gal. Two races up in the Sacramento area on super sunny days will do that I guess.

Saturday was the Land Park Criterium. The women's 1/2/3 race started at the perfect time of 2:30pm, with probably over 40 racers. The course was, again, flat as a pancake (fine with me!), and it had one sweeeeeeet sharp left corner. I decided to race a bit more conservatively this weekend, since the fields were 1/2/3, instead of just 3 like last weekend. The first couple of laps felt a little squirrelly to me, but I think people were just settling in and getting used to the course. After that, it was a really fun race! I pretty much just sat tight near the front of the field for most of the race, trying to stay in a position where I could (theoretically!) make any splits that might have happened. In the last lap, Velo Bella started to wind things up and the pace got pretty high. Of course, things got a little dicey as people jockeyed for position and coming around the last corner, I got bumped pretty hard. I thought I was going to crash, but we both managed to keep the rubber side down. So then I jumped on a wheel coming into the final straight. It was the wrong wheel though, and when it started to slow, I just went ahead and launched the sprint. I was out in front for a little bit, but, alas, I had gone too early and couldn't hold it. A couple people came around me and I crossed the line in 4th. Again. Here's a nice shot of the finish.

I was actually really happy with the finish - this race was a lot faster than last weekend, so I was psyched to be up there. In retrospect I wish I had raced a bit more actively, put in some attacks, gone for some primes, but to be honest, it's still a bit intimidating to race in large 1/2/3 fields.

Today was the Bariani Road Race, 4 ten-mile laps. It was a nice course, fairly flat with one climb about 2 miles before the finish, and again a pretty big field of 1/2/3 ladies. It's been a long time since I've done a road race with that many people - not since collegiate nats in 2005. So again, I wasn't feeling uber-confident, so I decided to be conservative and just watch how things played out. It was crazy to me how hard it was to move up - our field totally filled out the road, and when you're in the middle of the pack, you're not going anywhere until someone else does. The climb was nice because it strung things out a little bit every lap, but no one ever managed to stay off the front. For the most part, I felt fine, and I made it up the hill in the top 10 on the last lap. My positioning was pretty good coming into the final stretch, but (surprise!) I went way too early. I was toast before I got to the line, and enough people surged around me to solidly knock me out of the top 10.

The most exciting part of the race, though, was my dilly-dally into cyclocross. At one point, I was riding on the far right side of the road, when it started to narrow, and then turned to deep, loose gravel just as the person to my left moved over towards me slightly. All forces combined were enough to send me careening through the gravel into the grassy field next to the road. So it was like 'cross again! I was SO lucky though, because a wonderful Velo Bella happened to be riding behind me, and yelled at me to jump back onto the road, she'd let me in. Saved my ass. Thanks! I think that was probably my max heartrate of the day.

Anyway, weekend's over, time to fall into bed and dream about next weekend!

Rediscovering Mountain Biking!

2007-03-17T12:20:00.000-05:00

I headed out last night with some guys from the DS Cycling Club. Not yesterday evening, but night. Lights were in order when we started at 8:30pm.

I had forgotten how much fun mountain biking is, again! (I always forget). And night riding pretty much doubles your fun. Excellent.

Races are in Sacramento this weekend -- which means I need to get off my computer and into my car. And you should go ride your bike too!

Menlo Park Grand Prix

2007-03-10T22:34:00.000-06:00

I've never been a sprinter: In seventh grade, I joined my school track team, because everybody else was doin' it. I decided I wanted to be a sprinter, because the short distances seemed way more fun than slogging away for a mile or more. But I really sucked at it. I got my ass handed to me every time I lined up for the 100 meters. By ninth grade, I had resigned myself to doing the distance events if I ever wanted to not come in last. And since then I've always thought of myself as more of an "endurance" athlete (I still do).

But I've also realized over the past couple of years that if you want to win bike races, it often helps if you can sprint (not always, but often). Last year, I worked on it a bit, and today I worked on it a lot more.

I got up at 5:00am and got myself on the road close to 6:00 to head down to the Menlo Park Grand Prix. Got there with plenty of time, fiddled with my bike, registered, pinned my number, and then broke my valve stem as I was putting air in the tires. Crap. So of course I hadn't brought spare wheels and had to change the tube. Then as I finally was ready to put the bike on the trainer, I realized the only skewer I had brought didn't fit. Crap. The women's 3 race started at 8:00, so I lined up without much of a warmup. I finally met Sabine in person, which was sweet, and she reassured me that I would probably be able to hang with the group, since we didn't have an entire pro team in our field. The official then said a bunch of stuff, blah blah, 45 minute race, blah, lap cards, blah, and there will be 11 primes. Dang! That's a lot of primes! The course was a 4-corners, pancake flat, 1km per lap, safe and wide open. There were two short sides, and two long, with the finish near the end of one of the long sides.

We started out at an easy pace, people were mellow, and so I figured I would go ahead and try for the first prime to get a bit more of a warm-up in. I don't really remember exactly how it happened, but I somehow managed to catch someone right at the line and took the prime by actually throwing my bike, which amazed me. For the rest of the race, I tried to stay near the front of the 29-woman pack and went for a couple more of the 11 primes. I ended up getting 2 more and getting second in one of them. I was kind of surprised that more people didn't go for them. The way I see it, everyone was going to be saving it for the final sprint, right? So I may as well try to pick up some primes along the way since I don't actually have a chance in the end (that's an attitude I need to work on). But seriously, going for the primes is such good sprint training! It's a great way to learn when to sit on a wheel, when to launch the sprint, feel out how long you can hold your speed, figure out what gearing works best in that situation, etc. When there are multiple chances to do that in one race, it's a great time to learn. And at the cat 3 level, we're all still learning.

At the end of the race two girls went off the front with about 3 to go. The field didn't really do anything about it, so I didn't worry either - I figured one of the teams with several people there would reel it in. But when we came down to the backstretch before the final finishing sprint, the two were still dangling off the front. I probably should have been more patient, but I went ahead and attacked to try to bridge up. To my surprise, I didn't bring anyone with me. I caught the break of two and then kept going -- they had been out there for a while, and didn't have much juice left. Which left me, by myself, with a bit of a gap on the charging field, two corners, and one long straight stretch to the finish. (too long). I didn't have any choice but to wind it up and give it everything for as long as I could. At one point, I thought I might be able to stay ahead and take the win, but three girls caught me at the line, so I ended up in fourth. Initially I was bummed that I didn't get it, but all in all I had an awesome race, lots of fun, and met some really cool ladies. And I've almost started to believe that maybe there is a bit of a sprinter in me somewhere.

Who Gave Me Mono?

2007-03-07T23:27:00.000-06:00

Seriously. Contrary to popular belief due to my utter disregard for my blogging obligations, I have not died. But I came close for a couple days.

It all started with my first race here in California. A couple weeks ago, Sunday morning, I woke up without any intention of racing my bike, but somehow it still happened. The weather was actually nice (not raining) for the first time in a week, my race wasn't till 2:00pm, and Bekah (fellow Grumpy's gal) had already let me know she was going to be there. So I decided to head to Napa for the Cherry Pie Crit.

I met up with Bekah as we were driving in, and then we warmed up, while I got more and more intimidated as we saw the droves of intense, fast-looking women flocking around. And then the whole Colavita pro women's team showed up. So we'll just say that the race was great training for me, and leave it at that.

The day after the race, I came down with an awful chill, fever, body/neck ache. It came on so quickly and severly that my parents (both in the medical field) were afraid that I was going to die of meningitis when I told them my symptoms over the phone. So I reluctantly had my roommie drive me to the nearest Oakland ER where we spent the next 6 hours trying to get someone to care for me. After some IV fluids, tylenol, and blood tests, a doctor casually passed by, pointed at me, and said, "mono." A few hours later, we managed to get out of there, and I suffered in the comfort of my own bed (craigslist special!) for the next 5 days.

I hear the incubation period on mono, "the kissing disease", is 4 to 6 weeks, which means I picked it up somewhere in Minnesota. As far as I know, there's no one I was making out with in Minnesota in the weeks before I left. Is there something I'm missing here??

Anyway, supposedly mono can leave you out of commission for a LONG time, but I got lucky. I was good and sick for a few days, but after about a week, things improved drastically and I began to feel like a normal person. By now, I'm going to say I'm pretty much back to normal, although I feel like I missed a lot of bike ridin' time. This past weekend, I tried to make that up with this ride on Saturday, and this ride on Sunday. Did I mention that it was about 70 and sunny? Wow. I'm getting spoiled already. Counting my distance to and from the bars and BART in the evening, I topped 100 miles on Saturday.

If all goes well, I'll begin updating a bit more frequently, but the sweet climbs and curvy descents just outside my apartment are a bit distracting. Maybe you should come visit the Bay Area and see for yourself. I'm just sayin'.

And I'm out.

Too Bad for Da Bears

2007-02-05T00:45:00.000-06:00

They lost.

But it sounds like LGR is winning again, which matters far more than Da Bears ever will.

I've finally moved into my apartment in Oakland. It's pretty sweet, I gotta say. But I have been totally spoiled living in Minneapolis. In the Twin Cities, you can live with 2 or 3 people in a house (HOUSE) with bedrooms, kitchen, living room, BASEMENT, yard, maybe a garden, garage, off-street parking, etc. I took it all for granted. Not gonna happen here. My bikes will live in my bedroom and living room. But we do have a little garden in the back.

Today I got a bed. Dan (roommate) and I borrowed a friends' truck and went on a mission to pick up 2 mattresses, 2 box springs, and 2 steel frames - at the same time. Incredibly, it all fit and we are no longer sleeping on the floor. Nice! Also, that means that I have a nearly new nice thick air mattress for anyone that comes to visit.

And, of course, the riding is still amazing.

I went out for 4.5 hours yesterday with Shana down near Palo Alto, and another couple hours today up here in the East Bay. It was around 50 or 60 degrees the whole time. I think I'm going to like it here. As soon as I manage to extract my camera from the pile of stuff in my room, I'll get some photos up.

Housing, working, and more biking

2007-01-31T00:51:00.000-06:00

Every time I move, I’m again reminded of just how awesome riding my bike is. It’s by far the best way to get to know a new place – fast enough to cover ground, slow enough to see the sights, and if you end up going the wrong way on a one-way street, it’s usually not a full on disaster if you just jump onto the sidewalk. Not that it would ever happen to me.

Biking in San Fran:
So, today, I biked to work. Which I plan on doing every day once I get settled in Oakland, and when I’m also working in Oakland, which should be about a 2-mile trip. Right now, though, I’m staying in Palo Alto and our temp office space is in San Francisco. Here’s the route I took. It was 65 miles round-trip, but felt a lot shorter, just because it was all so interesting.
This past weekend, I biked around SF to and from a friend’s party and the Caltrain. Biking in the city is great loads of fun, especially when you run into a hill that you couldn’t quite see on google maps when you mapped out the route. We’re talking hills that I had to weave back and forth to get up in my 39-25. So much fun though.

The Housing Hunt:
As soon as I got here, Dan (my roommate) and I started the job of looking for apartments in the East Bay (Oakland/Berkeley). The first day, we went and checked out seven apartments. That may not sound like a lot, but try organizing that (we had to set up appointments with all the landlords) and finding your way to all the places in an unknown city. It was about three times more tiring than a 3-hour bike ride, I’d say. Of the seven places, about 2 of them would have been OK. I gotta say though, the downright ODD-ness of some of the landlords was astonishing. We ended up applying for a 2 bedroom unit in an apartment building in Oakland, and to our surprise the “leasing agent” called us back that night and said that we could have it. So we were psyched – that was easy enough. Even so, the next day, we decided to look at one last place. It had really jumped out at us on craigslist, and it was worth an hour of our time. It was PERFECT! Absolutely adorable. A unit in a house, with all the necessities included, in a good location. So we started bargaining with the landlord. After 4 days of back-and-forth, we agreed on a 4-month lease term (we’re afraid of commitment), and he said we could have it. For those of you that know the area, it’s here. It’s about 3 blocks from a nice bike shop and 1 block from all kinds of restaurants and shops. We’re moving in on Friday.

Having a job:
My work’s going really well, except today I ordered a printer that isn’t compatible with Macs – apparently I didn’t read the specs closely, but I was dumbfounded that anyone would still make a P-O-S printer that’s NOT Mac compatible. So I sent it back and ordered a new one. Other than that, all’s well. It’s a little tough working 8-9 hours a day when my friends don’t have jobs yet – but I suppose having a salary for a job I enjoy is pretty awesome.

Cali - Finally

2007-01-29T11:19:00.000-06:00

The Arrival:
I made it to California in one piece. This might get longish – so I won’t be offended if you don’t read. But most of you are probably at work and have already read the other blogs you frequent, so you may as well just suck it up.

My bike didn’t make it in one piece. The wheel decided to depart my car roof in the middle of Denver, on a 3-lane freeway with cement barriers. There was no way I was getting it back. So I stopped into a friendly local bike shop upon my arrival in Palo Alto (where I had a place to stay during my apartment search) and got lucky. I have to recommend Palo Alto Bicycles – one of the mechanics biked home to grab me a lonely wheel that he’d had in his garage for a while and that got me back on the road (with a dura-ace hub!)

(As an aside – I spent an awesome day in Denver skiing and enjoying with sun + snow that they have there. Now that’s a nice winter. The rest of the drive was fairly uneventful.)

The Cycling:
The riding and the weather is phenomenal. I won’t go on and on, but wow. And I’ve never seen so many guys decked out on sick $5K carbon and/or custom frames with hairy legs. There seem to be a ton of recreational riders with extremely enviable gear. Oh well. I rode with the Webcor club on Saturday (club, not pro-team) – met some really nice people, and also realized that there is as much testosterone on group rides here as anywhere else. Geez – I don’t think anyone has ever told them about taking it easy up a climb. Or maybe I'm just bitter because I finished the ride feeling pretty out of shape.

Then, yesterday, there was a “Meet the Teams” day at a nearby training crit, so I headed over to check out the scene. HOLY CRAP! There were hundreds and hundreds of people. For a training crit! So I chatted with some teams, checked out their programs. And I finally got to meet some of the CA Velo Bellas, Miss Mary and Mo! They were awesome ladies, very welcoming, and it was so good to finally put a couple faces with names on the internet. All in all, though, “meeting the teams” just made me miss my team Grumpy’s/LGR. Awwww. But word on the street is that the clothing is coming soon, and I’ll be bringing Little Guy Racing to the West Coast.

More to come on housing, biking in the city of San Fran, and having a job.

On the Road

2007-01-17T22:45:00.000-06:00

Phenomenally, I actually managed to begin my move today.
I gave myself a goal departure time of 10:30am, and an actual estimated departure of 12:00 noon, and I set off right at 11:30am. Not bad!

The Echo was packed to the gills, and I put two of the bikes on top. I shipped a couple others. The drive through Minnesota was seriously sketchy, due to some unusually aggressive winds. I got tossed around so much that I thought I had a flat tire a couple times.

I was torn between drafting off semis to save a lot of gas and trying to go it alone at the Echo max pace of about 65mph. I also realized that I miss the manual transmission of the Civic. The automatic Echo feels free to switch gears whenever IT wants to! Of course, I have some input, but I miss the connectedness of manually shifting every time. Imagine riding a bike that shifted itself! (I have - it's interesting, but not something I'd want to do again.)

I was also astounded by the ubiquitous Kum & Gos. What a horrid name for a convenience store/gas station. But on the other hand...I guess I'm blogging about it, so they must be doing something right.

Tomorrow = Colorado.

No more pirating

2007-01-10T23:23:00.000-06:00

I've decided to leave my pirate gig for good. It was nice and all, but I realized that it just wasn't my calling... so I'm back in Minneapolis for now. But I am leaving, perhaps permanently, in just a week. Crap. Hopefully my job in California (with the same company) will work out better than being a pirate. If nothing else, I'll just be a professional bicycle racer. Ha.

Mostly, I just hope that I will meet more people like (dis)pencer when I arrive in California. (dis) is SO cool. Why can't more people be that awesome?

Wait, that's already been posted on my blog. Looks like he beat me to it.

Anyway, I'm glad I met YOU too (if I have). I'd like to say good-bye.

Good-bye!

(dis). (omg).

2007-01-06T15:15:00.000-06:00

(dis)pencer is SO cool.

why can't more people be as awesome as (dis)pencer?

seriously. wtf?

look at these chumps getting dropped by (dis).
amazing.

I got Booty!

2006-12-29T12:45:00.000-06:00

Sorry, I'm not coming home. I've got a new job!

I have joined a band of pirates here off the coast of Peru. I was offered the job after the Captian witnessed my antics with the Lima Police the other day...

Capt'n Roberto is a fair pirate, and a good one. We have been hijacking cargo ships after they exit the Panama Canal, and taking the ships to Chile and selling the goods.

We leave the crew on the coast of Peru, and then sink their ship. It all works out pretty well.
After a successful mission we usually have a party. Lima is a good place for that.

Here's a photo from the last one. Good times.

Yeah, so it's a pirate's life for me. Sorry all, but I won't be coming home any time soon...

A little trouble.

2006-12-26T12:41:00.000-06:00

So apperently the Lima Police Department does not turn the other cheek at public urination, even for Americans!

Hucking a half empty Pilsen Callao at them when they put the spotlights on probably didn't help... but after a night of Pisco and cerveza malta... judgement might not be the best.
Still feeling the Pisco i think...

Anyway, it cost $38 in bribe, and worked out OK.
A little embarrassing, but what happens in Peru stays in Peru!

Karla! A live report!

2006-12-24T17:53:00.000-06:00

Nice to have a hiker in the group as nerdy as Smithers!
It means a blog from the majestic middle of nowhere!
Thank you Treo!

Machu Picchu. You have to follow the Inca Trail for about forever to get here, (ok, 4 days).
The hike starts as a foot path, then eventually turns into a rocky road (not exactly gravel, more like big pieces of busted rock), and then into a straight up old school Incan highway.
Parts of the road are actually stairs that are craved into the mountian! Rad!

Then you get here. Check out some ruins and things. Snap a few photos for the old scrapbook...
Yadda, Yadda, Yadda.

It's pretty sweet, don't take it the wrong way. But after all this walking around, back in Lima, it'll be time to hit the Disco and a take friggin' cab around town!

So, here on top of the world - but in the middle of nowhere at the same time, thoughts just keep creeping back to this blog and to LGR, the new team for next year. Basically this team is going to be the coolest in the aera, by far, so you've kinda got to get in at the ground floor. It's a relief to know that everyone on the team thought it was a good idea... LGR has a cool factor of 10, so it is nice to make the cut!

Other than that, it was basically just to piss off Hollywood.

:)

Oh yeah... Peru! It's still rad, but it'll be nice to hang out with the team again!

I tried to take a photo of the ruins, but this damn Lama stuck his bastard head right in the shot!

Happy Holidays!

Karla! in Peru!

2006-12-21T10:28:00.000-06:00

Sorry this is going to be a quick post...

Lima.

The Pad.

Today.

Tomorrow. (oh boy)!

Btw, Sarah-
The tattoo was part of a set. Matching tattoos, old boyfriend...
Recipe for trouble!

Weren't you and Pete talking about matching Bianchi tattoos?

Five things about Karla!

2006-12-18T13:04:00.000-06:00

Karla! was recently tagged by Tuffy to tell you five things you may not know, and in no particular order, here they are:

1. Middle child. Yes, one older brother who still lives in the UP works as a meat cutter, and one younger sister who is currently attending Community College in Detriot. At least that's what she tells our parents.

2. Kicked off Dartmouth team. It's true, try the link "my previous team" on the sidebar... it doesn't work. It was a fist fight outside of the soroity house with another member of the team... very embarrassing... for the loser!

3. Hyphenated. Jane is not a middle name. It's Kathrine. That officially makes Karla-Jane Kathrine Kingsley. Using Jane just avoids the initials KKK...

4. Insoles. New insoles are needed for every new pair of shoes and are replaced methodically every six weeks. That is the way it is, and always will be.

5. Tattoo. Here's a shot of it, with the brand new camera. No you can't see it in person.

That about wraps it up. Any questions?

Punk'd

2006-12-17T14:18:00.000-06:00

I feel like I've been Punk'd. But I guess you could say I've been "Bonked"

Amazing. More of the story is here.
To be honest, I'm speechless.

I got tagged by Tuffy, so coming up next are 5 things about Karla!

California

2006-12-16T12:45:00.000-06:00

First, I have to post this gem of a commercial. The guy is a friend from college. Hi Tommy!

Then, California. I'll be moving to the Bay Area in the second half of January. This is pretty scary, because it's really soon, and because one of my sources tells me that San Francisco smells like piss all the time. I'll be back from Peru on December 30, flying out to the Bay on January 2 to find a place to live, back on January 6 for about two weeks, and then driving the Echo out on January 17 or 18.

Who wants to do a road trip? Seriously. Want to drive out there with me? Let me know.

Breaking News

2006-12-15T16:41:00.000-06:00

I'm moving to California. More to come.

Cross Nats!

2006-12-13T21:05:00.000-06:00

Cross nats are this weekend, out in Rhode Island. It feels kinda funny to write about a race that I'm not going to be at. And also that I can write the last sentence and not feel sad that I'm not going to be there! After 2 weekends not racing, I thought I'd be jumping out of my skin and wanting to race again, but... nope.

All in all, I had an awesome season, but I'm glad it's come to a close. I didn't quite reach the little personal goal I set, which was to win one of each: a mountain bike race, a crit or RR, a track race, a cx race. But in reality, that wasn't really a well-thought-out goal. I don't need to win a race to know that I'm improving and having a ton of fun. (At least that's what I keep telling myself). And one of the highlights of my season was a race I didn't even finish -- the elite crit at Downer's Grove.

I could write about other highlights, but, wait. Looks like I already have! Funny, huh?

So I'll just say: GOOD LUCK to LINDA (go black and white) and everyone else who is going out to CX nats in Rhode Island. And good luck to Steve and all the people in New England that don't have to travel across the country to get there!

Grumpy's LGR and Yay for Minnesota

2006-12-12T21:40:00.000-06:00

If you haven't gathered, I've decided to join Grumpy's LGR. It was really only a matter of time before it happened. But in actuality, there are quite a few reasons I'm joining the team.
Here are the top five:

5. Two out of two visits to Grumpy's Bar NE, I've been pleasantly surprised with 2-for-1 glasses of wine. At $3!

4. Grumpy's LGR's dedication to racing - participating and promoting. Cycling is my passion, and racing is what makes me passionate about it!

3. The race-day enthusiasum (K-A-R-L-A, and getting flashed)

2. Grumpy's LGR rules the blog -o- sphere.

1. Stars, baby, stars.

And, a couple more: I like the Little Guy. Since he now has a team named after him, he's pretty much my idol. Plus, Grumpy's LGR used to be known as Team Awesome. Because it's awesome.

I also want to say a bit more: I know the MCF has it's conflicts and imperfections at times, but after being here in Minnesota for about 15 months, and racing for 10 or 11 of those, I'm very impressed with the racing and cycling community here. I've found many teams that I'd love to be a part of, and so many wonderful people that race, officiate, ride, volunteer, promote, and spectate in this sport that we're all a bit obsessed with. So thank you all. Awwww, doesn't that make you feel good inside?

A Winter Vacation

2006-12-10T15:42:00.000-06:00

In just a week, I'm leaving for a two-week vacation to Peru. That means I won't be updating my blog for a while, which isn't much of a change, but at least this time I'm warning you. We're going to hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu and arrive to the top on Christmas Day. The road to it looks like it would be pretty fun to bike.

Which I've been doing a lot of lately. Baba came and gave six Bellas some training tips during a spinning session at NOW bikes yesterday. It was very helpful in answering some of the questions I have about training for next season. One of the main points was that it's important to take a couple weeks to just sit on the couch and eat pecan pie.

Today I headed out for a few hours with the LGR team. Strats, dispencer, Gilby, Super-Rookie, the Little Guy, Shana, and Amy were all there. We headed out towards Excelsior, where we stopped at a Dunn Bros for some coffee, and S-R and Dis immediately jumped on the computers to see if anyone had commented on their blogs. I fully expected one of them to scoop Karla! on some breaking news, but as this post went to press, neither of them had yet. The Little Guy navigated us home a different way than we'd come, so the townline sprints were different. At one point I almost was going to beat Dis, but my bike wouldn't shift. Well, that's a good excuse, but what really happened was that he put in about two hard pedal strokes and it was all over for me. He sat up too early though, and the Little Guy snuck around on the outside to take the sprint. The Little Guy can be pretty sneaky like that.

All in all, it was a beautiful weekend to be outside - over 40 degrees and sunny. One question: does that seem like weather to be ice-fishing? A stunning number of people over by Lake Minnetonka thought so.

Photography

2006-12-09T15:18:00.000-06:00

I just got a new digital camera. I'm pretty psyched about it. Or I was until I realized that I don't have the right USB cord for it. So I can't download any pictures yet. This type of thing happens to me a lot though, so I'm used to it!

Instead I'll have to go to One on One tonight to see the opening of Caroline Yang's TDF photo exhibit! Last year's show was awesome, and I'm sure this year will be too. See you there!

A cold weekend

2006-12-03T18:59:00.000-06:00

Saturday morning I woke up to my insistent alarm completely uninspired to get my butt out of bed and roll over to Lake Harriet for the women's ride. I checked the weather to discover that it was about 8 degrees out, and was even less motivated, but more awake. So I got up and started the half hour process of getting dressed to ride in the frickin cold.

About a dozen women showed up and we headed out around the Lakes, Minnehaha Pkwy, over to St Paul, across Wabasha, and then turned toward Lilydale. Holy crap it was like hitting a wall of ice. I didn't realize the wind had been behind us the whole way (still half asleep) and it was a rude awakening to turn into the wind. We came back across the Mendota bridge and then people split ways. When I finally got home, I'd been out for 3 hours and I could not feel my feet, so I sat on the floor of the shower for a half hour until I could finally stand on them. Awesome. I thought I'd be set for the rest of the day, and I even decided to crank up the heat to 68. After a couple hours, though, I realized that it was really chilly, and the house temp had actually gone down to 59. After some investigation, Paula and I concluded that the furnace definitely wasn't kicking in for anything, and we weren't getting any heat.

About the fourth furnace people company we called had someone they could send out. He arrived and went into the basement for some tinkering, and then came up and let us know that the furnace needed to be replaced. And they weren't going to be able to do it until Monday. Yikes.

Thank goodness for good neighbors - they loaned us two space heaters and we cranked them up. Two seconds later the house was dark - we blew a fuse. All in all, I think we've blown a fuse about 10 times so far this weekend. And when we finally got the temp over 60 this evening, it was cause for celebration. Tomorrow should bring a new furnace. We'll see.

Jingle Cross Rocking - Day Two

2006-11-28T14:01:00.000-06:00

Sunday was a day that I had a really hard time getting out of bed. After not riding so well on Saturday, I wasn't too psyched to race, and I was still tired. Crap. But I fumbled my way out of bed and hit up the Panera on the way to the race for some much needed coffee. When I got to the race course around 10:00, everyone was already there, far more awake than me. Good thing my race wasn't till 1:30 again.

That gave me time to scope out the new course. It was run the opposite direction of Saturday's course, going over some of the same route, but with quite a bit different also. And it meant that we had to RUN UP the huge downhill. Also, they added a couple barn pass-throughs for a total of three, just to remind us that we were doing CX in Iowa. One of these was pretty dark, just lit with X-mas lights inside, so that was a little spooky. There were 2 triple barriers again, but the placement was much awesomer on Sunday. By awesomer, I mean faster. And in the barn area, the course wound around and around quite a bit, so if you were spectating there, you could see riders going in and out of the barns in all directions.

Hollywood rocked the singlespeed division early in the day, along with Kristi on her singlespeed 17.5 inch men's bologna-bike, and Jackie kicked butt in the Cat 4 women's race. At 11:40, the 3/4 men's race started, and I was given the task of bottle and beer hand-ups for the Little Guy, Lalla, and... what? Two Velo Bellas? Somehow S-R and Dis got into my suitcase and hijacked my Bella kits for their race. I gotta hand it to them, they looked damn good. And it was OK, because I hijacked Jay's Hollywood Cycles skinsuit and wore it for the weekend. At one point during the guys' race, I was running over to give Dis a hand-up and I heard a loud gunshot. Actually, no, it was just Super Rookie's tire popping explosively. But he got back in the race like any Velo Bella would and finished it out.

I had warmed up a bit with Amanda, and then finally, at 1:30, it was time for me to race. Sunday, there were a few more women, maybe 21, and again about half of them got the call up. This time I elbowed my way to the second row anyway, so I had a better start. Our start was slightly more low-key than Saturday, and after the first lap, I was still in the lead group of 7 women - made up of the top 8 from Saturday with the exclusion of Linda C, who had dropped her chain. It was all good for a bit, but then the girl in front of me had an ugly crash on one of the corners. Ouch! After I managed to avoid her and ask if she was OK, I looked up and there was quite a gap between me and the rest of the group. And... it continued to widen. I hung out alone in 6th place until Linda C caught me. We hammered along for a lap or so together, and then I drifted off her wheel into my own comfortable spot in 7th place. From there, I rode alone for the rest of the race, and it was by far the most fun I've had in a CX race!!

On one side of the course, Hollywood, Kristi, Jackie, and some of my new friends from Saturday night were hanging out, yelling for me every time I came by. They were amazing. Super-encouraging and made me want to keep going. Then on the other side of the course, I was getting hand-ups from (Dis)pencer, along with solid encouragement from Super Rookie and the Little Guy. In fact, at one point, I think Super Rookie actually flashed me, and then on the next lap, I'm pretty sure the three of them were chanting, "K-A-R-L-A, Wooooo!" They were in the barn area, so it was kind of nuts - every corner I rounded, one of them would pop out and yell. Awesome.

Then there was the hill - I'd say the majority of the spectators gathered on top of the hill to watch the action. Since I was racing alone, and I'm pretty slow on the run-up, that meant that all the fans had plenty of time to yell directly at me, and aggressively ring all their cowbells right in my ears. It made me laugh every time though, and that's always a good feeling.

All in all it was a wonderful weekend, the promoters did a great job and the weather was perfect. A good end to the season. Thanks to (Dis)pencer and Lynne for the pics.

Jingle Cross Rocking - Day One

2006-11-27T20:58:00.000-06:00

Here's my point-of-view from the weekend. Friday afternoon I picked up (dis) and the Little Guy and we loaded up the Echo for the drive down to Iowa. When we got to the Comfort Suites, we were just in time to see Chris Horner leaving, but that wasn't really a problem, Super Rookie just asked him for his autograph during the race the next day. I then made my way over to Hollywood's parents' house. He had set up a sweet guest-pad where I stayed with him and the Peace Coffee girls - Kristi and Jackie. The Hendersens were great. They didn't mind having some girls around for a bit, and they even came out to the races both days and cheered us on.

Saturday morning it was off to the races, starting at 9:30. My race wasn't until 1:30, so I got to hang out and watch all the other races first and check out the course. It was a really cool course, with some straight grassy sections, some good corners, a couple sets of triple barriers, a short run-up with a barrier at the bottom, a longish, rideable climb, some little mud holes, a screamin' steep bumpy downhill, and a ride through a sandy barn. And there was this little lip where you could get a bunch of air - that was my favorite part of each lap. We started the race with 18 or so women, about half of which got called up for one reason or another. I wasn't one of them, AND I didn't register early, so I was in pretty much the worst starting position. Bummer!

We started out really fast, and I managed to work my way through a lot of the field on the first half a lap. I pretty much buried myself to catch up with the lead group, but then I fell off them and rode by myself in 8th place. I was riding pretty crappy on some parts - I guess that's what happens after a weekend off. I managed to crash before one set of barriers when I tripped over my own feet, crashed again when I slid out on a downhill corner, and I had trouble riding the mud until I decided to just run it. Other parts were good - the sand was rideable and really fun - it went through a sandy barn aisle and then around a little corner out over a decent sized lip. Every time I rode out of the sand, Hollywood was standing there yelling, "You OWN the sandpit! You OWN it!" The one time I didn't make it through, no one was watching anyway, so that's good.

Aside from the little lip, the crazy bumpy downhill was probably my favorite part. I spent some time watching the 3/4 men ride it before my race. The top four guys in that field were barreling down, no brakes, but after that most of the guys were a bit more cautious. The first couple of laps, I erred on the side of caution, feathering my brakes and keeping the bike solidly under control. Then I noticed that the 9th place woman was gaining a little bit of ground on me with each lap, so I decided to make up time where I could and just stop using my brakes. At the top of the hill, I got down into my drops and just hung on tight with both hands. THAT was fun! And I managed to stay ahead of the other woman after that.

Sunday's race report coming soon....

Jingle Cross non-report

2006-11-26T23:16:00.000-06:00

I'll get a race report or something going soon, but I'm just going to have to face the truth: I'm not as dedicated a blogger as (dis)pencer (who brought his computer to blog in the wireless hotel), or Super Rookie (who somehow cajoled HotPinkEvil into guest-blogging). You can already read partial race reports at their blogs. But I'm OK with that.

Anyway, one of the really cool parts of my weekend was the Saturday night townie ride through Iowa City and Coralville. Hollywood and some of his hometown friends took us on a sweet tour of the area and showed us the sights - the cemetery, the golf course, the black angel, acid hill. Amanda was there, and Tater, and some other lovely Iowans that I had not met before. They were all rad, and we had a great time making our way through unfamiliar streets and trails in the dark, polishing off some pitchers at the Legion, and playing in a bonfire at JM's house before ending the night (in the early AM hours) with a pizza from Paul Revere's. Probably not the best recovery strategy after a hard race on Saturday, but I raced better on Sunday anyway. Go figure. But I'm not writing a race report yet. That'll come.

Bucks and Jingle Cross

2006-11-24T11:13:00.000-06:00

Dear readers, has anyone out there ever actually ran into a deer while riding their bike?

A couple days ago while riding the paved trail on the way out to Afton (along Hwy 10), I came within a foot of nailing a buck. He jumped onto the trail right next to me and I nearly shat my pants, but managed to avoid a collision. It would have been ugly.

Now it's time for Jingle Cross Rock.

Slacker....

2006-11-20T20:36:00.000-06:00

Yep, I'm a slacker on posting.

So shoot me.

Yesterday, I had an awesome 7 hour excursion to Lebanon Hills with Shana and Kristen. I pulled myself out of bed almost early enough to make it to Lake Harriet by 9:00am. Not quite early enough though. But I was lucky - they waited for me. We started out with some other Flanders guys, but then they split off and we headed out across the Mendota Bridge. Wow, mountain bikes are A LOT slower than road bikes, AND they sound like airplanes taking off when you go fast on the roads. We made our way down to Lebanon Hills as the day warmed up and the sun came out. When we got there, it was beautiful, and the parking lot was full of people that had driven down. The trails were in awesome shape, and it was the perfect day for a couple of laps. It was hard to finally cut ourselves off and make our way back to Minneapolis, but we did. By the time we got back, we were starving, so we stopped for a late lunch at Gigi's. Not bad!

That was the longest I've been on my mountain bike since 24 hours of 9-mile. I always forget how much FUN mountain biking is - we were all grinning like frickin cheshire cats the whole time. It was awesome.

State CX - Done

2006-11-12T22:28:00.001-06:00

My mom and I headed up to State CX race in Crystal in the Echo on Saturday morning (yes, that was 4 days ago) - we were going to ride up, but it was pretty chilly out, and I could see myself freezing my butt off if I didn't have a car to warm up in. I sent my mom to go get in line for registration while I went and got the bikes ready (my mom rode my Epic - 26 lbs is not light for a CX race!). We rode the course together, and realized it was going to be hard. It started on a loose gravel road then went onto a bumpy grass section, a set of double barriers, and then up a steep, but rideable, hill. Then around some chicanes, more grass, gravel, then a sweet single track section before a nasty run-up with gigantic steps. Ouch. Then a ripping downhill, more gravel, and a sweet stream/mud run-through.

There were actually quite a few women today, which was cool. My mother raced the Cs, or as she puts it, she "participated." She's awesome, in fact, I think she would be on team Awesome (LGR) for sure if she lived here.

There were 8 of us women in the B race, including both Lindas, and me and Maria for the Bellas. We started out pretty fast, or maybe it just seemed like that because I didn't get any warm-up in. We came up the rideable hill and then I dropped my chain when I skidded out in the chicane. So the Lindas gapped me at that point and I jumped back in the race in 4th or 5th place. I nailed it to try to get back up to the Lindas, and I almost caught them, but just couldn't hang on. I pretty much rode the whole race by myself in 3rd place after that - I can tell that my fitness is now on the DECLINE.

I had a fun race though. Patty Cakes made an encouraging comment using some mildly inappropriate language. I apparently "girled" dispencer, but I'm going to give him the credit for riding 144-spoke wheels - is that right? I picked up his bike (a singlespeed, too!) before the race to see how much 288 spokes weigh, and let me tell you, it's not light. Then Strats and Pete were there at the mud hole cheering. The mud hole was FUN! I wish we had a bit more mud in our CX season. I stayed to watch most of the A race and yelled for Skibby and Snide, but then I turned into an icicle, so I left. I have to get used to these cold temps still.

And, it's already hump day! Time to look ahead to the weekend - my first non-race weekend in a long time. Sweet!

Kingsley Mom

2006-11-11T17:23:00.000-06:00

I didn't really feel like doing a race report from the State CX race quite yet, so I'm taking a page out of Smithers book and doing an interview -- with Sue Ellen, my very own mother.

Me: Hey, mom, do you want to say something on my blog?
Sue Ellen: Say something about how cyclocross races are so much fun because they tolerate all types of people and they are so friendly.

Me: Why'd you decide to have me?
Sue Ellen: I was actually looking for the messiah, someone who would save the world, and I wanted to be a saint myself.

Me: Oh. Well, um, what got you into biking?
Sue Ellen: I've been into it all my life, but you got me into racing. Although I can remember having to bribe you to go biking with me.

Me: What did you bribe me with?
Sue Ellen: Let's see, was it, ice cream? Cookies? I probably told you I'd take you to the mall or something.

Me: How did you first get me on a bike?
Sue Ellen: I bought a bike for you when you were 10, it was red.

Me: What? I could bike before I was 10!
Sue Ellen: Oh, you mean when you learned? You had a pink banana seat bike, and I put you on the top of a little hill so you could ride down it, and you fell off at the bottom, and got skinned, and hollered and screamed and acted like you were mortally wounded. So I told you to come into the house and stop but you wouldn't. You went back to the top of the hill and did it again. And you fell again. And you HOWLED, and you kept doing it, and I finally had to go in the house and let you keep doing it because it was too awful. You just kept doing it and hurting yourself and you wouldn't stop. Pretty soon you were riding.

Me: Yeah, that sucked. What about the red bike?
Sue Ellen: And then the red bike, when you were 10, was for your birthday. We lived on a road that was a STEEP hill going past our driveway, and the first day you had your red bike, we were out together, and you were going screamin' down the hill way too fast, and I was yelling at you that you had to brake before turning in the driveway. But you didn't hear me, and you tried to take the driveway going way too fast, and you crashed, and the paint job was scratched up, and the bar grips were all broken.

Me: Hmm, yes. Was I broken?
Sue Ellen: Nope, nope, you made a lot of noise, but you were all right. You loved that bike. Soon after that, a year or two after, you got a horse, and biking came after the horse. For quite a few years.

Me: Oh yeah, I remember that. When did things change?
Sue Ellen: Well you started racing bikes when you lived in Mexico. I think you met a bunch of really cool handsome Mexican guys that put you in bike clothes and clipless shoes.

Me: Right, I think I remember putting you in clipless shoes too.
Sue Ellen: Yes, that's true. First and last time. You arranged to have us stopping in front of crowds of people as frequently as possible so that I would fall in front of everybody. I must have fallen 8 or 9 times that day, but tried to keep smiling throughout.

Me: Yeah, I remember that. Have you ever thought twice about encouraging this biking hobby of mine?
Sue Ellen: Only when it came to the expense, AND I have gotten so that I'm always really glad when YOU [and not someone else] call me from the emergency room, so that I know that you are conscious and that you haven't had a head injury.

Me: You seem to handle the injuries pretty well.
Sue Ellen: What! Well, they're not mine! They're yours!

Me: Anything else you'd like to add?
Sue Ellen: About what?

Me: About your visit, biking, sainthood....?
Sue Ellen: I think that's probably enough. I might add, though, that there IS a life other than biking. There are other things in this world.

Me: Like what?
Sue Ellen: Sudoku.

And that's that. I'll get a race report up sooner or later.

Observing Veteran's Day

2006-11-10T20:35:00.000-06:00

I had a very good observation of veteran's day today. Gilby did too. It's a good thing, since we were both out past my bedtime last night. Since neither of us work directly for the man, we get random days off, which is nice. I really enjoyed sleeping in for once, although the day seems way too short when you sleep till 10. But the real news is that my mom is in town. She might even do the State Cross race tomorrow, since she rocked at Powderhorn in her first CX race last year. We'll see. It sort of will depend on whether or not I can get my pedals off my mountain bike in time. If you have a pedal wrench at the race tomorrow, let me know - I'd probably love to use it. And if you do see her out there in the C race, definitely cheer for Sue Ellen. I know I will.

My 50th race of the year - or something

2006-11-05T18:48:00.000-06:00

Today was the Northfield CX race, and according to my calculations, my 50th race of the year. That's 26 crits and road races, 1 time trial, 2 MTB races, 11 cyclocross races, and 10 nights at the track (I counted each night at the track as one race, even though it was technically three). Also, I counted Opus, but not the Boom Island CX training races.

This weekend was another double CX weekend, and a pair of second places for me. I spent Friday night getting my bike rack onto the Echo, and Maria and I headed up to Anoka on Saturday. We cheered for Bellas Barb, Manda, and Dana in the C race before lining up with Linda C for the B race. Yeah, there were only 3 of us women in the B race. We started out at a nice easy pace, heading out over some pavement, through some bumby grass, over a paved bridge and back onto dirt before hitting a triple barrier. Since I'm super smooth, I hit the first barrier and took a bit of a digger, but I was up again pretty quickly. After the race, I realized that the barriers seemed higher for a reason -- check out the three inches of space under them in the photo (courtesy of Lynne). Then we went over some relatively flat, smooth trails through the woods before emerging into a sand pit with a barrier in it. Then onto some more paved trails, through some curves, and over another single barrier right by the start/finish. The course was relatively long, and a pretty constant effort - there weren't really any parts that were harder or easier than others. After a couple easy laps, Maria got impatient and went to the front to push the pace for a bit. She put in quite a huge pull for a lap with me on her wheel and then pulled off. I took over, and then managed to pull off a true superman style fall - I caught a toe on the single barrier and went flying onto my stomach. At that point, Linda C went to the front, pushing the pace. I got up and hung on to her wheel until the last lap, where she attacked on a paved section, and I just couldn't quite hang on. I didn't have any mechanical issues though, which was great - Hollywood came running up 5 minutes before my start and slapped some spanking new Shimano 959s on my bike - nice.

Today was the Northfield race. Maria and I loaded up the Echo - it was like deja vu all over again. We got to Northfield and quickly got lost. We drove around for a while and finally some guy pulled up next to as and asked if we were here for the "bike meet" - brilliant guess, considering the bikes on top of the car. He pointed us towards all the other bike meet participants, where we spent another 15 minutes finding registration. We caught part of the C race, where Barb took second and Paula got fourth. Nice job! Maria did the collegiate race as her warm-up and then we lined up for the B race. The promoter decided to line up the women first, a nice change, so the 6 of us started a couple minutes ahead of the main men's field. We started over some bumpy grass, then around an off-camber 180 turn, where Linda C laid it down. She bounced up though, and we all approached the biggest frickin run-up ever. Wow, was it hard. Holy crap. You could grind up the first part, but then there were two barriers, and then another LONG stretch of steep running uphill. Linda C killed us all on the run-up, but I made it to the top second and took off after her through a bunch of grassy switchbacks. Then there was a rocky downhill singletrack section where I caught her and then took around her as the trail opened up. I almost nailed a pine tree, but it was all good, and then we headed into the "pinwheel" a spiral that you went into and then back out. It was pretty rad. Then Linda took around me again on the run-up, and I caught her again on the downhill. Then it happened again except I didn't catch her. The bell lap came far earlier than I expected, I think my race ended up being under 40 minutes, but it was all good because I finally came in ahead of Super-Rookie. To be fair, I started with two minutes on him and he is far better than me at turning left, thanks to his track skills. Maria pulled off a third place again, with Betty A and Gopher S battling it out in a sprint finish for fourth.

And Matt Anderson was handing out Coke at the end, so it was a good day all in all. That's Coca-cola, not cocaine. Steven has an awesome video of clips of the race, and Dispencer drew a sweet diagram of the pinwheel.

Next weekend is the MN State CX race, and my mom's going to be here!! I'm pretty psyched about that. Plus, it's her birthday tomorrow - happy birthday mom!

And I'm already fired up for jingle cross rock - it will be my last weekend of racing for 2006, and it looks like it's really going to rock.

Good thing I don't have my own kids

2006-10-31T20:16:00.000-06:00

Some kids just piss me off. Like the ones that stole my car, for instance. They really make me angry. Then there are the ones that come trick-or-treating without even pretending to dress up. What's with that? If I do ever end up with my own little ones, they will never go out trick-or-treating without any hint of a Halloween costume.

But I'm also just not kid-appropriate: Paula and I were taking turns answering the door and giving out candy, and by 8:00pm things had slowed down a bit, and I had put on my bathrobe (over my clothes. A little weird.) But then there was another knock, so I went to answer it, where I saw two girls, probably about 12 or 14 years old. They were wearing raccoontail hats, men's overcoats, work gloves and boots, tools, etc.

Me: "Wooooow, nice hats. Those must be nice for keeping warm in this cold weather."
Them: "Ummm, yeah. We're Prospectors."
Me: "You're CROSS-DRESSERS?"
Them: "No.... um, prospectors."

Ooops. My mistake. Apparently I need to get my hearing checked. We all kind of laughed, and then I tossed them some candy.

In other news, Eclectchick's hubbie snapped some sweet pics of me at the Como race, which, by the way was an awesome course, and a beautiful day. If you missed that race, I'm sorry.

And I'm quickly becoming attached to the Echo. I like it a lot and very soon it will have my bike rack on it and life will be good.

Cars and Cross

2006-10-29T18:49:00.000-06:00

I've been seriously uninspired this past week as far as blogging goes. But stuff has indeed been happening -- on Friday, I went from zero cars to two cars in about 6 hours. The Civic is now sitting in my driveway, not running, and the Toyota Echo has been driving me around lately. I like it.

I also wanted to say thanks to everyone who cheered for me at the cross races this weekend. Especially today, there were people all over the course - it was awesome to hear everyone! I'm generally hurting quite a bit and don't acknowledge all the cheers, but I definitely hear you, and it totally helps. So thanks. And just let me know if you want me to cheer for you too.

Of Course...

2006-10-24T23:19:00.000-05:00

The day after I put cash money down on my new (used) car, I get a phone call from the Minneapolis Police telling me that they've recovered my old (used) car. Awesome. Timing couldn't be better (if you're sensing a bit of sarcasm, well, you're sharp). So the cops say that, no, they have no clue who took my car or why, but that the ignition is punched in and it was towed from a private property. They "recovered the car at 18:00" (6pm for non-militaries), but for some reason didn't manage to place a call to me until 10pm.

Anyway, they told me to call the impound lot, where I would be able to claim my car. So I called the lot:

Me: Hi, I think you have my stolen car.
Lot Girl: Is it a Honda Civic with Michigan plates?
Me: Yep, that's the one.
Lot Girl: OK, well, you can come get it tonight for $245. The ignition is punched in though, and it doesn't run.
Me: So, lemme get this straight. I have to PAY you to get my car that was STOLEN from me?
Lot Girl: That's right. And if you wait until tomorrow, it will cost $270. It goes up $25 per day.
Me: (in total disbelief) How am I supposed to pick up the car if it doesn't run?
Lot Girl: You'll have to call another towing company to get it towed.
Me: And if I don't???
Lot Girl: Then it will keep going up $25 per day for 10 days. Then it will go up by $50 per day. After 21 days, we'll sic the collections agencies on you.
Me: You've got to be f***ing kidding me.
Lot Girl: I'm not.
Me: Do you realize that you're telling me that I'm going to have to pay around $400 just to get back my own car that was stolen from me and is now totally jacked up and undriveable?
Lot Girl: Yep, that's right.
Me: That's soooo f***ed up. I didn't authorize anyone to tow my stolen car!
Lot Girl: Hmmmmm.
Me: This is f***ing ridiculous! Do you realize that?
Lot Girl: Hmmmm, it happens all the time.
Me: Thank you, you've been very helpful. Good night.

I like to end my phone conversations on a good note.

Maybe Donimator can go in there with the Hummer and put my Civic inside it and just drive off.

Powderhorn CX

2006-10-23T20:42:00.000-05:00

All the hype around this race totally got people out racing. Including my roommate, Paula! I've been trying to get her to do a CX race all year, and yesterday it finally happened. We rode over to the park, where we found the Fire Department hosing down the course. Awesome. Now they can add "CX race prep" to their areas of responsibility. We warmed up on the course, and I found it to be, um, hard. An S-turn through the mud, a fast down hill, a FAST set of double barriers, two stair run-ups, another steep ride/run-up, some twisting through trees, and then another barrier plus a run-up. I think Margot put it best:

Margot: "Did you ride the course yet?"
Me: "Yeah. Pretty hilly."
Margot: "I think I'm going to throw up today."
Me: "Are you sick?"
Margot: "No. It's just that kind of course."

In the end, I don't think anyone threw up, so I guess we weren't going hard enough. Paula's debut in CX went without a hitch, and she admitted afterwards that she actually had fun. The Bellas rocked out in the C race, with 4 women racing - Paula, Barb, Manda, and Angie - and a ton of Bella spectators out to support the racers! In the B race, it was Margot and me for the Bellas, both Lindas, and three other women. In the first lap, Linda S and I pulled away a little bit, and I was just focusing on staying on her wheel. After about 3 laps, she started to gap me, and the gap just kept opening little by little. The rest of the race went like this: ouch, ouch, wheeeeeeeee, ouch, ouch ouch, wheeeeeeeee, and so on. It was really fun! I had no mechanical issues! And Super-rookie totally beat me! It must be because he is awesome. I pulled off a second place (of the women) in the end, and I walked away with a Surly flask, so I was pretty psyched with that.

Does anyone have any photos of the day? All in all it was pretty awesome, with the sponsors, the refreshments, the warming stations, and straight up fun. Nice race!

Apparently I also bought a new (used) car today, which was shocking and stressful. But that's life sometimes!

Eulogy to my Honda

2006-10-17T18:33:00.000-05:00

Dear Honda,

You will always be fondly remembered. For a Honda Civic, you had a short life, you never even reached your 10th birthday (with me), but at 153,000 miles you were fairly well-traveled. When my parents bought you, new, I was a junior in high school. During my senior year, I took my driver's test with you. The tester lady was impressed that I was already pretty competent on a manual transmission, but you always were a smooth shifter. After high school, you brought me across the country several times, until finally, my senior year at college, I convinced my parents to let you be mine for good. During that year, you did some amazing things - hauling around kegs of beer, squeezing into non-existent parking spots on campus, driving to bike races packed to the gills. I think the record was when we drove to Pennsylvania with me, you, Steve and Tim, along with our three bikes, two extra wheelsets, three trainers, and a crapload of bike gear. With only 2 trays on your rack!

Somehow, after I spent four years at college you managed to carry all of my worldly possessions (there were only two bikes at that point in my life, attached to the roof rack) back with me to the Midwest. We hung out in the U.P. together for a while, where I never locked your doors and left the keys on the driver's side floor.

Then, we drove to Minneapolis, again full of all my crap. Soon after our arrival, someone busted your driver side window and stole your CD player, leaving a gaping hole in the dash. A few months later someone attempted to make a left turn into your front left corner, smashing your bumper and left fender. We got that fixed up, and within 6 weeks we rear-ended someone on 35W.

Let's be honest Honda, you weren't looking as hot as you used to. But you were still running just fine, and getting kick-ass gas mileage as well. But I guess you and the city of Minneapolis just never got along. You were taken from me, stolen from my own driveway, and I'm not optomistic about my prospects of ever seeing you again. I can only hope that you are now in a happier place.

Bye, Honda.

Amazing.

2006-10-16T21:22:00.000-05:00

Interestingly enough, my car was stolen this evening. So, if you see someone driving around a 3-tone (blue body, silver hood, black left fender) 4-door Honda Civic with a Saris rack on top... that's my car. Please notify the Minneapolis Police.

I'm still trying to figure out WHY someone would steal my crappy car. It doesn't even have a car radio in it! (That had already been stolen) At least Powderhorn is within riding distance this weekend : )

Frustrated.

2006-10-15T21:18:00.000-05:00

Why am I frustrated? Well, it's threefold (at least).

1. My race today was pretty frustrating. I don't even want to write about it. Ha.
2. On my way home from the race, I got taken out by a football. And now I have a huge bruise and patch of road rash on my keister. It all happened in slow motion - I was a block away from my house, and this football came rolling out into the road in front of me. I swerved away from it, and if footballs would just roll correctly, like other balls, it would have been fine. But footballs roll and bounce in the most unpredictable way imaginable and this one jumped right under my front wheel. Ouch. The poor owner of the football, a young boy, was close to tears, as was I, but when I thought about a possible scenario (his parents come outside to find us both sitting side by side on the curb pitifully bawling) I quickly sucked it up, told him not to worry, and headed home.
3. I'm way behind on bloggering! I'd never expect to compare with Smithers, but all the other local bloggers easily put me to shame as well, and now even (dis)pencer has entered the fray.

All in all, it was a beautiful day to be racing and the Alan guys put on a great race. A TON of people turned out to race, spectate, and drink beer. I witnessed a stellar beer hand-up to Skibby, who downed the whole cup in two gulps. Nice job, Skibby, you win!

Super-rookie raced Bs this weekend and beat me today. S-R, it's on. I'll beat you next weekend.

Margot pulled off the win today - nice job, Margot! Apparently, it was a sprint finish between her and Linda S - they were neck and neck the whole way. I had some lovely muck-ups during the race (hence the frustration : ) but I was happy with the way I rode overall. I'm already psyched for Powderhorn next weekend, sounds like it's going to be an epic race!

Weekend cross report - Almost there

2006-10-08T20:01:00.000-05:00

Another weekend of two cross races - I think I'm starting to get used to this. Saturday was Rum River Cross up in Milaca, it was a gorgeous day and a fun course, probably my favorite one so far. Two really fast sets of double barriers, and two more double barriers on hills - one rideable, and one definitely was a run-up. We started out with 5 women - me and Margot, Linda S, Linda C, and Gopher Sara. Margot and I got a bit of a gap towards the beginning (afterwards, we found out that Linda S' shoe had busted at this point - bummer!!) and traded pulls, Linda C caught us and then somehow I gapped both of them a tad. Soon Linda C caught back up to me and I let her get in front. She's got quite an engine on her, so I figured I would sit on her wheel and then try to gap her in the more technical woods section. Theoretically it was a great idea except I hit the corner way too fast and biffed. I jumped back up pretty quickly, but she was already pretty far up. It took me about a lap to catch back up, and quite a bit of an effort. She pulled away from me a bit on the second to last lap and held an even gap until the end. I ended up in second - I was happy with the way I rode. I was sorry about Linda S' shoe, though, and also Margot had a tough break - her thigh got in a fight with her chainring in the middle of one set of barriers.
All photos courtesy of skinnyski. You should definitely check out the other photos - there are some great ones from Rum River.

Today was Lake Rebecca - a beautiful course around a small lake. It rained a bit before my race, so the course was slick. I loved it, sliding around on a bike is always a good time. There were some fun corners, too, but I think Saturday still wins as my favorite course. Today there weren't any really fast barriers - they were all at the hills. There were only three women in the B race - me, Linda C, and Korey. We started off about 30 seconds behind the men. I led into the wooded section, and as we went around a corner, Tina yelled to me, "get on your bike and ride the hill!" That was a great tip - coming up was a single barrier at the bottom of a relatively steep hill - I had originally thought I'd probably run up it, but I jumped back on my bike and rode. It worked out really well, and when I looked back, I didn't see either of the other women. So I gunned it, and kept going. I think I was gaining time in the more technical section, and had quite a lead after that lap. I stayed ahead, feeling pretty good, until about 2 laps to go - all of a sudden I just couldn't push the pace anymore. Linda caught me, and I jumped on her wheel, but when I dropped my chain coming into the hill, I kinda gave up and settled for second place. I had so much fun sliding through the slick corners though, mostly on my bike, but once on my side. I think I ran my tire pressure too high - I don't like to have it too low though, because I always seem to flat. Hmmm, time for me to get some tufos. I actually had a lot of bike trouble today - dropped chain twice and my horribly budget pedals kept upclipping as I cranked up the hill - but H-Wood is going to get me set up this week, and then I'll have no more excuses.

It was great to see Bellas Barb and Manda in the C race - for being one of the smaller teams in the MCF, we sure are representing well at the cross races!

And it was sweet to hear Super-Rookie and team Awesome cheering and telling me to blog it. He almost caused a disaster in the first lap of our race when he walked in front of the entire women's cat 1/2/3 field! It was all good though. Now I'm going to sleep a lot.

Night rides....

2006-10-05T21:45:00.000-05:00

Just got this cool pic from the Hudson race of Linda and me - thanks to Gregg!

One thing I really love about the fall is doing night rides. Not that I'm psyched about the shorter daylight hours, but look at the bright side. Today I was a bad influence on Paula and caused her to leave work for an hour or so (cough, 2.5 hours, cough) to go riding with me. Seriously though, if you're working after 6:00pm, you should be convinced to leave. So we headed out as the sun was starting to set, made our way through downtown and headed down West River Road towards the Mendota Bridge. Over by the VA I saw this woman in a Dartmouth sweatshirt, so being the shy, quiet, reserved individual that I am, I yelled "Yeah, Dartmouth!" She was a bit startled and confused, so I was like, "Dartmouth, I went there too" pointing at her as we rolled by at a rather quick clip. Paula had a good point though - she probably picked up the shirt somewhere at a thrift store. Oh well. Pretty soon it was time for me to turn on my ultra high powered blinding Light in Motion bikelight to light the way for us and blind any oncoming traffic and would-be muggers. We went over to Mendota/Lilydale, rode down the trail to the Yacht Club, and then continued on the road to Harriet Island. Downtown St Paul is beautiful at night! We tried unsuccessfully to take out some of the Wild fans as we made our way through the somewhat crazy traffic. We practiced the College Girl Swerve a coupla times on our way to Ramsey hill and up to Summit, where we decided it was time for a snack. Reaching into our jersey pockets, Paula pulled out some Power Bagel Bite or something, and I pulled out, according to Paula, some "gag material." Thank you, Paula, for saying that before I had a chance to enjoy my snack. Apparently, she can't stand banana-flavored food items. I will say, that I think Nature Valley does make products superior to the one I ate today, but it wasn't gag material either. Anyway, we cruised home on the Greenway, talking about the improbability of getting mugged with a spotlight strapped to one's head, especially if one was talking in a man-voice. What a fun ride! I'm psyched for more.

CX again this weekend, Saturday in Milaca and Sunday at Lake Rebecca. Think Todd Wells is going to show up at Milaca again? I'm not betting on it. But I'll probably be there. I think that's enough for tonight.

Relegated!

2006-09-30T19:13:00.000-05:00

Saturday CX - Hudson
I headed over to Hudson, Wisco for the CX race with Bella Maria on Saturday. She brought the Kona MTB with some sweet commuter wheels for her cross rig. That girl does it all - last year she did the Boom Island CX on a road bike, with regular road tires. Wow. Anyway, we pre-rode the course and I decided that it was pretty much made for me - flat and fairly technical with lots of tight corners, sand and mud. There was one little drop-off into a puddle, and Maria warned me after we warmed up not to go off the left side of it, because there was a big hole that she'd been fortunate enough to ride into. I saw bits of the C race and StevenCX even waved at me as he flew through a corner. Hi StevenCX!

So the B race lined up with 55 people, 5 of them women, and after the official finished going over some details, Linda S let everyone know that it was my birthday, and they all sang happy birthday to me on the start line. How nice - gosh, I was all choked up. The course went through a couple narrow turns near the beginning and there was some bottleneck action pretty soon after our start. I had started near the back, so I tried to work my way up a bit as we came to the puddle drop-off. Apparently, I suffered an attack of moronism, because when Maria said left, I was thinking right, and I came into the drop-off on the far left, thinking I was fine. And I went straight into the hole which sucked up my front wheel and sent me sprawling into the puddle. Betty A came sprawling on top of me, which was nothing but fun, but soon we were both up and going again. I was totally enjoying the course, and soon I caught up to Linda S - that's saying a lot. She's superfast, an awesome CXer and she always beats me. I came around her in one of the corners and the two of us started working our way through the B men - it was a ton of fun, and I was thinking it was going to be awesome to duke it out with her at the finish, but then I hit some glass and flatted. Darn! Linda told me to use her wheel out of the pit, so I started running with my bike back towards the wheel pit. I chatted with the officials, who were confused as to where I had come from, as was I, and it was sounding like they weren't going to let that fly. So I told them I just wanted to ride, and then jumped back into the race with Linda's wheel, about a half lap down from where I was. In the end, I was relegated to last place because I left the pit going the wrong direction. I'm still a little confused, but that's normal. And tons of people said happy birthday while I was racing, which was sweet. The Alan guys put on a great race and it was a beautiful day for it!

Sunday CX - Orono
This morning, I headed out to the Orono High School to race - it was the same place we raced last year, but they changed up the course a little bit. It still had the same brutal run-up, but they threw in an extra set of barriers and a sand pit. Not as technical as yesterday either, so I wasn't as psyched. There were 5 women in the B race again today - Bella Margot, Linda S, Linda C, Betty C, and myself. It was pretty good starting out, Margot took a flyer after rocking through the sand pit on the first lap as the rest of us sort of piled up. After a while though, Linda and Linda reeled her in as I hung on to their wheels. Margot dropped back a little way after her huge effort, and after 19 minutes the Lindas dropped me. So I was psyched about the first 19 minutes. Soon Margot caught up to me, and the two of us worked together for the rest of the race - wow, it was really nice to have a teammate to keep me going and trade pulls with. We actually were slowly gaining on the other two women towards the end of the race, but not enough to really pose a threat. Margot nipped me at the line - she's got quite the sprint!

After our race was the C race, where Bella Barb and Bella Manda showed their CX skills. Nice job ladies!

All in all everyone had a fun race, and it was another gorgeous day to be out!

Happy Birthday to me!

2006-09-29T13:39:00.000-05:00

Birthdays are sweet - I've gotten 3 bouquets of flowers at work today. Good thing I like flowers. Too bad I rode my bike to work today and am not even going to try to carry them home with me.

Good thing you're coming to hang out tomorrow evening.

I've officially reached my mid-twenties.

St Cloud CX

2006-09-24T19:37:00.000-05:00

Wow, I forgot how much cross hurts. It was really nice to sleep in before heading up to St Cloud, and when I got there it was gorgeous! A lot different than last year's St Cloud race. I was there in time to see the C race (and wish that I was in it, instead of the B race). Bella Barb was out there, along with GW Sara, a couple Bettys, and some other new women - it was awesome to see! What wasn't awesome was that I noticed only about 4 women in my race - three of them were faster than me and the other one was me. Pro MTBer Jenna Zander was there, along with Kyia, and Linda Sone, so I was looking forward to a good butt-kicking. When we lined up, there were actually a total of 6 women, one of whom consistently beat me last year and Betty A, new to the cyclocross B category. The beginning of the course was quite a bit of flat, non-technical back and forth, then a fast slightly off-camber downhill onto a stretch of pavement. Then some really fun barriers - one set of double barriers, a stretch of dirt, and then another double set. There was just enough space in between them to make it worthwhile to remount between sets. Then a bit of flat, a decent climb, a bit more winding, another fast downhill, 180 turn and then two barriers on an uphill. Ugh, that part hurt a lot.

All in all, I felt...um...awful. I feel like I have zero high-end fitness right now, so every hill was pretty much a big problem. The barriers were fun though. Probably the best part of my race was when some of the guys near the front came around and lapped me on the pavement, and then I repassed them on the barriers.

But I've come to the conclusion, along with Skibby and Super-Rookie, that the track is way better. I think cross is supposed to get better from now on though...

The men's A race was pretty impressive - Aric, Dan, and Adam went off the front right in the beginning. Bjorn and a Gearwest guy were back just a bit, and then the rest of the field. In the end it was Aric and Adam for the last couple of laps together, duking it out, and it came down to a sprint. From where I was standing, no one could tell who had gotten it, but it turned out to be Adam. It was a pretty awesome race to watch.

Next Friday is my birthday, and on Saturday I'm going to have a party of sorts. I probably haven't invited you if I don't have your email, but I'd still like you to come. So email me at karlajane at gmail dot com if you want to stop by!

Bike Counting

2006-09-20T23:22:00.000-05:00

Today I did a bit of volunteering for Transit for Livable Communities. I thought it was a good idea for a lot of reasons:

1. Volunteering is always a good thing to do.
2. I'm always up for working towards better city transit (a big part of which is biking)
3. They were looking for people to count cyclists so that, to make a complicated issue simple, they'll have the evidence to support more cyclist-oriented development planning.
4. It was outside my normal work hours, so I wouldn't even have to skip out on my job. (FLAWED THINKING).

Outside my work hours meant that it was from 7am-9am, which meant that I had to be at my designated intersection (across town from my house) before 7am, ready to go. So I left my house on my bike just a little after 6am. That's some kind of record for me I think. Hard as it was to get out of bed, out the door, and onto my bike at that hour, it sure was beautiful riding at that time!

The bike counting part was actually really interesting. I had to look at whether people had helmets, were men or women, used the regular traffic lanes or used crosswalks, ran lights, etc. It was pretty interesting to check out the different rides people had as they went by, and the clothes they were using in the 40ish degree weather. But the best part had to be the guy that came up to the West River Road and Lake St. interection on roller skis and almost biffed it because he couldn't stop in time for the red light. What's the DEAL with roller skis? They seem like death waiting to happen. Can anyone explain to me why they're a good idea?

Oh yeah, I stopped by the CX clinic after work for a little bit. Apparently, I'm doing everything a little bit wrong, mostly my "superman" remount. Oh well. Racing this weekend!

Ouch

2006-09-19T20:12:00.000-05:00

In spite of Dr. Walker's findings that wearing a helmet is dangerous, there are times when it's undebatably better to be the kid with the helmet.

Thank you, Paula.

the end...

2006-09-17T13:27:00.000-05:00

This past Thursday was the last night of track racing. When I realized it was over for the year I was thrown into a depression that caused me to stop blogging. By Friday, I was over that, and was on to just being lazy. But anyway, the last night at the track was pretty fun, Matt Anderson's band was playing on the infield and Hollywood showed up and heckled all the racers a bit. I got beat in the first race, the 10 lap scratch, so I switched bikes (when you're renting you can do that) for one that had higher gearing. I had a much better race in the miss n out. After the last miss n out, where I was the first to be eliminated, I wasn't taking any chances, so I just went to the front and stayed there until the end. The last race was the points race - it was going really well until Hollywood yelled out to me that he had about 6 eligible bachelors lined up for me. Except when I looked over, they all seemed to be about 18. So I was a little flustered. Fortunately Bella Megan was on top of things and she went to the front and led the field up the track a bit, leaving it open for me to attack underneath and get away alone. Teammates are SWEET!

Hey, they made a movie with my name. Check out Karla. It actually looks pretty scary, but I'm sure I'll have to see it.

Then today, I solved one of my life's little mysteries. Last May or so, I was riding down West River Road with my Dartmouth cycling kit, and some woman running past yelled, "yeah Dartmouth!" There's this weird obsession with Dartmouth among its alumni, so I wasn't too surprised, but I still wanted to know who it was. So today, I headed out on a ride with Jen, Manda, Barb and Hubby, SPBRC Bob, and Julia, who Jen is currently recruiting. We got to chatting, and eventually discovered that we both went to that small school in New Hampshire, and she was the one that yelled at me! Moreover, we were in the same (gasp) sorority. Yes, I was in a sorority. Please don't judge me.

I'm looking forward to cyclocross next weekend. I still haven't decided if I'll head up to Moorhead, but I'll be in St Cloud for sure.

Cross Rocks

2006-09-14T00:29:00.000-05:00

Because I'm lazy, I'll direct you to my recent post at the MWCMR blog. Ton ten reasons why 'cross rocks.

CX is here!

2006-09-10T21:08:00.000-05:00

This morning I woke up today to a nice drizzle and about 50 degrees. I'd been looking forward to today for about 2 weeks now, because there was a CX clinic in the morning down at Hollywood's and then the Urthel Grand Prix up at the velodrome in the evening. What could be better than a day with cyclocross AND track racing in the same day?? I can't really think of much. But the morning drizzle didn't bode well for the track racing.

I got out the bianchi cross bike for about the second time this year, and Paula and I headed out to meet Manda. The three of us had a rather wet ride down to the shop. In spite of the weather, there was quite a good turnout for the clinic and a lot of people new to 'cross. The drizzle subsided a bit actually and we had a great clinic. Lots of crashes, on the whole, but I managed to not crash at all until Paula, Manda, and I were on our way home. Thanks to Hollywood, Hardogger, Fast Freddy, Dan, Doug, and Patty Cakes for leading the clinic and sharing your skills. It was also really cool to see some new women out there, and I hope they come to the races this season!

Unfortunately, my sweet day was cut a little short, as the Grand Prix was called off due to rain. Which means the last day at the track is Thursday. I already can't wait till next year!

Photos from skinnyski.com, MN State CX 2005.

Track and Stuff

2006-09-08T00:06:00.000-05:00

What prompted the poll? So, the track has 4 biffies, which is great, but all 4 have been completely out of the handy dandy hand sanitizer for a couple weeks now. So today, on my way to the track, I decided to stop at a gas station to use their restroom. The attendent pointed me in the right direction and I found the ladies room, which was labelled, interestinly enough, with a bright-orange star-shaped sign that said, "no men allowed." I pondered that for a while. The line is always longer for the ladies room (except sometimes at bike races) so there are women that have been known to use the men's room on occasion. But apparently the opposite - men using the ladies' room - happened at this particular gas station, and offended enough people to prompt them to create a special sign. So I was intrigued. What do you think?

Anyways, I made it to the track with clean hands. There were 8 women racing tonight, from 5 teams I think. To sum it up, we had some fun racing. We had a points race to start with - I really like points races, so that was sweet. Then there was a crash with two people down at the beginning of the MN State Championship Keirin, but fortunately they were OK. They re-started us, and somehow, I managed to win that race and become the state champion at something else. I'll take that. Our last race of the night was a 30 lap scratch race. Gilby kicked some butt on that one, and showed that she'll be representing MN well at track nats.

Thanks for reading and voting.

It's Official - Flaming Nimrods

2006-09-06T22:50:00.000-05:00

Thank you all for your commentary on my nimrod adventure. Especially to Justin, for letting me know that the man who called me a flaming nimrod was perhaps just calling me a mighty hunter. I'll take that, and put a logo with it. I believe the credit goes to EclectChick's hubby for the logo.

Super-rookie, yes I believe I have encountered you on the road before, but I think you said something like, "Yeah, Velo Bella, woo-hoo, where can I get myself one of those kits?" Maybe next time you can be a bit more heckler-ish.

Flaming Nimrods, Healthy People, and Power Tools

2006-09-03T16:16:00.000-05:00

Today, I decided to go ahead and be lazy pretty much all day, after Paula and I decided not to go race in Wisconsin. But we did get out the cordless drill and I attempted to put up a hook in the kitchen. Actually, we had several good attempts throughout the day, but after ripping off some paint, making numerous small nail holes, destroying some plaster, running down the drill battery and still not finding a stud, we gave up for the afternoon. You could say that we spent the day searching for studs to no avail.
...
It isn't everyday that one is called a "flaming nimrod," but yesterday, I was called just that. Somehow, Paula convinced me to get up and out onto my bike by 6:30 yesterday morning. That was rough, but after an hour or so, I was functioning normally. We rode with the Flanders crew for a few hours, and then I headed to the Harvest Moon for the 10:00am Bella ride. I met up with Jen and we decided to go on a leisurely loop of the lakes and Minnehaha Pkwy for some people watching. So, when riding around the lakes and the parkway, I don't usually ride on the bike path, because they are usually crowded with families and more leisurely-paced riders that ride near the trail speed limit of 10mph. So I choose to go on the road, like many other cyclists that move at speeds similar to the car traffic. So yesterday, as Jen and I were stopped at a red light on the Parkway, some crabby, unhappy man without a helmet rode up on the trail, and as he crossed the road on a red light, proceeded to yell at us:

"You flaming nimrods, why are you riding on the road, you're endangering yourselves and everyone else, you flaming nimrods. Flaming nimrods!"

Wow. I could rant and rant about this, but I'll spare you. As Jen noted, she'd never been heckled by a fellow cyclist before, and I don't think I had either (except for in races). We continued on our way and then went up River Road towards downtown, where we encountered a Magical History Tour in progress, with about 20 people zipping around on Segways. Speaking of Segways, check out thisinteresting commentary on Dubya's fall from a Segway.

As Jen and I rode by, the tour leader yelled jubilantly, "Hello, Healthy People!" I guess I like that a little better than Flaming Nimrod. We had a quick stop at the Mill City Farmer's Market, before I headed home for a 4.5 hour nap. Seriously. It was epic.

MN State Champ.... I guess

2006-08-31T23:30:00.000-05:00

What a night at the track. Somehow I came away with a state championship and nationals qualification. Thanks to Sarah for the photos.

The 10-lap scratch race was fun, the ladies were active and attacking and taking flyers and the like. I ended up second. The miss-n-out totally schooled me. I thought it was my favorite race at the track, but I definitely got humbled tonight and was the first one pulled. Sarah pulled off a third place though. Then we had a 40 lap points race.* It was really fun, Nature Valley girl and UofM girl each took a sprint, while I kept picking up 2nd place. Stratton had about 5 strong attacks during the race - awesome teamwork. Those were 5 attacks that I didn't have to chase down. Then Gilby got a sprint. I crossed the line first on one lap, somehow completely sure that it was a sprint lap. But then as I crossed the line in first, I heard the bell ringing. (Which means that the sprint was on the next lap.) Oops. Anyway, going into the last lap, the Nature Valley girl had 13 points, the UofM girl had 11, and I had 11. The three of us were off the front a ways and I swung up the track to get them to go ahead with about 2 laps to go. Coming around the backside of the track on the last lap, the two of them were right next to each other and I was right behind, waiting to jump. Then there was some bumping between the two of them and the Nature Valley girl went down. Ouch. I know what that feels like. The UofM girl and I sprinted it out at the end and I won by half a wheel. Fortunately the Nature Valley girl was OK, just some track rash and splinters, but that's a huge bummer. But, as I've heard many many times, "that's racing." Sometimes it hurts more than others.

Here I am before I got it together enough to zip up the jersey. Thanks to the men's cat 1/2 field (pete and s-r) for yelling at me to do that.

This weekend will be free of racing for me -- anyone have any suggestions as to how I should occupy my time?

*40 lap points race -- the race is based on the number of points each rider accumulates. There are 5 sprints total, a sprint every 8 laps. Points are awarded to the first 4 riders to cross the line on each sprint - 5 points for 1st, then 3 points, then 2, then 1.

2006-08-30T23:06:00.000-05:00

The MN State Fair was, well, pretty gross all in all. I know that what you are supposed to do at the fair is eat fair food, but wow, that's disgusting. Deep-fried jalapeno poppers filled with cream cheese dipped in ranch? Frozen snickers dipped in donut batter, deep fried, and rolled in powdered sugar? Ugh, I could hear my arteries clogging just looking at it.
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And, I can't believe it's almost September. Cyclocross starts in September! And my birthday is in September! I'm thinking it will be a good month.

Marty RR, More Downers Pics, and Picnics

2006-08-27T20:38:00.000-05:00

These are some of the sweet gas station finds that Shana and I picked up on the way to Downer's Grove last weekend.

This weekend, Shana and I headed to the Marty Road Race. Sarah, Paula, and new Bella Jennifer were racing in the cat 4 race earlier, in the morning wave, but the women's 1/2/3 wasn't till the afternoon. Ms. Jen had a fabulous first race, and we will all be psyched to have her out racing a ton more next season! The women's 1/2/3 race had a total of 5 women in it - Shana and I, Anne, Linda, and an AUC woman. We did 4 laps of a 12 mile loop, which had one pretty decent hill on it. Going into the race I was pretty sure I was going to get dropped when someone gunned it on the hill, but fortunately I was wrong. We pretty much rode a nice paceline for the entire race except for the hill. The first 3 times up the hill weren't too bad, but on the final lap Anne and Shana both attacked pretty hard. But I just picked it up and rode at a steady pace and stayed with them. At the top of the hill, we were all together, and that was pretty much my goal for the race. So I was psyched. We played cat and mouse for a bit going into the finish, until Shana attacked really hard. I tried to go with her, but she had quite a jump on us and I couldn't quite get on her wheel. I had a little gap on the other three, but they soon caught me, and then we all caught Shana. Going into the final stretch I showed my true non-sprinting colors and got 4th place. But overall I was super-happy with how the race went.
--
Bob Williams says something like this: In cycling, it doesn't really matter how fast or strong you are, but you gotta look good. Why? Because if you look really good and do bad in a race, people just think you're having a bad day. Whereas if you do bad in a race when you're not looking good... well...you get it. So here we are looking good.

And having fun.

Thanks to Shana for the photos.
--
Also, yesterday, I was officially introduced to NASCAR. Thank you, Sarah. I picked my guy (Harvick?), based mostly on his sponsor (Reeses?) and then watched him not win. I may have been able to pick up on more details, but my attention was diverted for much of the race by our viewing companions. Such is life.
--
Today we had a Bella picnic with about 25 or so Bellas and Fellas out for a morning ride followed by a picnic in the park. How picturesque! Our ride got back before noon, so Jen, Bella A, and I decided to go do some hill repeats. What could be more fun? We even had a Super-Rookie sighting. There were many others worthy of mention riding with him, but my brain was low on oxygen at that point, so I couldn't tell you about it.

And I'm out.

Rain = no track = how sad

2006-08-24T21:01:00.000-05:00

Normally, I like rainy days. They're kind of soothing, relaxing, etc, and it's always nice to curl up inside when it's raining. But today I really was pretty disappointed in the weather, because it meant no track racing. Not to mention my drive home from work - the Civic barely made it through some of the lakes on the highway. And instead of racing, I spent my evening texting.

Tuesday was a good ride though. Stratton and I headed out to Wayzata after work. All in all, we had a great ride, but I think the best part was on our way home, we were just piddling along on the Cedar Lake Trail, when two guys totally shot past us. They were hammering. Then we heard some more people coming up behind us, going at a quick clip. They were all yelling, "on your left, coming through, etc," when we heard the sound of bike hitting bike and bike flying through the air, and someone hitting the ground. Oh no. I don't know if I've ever seen someone bite it that hard on a bike path of smooth pavement. It was tragic and comical at the same time (pretty sure the guy was OK).

Then yesterday, MAYNARD came and visited me! My first friend from the east coast to come visit me (hint, hint, friends from the east coast). We rode some of my bikes into uptown for dinner at Fugi Ya and managed to avoid getting hit on the way home thanks to my spotlight. Maynard, what else was I supposed to blog about?

Downer's Grove

2006-08-22T22:37:00.000-05:00

More photos are coming! In the meantime, check out Matt Moses' photos But here's the report: Paula, Shana and I headed out of the Cities around 1:30 – not bad, seeing as we’d planned to get on the road by 1:00. I hunkered down in the backseat of Paula’s Infinity, our trusty team car, with three bikes on top. Passing through Eau Claire, we got a call from Ms. Stratton, who was also en route with Pete and Eric. Soon we saw them, also with three hot bikes on top of their car, and for a moment I almost felt like we were a pro caravan – but that didn’t last. Soon we made a pit stop, where my sunglasses binge started.
Karla Stat: Pairs of sunglasses bought on the Downer’s Grove trip – 5. Pairs that were bought from gas stations on the way down – 2. (I started to try on another pair on the way home, but Paula staged an intervention.)
After 4 or 5 hours we rolled into Janesville, where we opted to stay for the night. First stop was the Days Inn (or something like that.) They only had smoking rooms. We considered our options:
1. Move on to the next place, where they might be out of rooms.
2. Open the doors and windows and try to air out the room.
3. Pick up a couple packs of smokes and just go with it.
After almost getting lung cancer when we went to investigate one of the rooms, we opted for option 1.
The next place was the Microtel, where we were told we could get a room with a queen-size bed for 69 smacks. But we would not be able to get a cot, because they were all in use. Paula offered to sleep on the floor, but Shana and I wouldn’t allow that. We decided to head to the Holiday Inn Express, and the Microtel guy informed us that it would be about 1.8 times more expensive.

So we checked into the Holiday and it was awesome. We got our act together in the morning by 9:00, and made our way to Downer’s Grove. The women’s 3/4 race was scheduled to start at 1:15, and the women’s 1/2/3 race was at 5:30. I planned on doing both of them, but they wouldn’t let me register for the 1/2/3 race at first because my license still says I’m a cat 4. So I got Matt Anderson (our local official) on the phone and he straightened things out for me.

The 3/4 race – probably 40+ women started this race, so that was a good-sized field, but overall the race was pretty darn boring. The course was awesome – 8 corners, a couple gradual rises, a short power climb, and then a non-sketchy downhill. People pretty much did nothing until Paula attacked going up the hill about halfway through the race. That was awesome, and she stayed off the front for almost a lap. Endeavor chased her down though. There were a couple primes – one for a bike tune, one for a bike fit – which would be great, except that I wasn’t from the area. So finally they rang the bell for a cash prime, and I decided I wanted that one. It was easy to move up on the downhill, and I came around corners 7 and 8 in the lead and sprinted up to the finish line for the cash. Only then did I notice that the lap counter was at 2 to go. Oops. So I didn’t have much time to recover. I got boxed in on the top of the course on the last lap and I never could quite get into a good position for the final sprint, so I ended up 9th.

The 1/2/3 race – wow. I was racing against Tina Pic, Laura Van Gilder, Sarah Uhl, and a bunch of other big names in women’s racing. Before the race I chatted with a couple of the women riding for Colavita – Kele, a Bella that was guest riding for them, and Allison Powers, who’s been doing amazing this year. I finally put two and two together and realized that Allison Powers is the same woman I raced against last year at the Williams Crit (out east, when I was at Dartmouth). We were both cat 4s at the time and broke away from the field together. She’s awesome – super friendly, supportive, and a great rider! Staging for the race was nuts – people were pretty aggressive with getting a starting position, and I somehow managed to end up way at the back of the pack. There were probably almost 100 starters, so it was definitely the biggest and fastest field I’ve ever raced with. It was hard. I’d never quite understood before when people have told me that it’s so much harder to race at the back of a crit, because you often have to practically sprint out of the corners just to stay on the pack. Well, now I totally understand. I started at the back and it was really hard to move up. I hung on for quite a while, more than half the race, but when the field took the initiative to chase a break that had been hanging off the front, I got shelled. Ouch. It was so awesome though, and now I definitely have something to work towards.

Saturday night, Shana, Paula, and I got some take-out to eat in our room, while Sarah joined us with a couple bottles of wine. Nice. Shana was racing on Sunday, along with all the GP guys, but Sarah, Paula, and I saw no reason not to enjoy the wine.

We got up way too early for me on Sunday to get ready to head to the course for the day. Shana’s race, the Elite women national crit championship, was going to start at 10:00 and then all the GP guys were racing in the men’s elite national crit at 11:30. The women’s race was fun to watch, just being able to see how these women’s teams work together. In the end, Tina Pic and Laura van Gilder were coming around the final corner together, and somehow Tina ended up going down. Teresa Cliff-Ryan came around Laura in the end. Read about the race at cycling news.

The men's race was next, and it was pretty amazing to watch as well. Sarah has a good report on their race.

Downer's Grove

2006-08-22T09:41:00.000-05:00

update coming soon. I'm lame, and busy.
It was wicked fun though.

Track again - without the splinters!

2006-08-18T09:44:00.001-05:00

Last night at the track:

I got to listen to Super-rookie and Stratton go nuts about NASCAR. SS swears that I'll soon be hooked, but I'm skeptical.

Other than that, I managed to get back on the track one week after my run-in with it's wooden surface. There were 9 ladies there! It was quite a turnout, even with a lot of the regulars missing. If we were to get all the girls up to the track on the same night, we might even get a whopping 15 women!

Anyway, we had a snowball race first. Usually I hate the snowball races because the points only go to the first person across the line, which is usually not me, but somehow I managed to do well in this one. There was a girl out visiting from New York - she took the 2 points on the first bell lap. Next time I heard the bell, I attacked early and got 3 points, and the "MN Sprint Champ" UofM girl came with me and we got a little break. So we decided to go for it. Somehow I managed to get the next sprint as well for 4 points, which meant I had the race in the bag (unless the New Yorker caught our break) because the final sprint was only worth 6 points. Good thing, because I didn't get the final sprint.

Then we did the miss n out. For some reason the miss n out is my favorite race, even though routinely come in second. So last night, I was fairly determined NOT to get second place. I set the pace for most of the race, then the New York girl did for a while, and bit by bit people were getting eliminated. Finally it came down to just me and an Alan girl. She was on my wheel as they rang the bell for the last lap, and then I attacked with three quarters of a lap to go. She stuck on my wheel and then started to come around on the final straight. She would have had me if the finish line was a meter later, but I managed to pull off my first miss n out win by about half a foot.

The last race of the night was a 30 lap points race. Ugh, it was hard. We piddled along for the first couple laps. Bob, the announcer, even said, "and they're off like a pack of turtles" as we started. Then Stratton threw out a monster attack from up high out of the turn and got 50 meters on the field in the blink of an eye. The girl from New York went with her and they picked up some points on the first bell lap. Then the field brought them back and then another break formed with me, UofM girl, Alan girl and NY girl. I think I may have won one of the sprints, and then got a good gap on the field. I decided to try to solo off the front for a bit, which worked out well for a while, but then I got caught 5 laps later about 2 meters before the line (on a points lap). Bummer. Oh well. I picked up a few other points through the rest of the race, but I was pretty cooked from the little solo effort. I think I probably got third or so, but I was just psyched for such awesome racing - it was a fun group last night and we had some really fun races!! In spite of getting my butt kicked in the last race, I took the omnium, and that always makes me happy.

Now it's off to Downer's Grove for the weekend.

Ouch.

2006-08-12T20:36:00.000-05:00

Here are my findings from the last couple of days:

1. It is not a good idea for me to ride with the 4/5 guys at the track.
2. Track-rash hurts like hell.
3. The Donimator is always good for a comforting word and doesn't even mind my pitiful wimpering after a good crash. Even though I drive a Honda.
4. The Walgreens on Central Ave (on the way home from the track) does not stock Tegaderm. The one in Uptown does. It also stocks a wide variety of tweezers, including pointed ones specially made for extracting splinters.
5. Roomie Paula would be a great surgeon, judging from her ability to deftly extract buried splinters from my back with an exacto knife.
6. Working on a Saturday sucks.
7. I'm glad Gilby is back at the track!

Mom - I crashed at the track, but everything is fine, nothing's broken. And after not riding for two days, I'm ready to head out tomorrow for a long ride in Wisconsin!

Perspectives on health and other cycling conundrums

2006-08-08T21:31:00.000-05:00

I consider myself a cyclist, and I am also realizing that many cyclists are very "special" people. Have you ever been told you were "special"? Did it make you feel good, or did it leave you uncomfortably wondering what that meant? I'm not going to define it or anything, but...

So today I was having a conversation with a woman regarding our health care system, and the general health of Americans (which, in case you were wondering, is pretty dismal). I was saying how psyched I was to have full health insurance -- as opposed to the zero health insurance I had during Oxbow and Ken Woods. Huge relief. But she said that she actually thought insurance (above catastrophic coverage) wasn't really worth it as long as you take care of your health. I was pretty shocked at first, as I'm totally afraid of being without coverage. But then I thought about it -- I take care of my health, which works out well for me. I haven't been to the doctor for an illness or health issue for years. But, let's see, I've been to the emergency department, let's see, 8 times in the past couple of years as a result of cycling. And that, my friends, is a good reason to have health insurance.

Karla Stat: cycling related ED visits = 8
So if you ride bikes and don't have insurance, you should get some. You can get it through USA Cycling (if you're a member) for $25 a month. Totally worth it.

Also, why is the "ER" now the "ED" (emergency room v. emergency department). What prompted that change? Or is it just in my head?

Anyway, why are cyclists "special"? Why is cycling "special" (or is it special without the "")? Why do we do it? How come it's so damn addictive? What's wrong with this photo? Apparently the lack of racing this weekend left me with a little too much oxygen getting to my head, and I've been thinking about it all a bit too much.

Back to the Track

2006-08-04T17:02:00.000-05:00

Last weekend, after I finished the 12 hour ordeal, I told myself that I wasn't going to even look at a bike for the rest of the week. Well, that lasted till about Tuesday, when I went out for a morning ride. That went OK, and by yesterday I was itching to race again. Geez. So I went up to the track last night. The women's field was somewhat slim, compared to what it has been, no Sarah, no Barb, no Margot, no Gilby, no UofM girl with a pink bike. But Bellas Becca and Megan were there, along with Bella Maria, riding for UofM. Rounding out the field were a Betty, a Penn Cycles girl, and two Alan ladies.

I was thinking about racing with the men's 4/5 field as well, but Stacia came over and informed me that it had almost 30 guys in it. Wow, that's a big night for the 4/5s! Maybe not the best time for me to start riding with the guys. It was a good thing too, because a bunch of them fell off the track in their second race. Oooops.

Overall, the women's races went well. It was great to have Megan and Becca out there! I got second in the 10 lap scratch, to Maria, who is wicked fast. Then for the miss-n-out, I got second again, to the Penn Cycles girl, who is also wicked fast. Nice job to them! The 30 lap points race went really well for me and I managed to take the points on the first 3 sprints, and ended up winning the race. And actually managed to squeak out an omnium too! So I was psyched.

I was even more psyched to see these really cool pictures from the track last week at Matt Moses' site.

119.7 miles of trails

2006-07-31T14:35:00.000-05:00

It's about time for me to write about my Epic (catch the double meaning?) race at 24 hours of 9-mile this past weekend. If you don't like to read (ahem, Hanna), here's the quick and dirty:

I raced 12 hours, on my mountain bike, by myself. I did 9 laps of the course for a total of 119.7 miles. Second place did 7 laps. So I'm psyched that I won, and I'm still hurting.

If you do like to read, here's the rest of the report:
After getting back from the track on Thursday, I opted not to take the time to pack up my car, and went to bed instead. Then I woke up on Friday morning, packed in about 15 minutes for 24 hours of 9-mile, and headed to work. I took off towards Wausau, WI on Friday afternoon. The plan was to pick up my mom in nearby Weston and then camp Friday night at 9-mile with all the U.P. cyclists. Of note: my mother rode a total of around 125 miles in two days on her mountain bike, loaded down with saddle bags, in almost 100 degree heat in order to meet me and be my race support. Way to go, mom! Fortunately, she was fully energized due to her consumption of Rock Star, apparently a favorite of Kid Rock and Snoop Dogg. The plan was fine, but my packing was not well thought-out. I had forgotten a sleeping bag, a sleeping pad, and any sort of rain gear. I guess I was thinking more about the biking aspect of the weekend than the camping aspect. At least I had my mountain bike -- in tip-top shape, thanks to Hollywood.

The whole scene at 9-mile was pretty impressive. It was the national championships of 24-hour racing this year, so a lot of the big shots in endurance racing were there, along with all kinds of team support from Trek, Mavic, Sram, NiteRider, Hammer Nutrition, etc, etc, etc. There were tents and campers set up all over the place, and we soon found the crew from the Keweenaw set up with the Cross Country Sports tent and a ton of coolers, bikes, and crazy endurance nutritional products.

I went and got my registration for the 12 hour women's solo event. I'd never done anything like this in the past - the longest race I'd ever done before was probably just over 4 hours. So I was a tad apprehensive on Friday night when I lay down to sleep on top of the scrappy wool blanket that I found in my car. But I was soon fast asleep. And soon awakened around 1:00am, by my mom, telling me, "Karla, there's going to be a tornado, we all have to go down to the park building." So I was soon wide awake, out of the tent, watching people scrambling around trying to get our things into the vehicles. Then I saw Dr. G's tent go rolling up the trail as he chased after it, and a couple others collapsed. There was some chaos for a while there, until the wind died down and it started pouring. But I was tired, so I climbed back into the tent and went to sleep.

The rain had pretty much passed by 8:00am, when we finally got up and got ready for the 10:00am start. They had all the racers put our bikes on racks and then lined us up to run about a quarter mile to get our bikes and then jump on and go. We started right on time and the race was on! The course was awesome - 13.3 miles long, about half singletrack, half doubletrack, and maybe 50 meters of gravel road. The first lap a bottleneck formed on the singletrack, of course, and I got somewhat impatient, but then I remembered that I had another 12 hours to ride the trails, so I got over it. My second lap was faster than my first, but I was still trying to be careful not to go too hard. To be honest, all the laps kind of blur together, so I'm just going to throw out some of the highlights.

- It was awesome to roll up to our support tent every lap and grab two bottles of cold Perpetuem, because it was frickin hot out, and I was sweating lots.
- I felt great for the first four hours, and I had an average heart rate of 160 (my LT is around 166!) Yes, I am a nerd, and I love statistics.
- There were all kinds of Twin Citians there - from Kenwood, Penn Cycles, Peace Coffee, and of course, Velo Bella.
- After about 7 hours, I crashed and bloodied up my elbow, knee, and thigh. So I was a bit of a wreck for the rest of that lap, until I finally rolled up to our support tent. My mom got me cleaned up, and told me that she thought I might be in first place by about 10 minutes or so. I was like, "Sweet!" And then, "That's it? I better get going! I need some of that energy frickin drink!" So she gave me a Rockstar, and I was back in business. It was weird - I felt so good after that, it was hard to believe the stuff's legal.
- I really loved the course, overall. The singletrack was reasonably technical, but nothing really unrideable. Mostly just a really nice-flowing course with sweeping corners and some fun rock gardens.
- After about 10 hours of riding, it started to get dark, so I got out my AWESOME Light & Motion ARC Li-ion. I love night-riding! It was pretty surreal to be out there in the dark riding, other lights flickering ahead of and behind me, totally exhausted yet euphoric at the same time.
- Around 9:15pm, I finished my 8th lap and headed out on the last one. (You do as many laps as you can start in 12 hours, and they record your final time when you finish). During that last lap, I was almost certain that anyone coming past me was a woman in my category that was going to beat me. I did 9 laps in about 12h 47m. All the results are here. It turns out that I had plenty of time on the next person and didn't need to do the last lap to win. I'll plan better next time.

After I finished the race, my lower back decided to turn into one enormous muscle spasm. It was truely incredible. I literally couldn't bend forward at all. I managed to sit myself down in line for the ladies' shower, but it took some real creative thinking to stand back up again. And once in the shower...well, suffice to say, it was a huge challenge. I managed to make it back to our campsite, shove a bunch of food down my throat, and then lay down to rest. Sleep wasn't happening with all that caffiene and adrenaline in my blood.

I could not, and still cannot, imagine all those people doing the whole 24-hour race who were only halfway done when I finished! They are truly amazing. And actually, the race had to be called in the early AM on Sunday, when it started thundering and lightning and pouring again. HUGE congrats to all the riders that were out in that - tough!

Thanks so much to everyone (especially my mom) who helped me out on the race day! I had awesome support and couldn't have done it without you!

Superweek - is over

2006-07-24T21:24:00.000-05:00

Whew. A quick summary of yesterday's race - it was confusing. It got blown apart, a lot like Cudahy, and soon the lead group was down to about 20 women. I was in some early moves that almost worked, but nothing stayed away until two girls kind of rode off the front. About two thirds of the way through the race, I realized that no one else was really committed to chasing down the two-person break that was still lingering off the front so I went for it. One other girl came with me and we worked hard for a couple laps to try to bridge, but couldn't quite get there. Just as the field caught back up to us, someone else launched an attack, and I got spit out the back. Yuck. Oh well, I only had 8 laps to go, and I still managed to finish in front of the second half of the pelaton for a 17th place.

Overall, it was so fun to race with Bellas Paula, Sarah, and Barb, and with a ton of other great ladies! After our race, we somehow managed to convince ourselves that it would be a good idea to stay and watch the P/1/2 men's race and then drive the 5 hours back to Minneapolis starting after 8:00pm. It was a great race to watch though, the highlight being when Pat tossed a well-aimed waterbottle right into a surprised Paula's lap, then rode by apologizing profusely on the next lap. The GP guys had a great race though and some great results with a 5th and 8th place.

And here are some photos from Cudahy courtesy of Craig Kingsley:
Before the race

Here I am before the pain

Here I am during the pain of the breakaway

And the field

Now the break has lapped the field

And we're all chillin out before the final sprint

And I'm out!

Superweek - Cudahy!

2006-07-22T16:10:00.000-05:00

And I'm tired. Wow.
This morning, we got up and headed out pretty early, around 7:30, with two of my cousins in tow. Amazingly we managed to get to the race without missing any turns or exits and even nabbed a sweet parking space in the shade. The cousins were hired to be dog-sitters by one spectator, and we started our pre-race activities. The course was pretty rough -- the road had a lot of tarred cracks and a couple of the corners were pretty bumpy. There was a nice hole in corner two, but fortunately, as the announcer put it, "It appears that the hole in corner two is outside of the normal line of cornering, so you won't hit it unless you are riding...um...weird."

The race started out freakin' slow, unlike the other days. After a lap, we were going so slow that I was getting nervous, so I went to the front to up the pace. I didn't even attack, I just kind of rrrrrrolled off the front and got a big gap. After the Sheboygan crit, though, I wasn't interested in soloing off the front, so I waited for them to catch back up. Gopher Wheelwoman SB had a good attack and finally the pace got going a little. On about the third or fourth lap, I was sitting in the front third of the pack, and I heard someone yell "on the left" (trying to warn the field that there was someone else attacking) and I looked over and saw Stratton rocketing up the outside edge. One girl went with her, and then Barb and I went to the front of the field to block a little. They had quite a gap and held off the field for almost two laps before everyone caught them. Pretty soon GW SB attacked yet again, and was joined by a couple strong girls, including this one. GW KM was up at the front blocking for SB, and pretty soon someone else attacked and KM followed them up to the others. I was watching closely to see what people were thinking - were we going to chase? Then I noticed the two GW women off the back of the break getting pulled back in - but the other three still had a good gap. I decided that could be the winning break, so I gunned it and bridged up to them. That was NOT easy. I didn't bring anyone with me though, so I was hopeful it might stick. Then I looked back half a lap later and saw a couple girls a little off the front of the group, trying to bridge up to us... there was a bit of reshuffling as a couple more girls latched on, and a couple fell off, and soon we ended up with a group of 7 girls working well together in a solid break off the front. Nice!

Everyone was really strong and working well together, and we nailed it. Fortunately, my heart rate monitor wasn't working, because I probably would have freaked out if I had seen my heart rate. Out of the 7 girls in the break, I was probably struggling the most, but I was just happy to be there. I almost fell off quite a few times, but I kept telling myself, "Yes, this really sucks, and it hurts, but it will suck even MORE if you let yourself drop off the break. Because then you'll still be in 7th place, but riding all by yourself until the field catches you again." I really really didn't want to get caught in that no man's land. So I managed to hang on. After what seemed like forever, but was probably only about 15-20 laps, we lapped the field! The third time I've lapped the field this year! (although this time I had a ton of help). After we reintegrated with the field, most of the girls that were in the break moved to the front and kept on working. There wasn't much left of the field - there was quite a bit of attrition due to the wicked high pace. In the end, we all came around the last couple of laps together, and I managed to come in OK in the final sprint -- about 10th in the field ahead of two of the girls that were in the break with me, for 5th place overall! I was definitely psyched with that!

For our last night here, we booked a swanky hotel, so I just got out of the jacuzzi, and now I'm going to take a little nap before we head downtown to watch the P/1/2 race at Downer Ave. Pictures coming soon. And I'm out.

Superweek - Kenosha!

2006-07-21T21:16:00.000-05:00

Second day of racing... I have to say, Sarah, Paula, and I had an advantage over some of the other racers because of our race accomodations. Last night we arrived at the house of my WONDERFUL aunt and uncle and three cousins to find a tasty meal waiting for us, along with a ton of laughs and three beds. It was awesome. This morning, we woke up to a leisurely breakfast before loading up the team car with the three identical Javs.

We also had a wonderful stroke of luck in convincing my 11-year-old cousin to come along as our soigneur. We rolled into Kenosha about 3 hours before the start of our race, after some navigating difficulties (what's new?). For some reason we were all running on about half brain capacity. Not quite all the cylindars were firing, I think Sarah said, and we actually needed all three hours to get ourselves ready. Finally we all made it to the line with all necessary accessories and the race was off. It was a fun course - flat, four-corner, with a little shicane. Not super wide either. We started off on our 50 laps of the 0.6 mile loop fairly quickly, again, and the race continued at a decent clip for most of the time. It's really fun to ride in such a big field, I think we had over 50 or so women start. There were quite a few fast girls in there too, lots of attacks the whole race. I stayed near the front for pretty much the whole race, and I decided that today I would chill out a little bit more and try to finish better. I chased down some attacks and followed wheels for most of the first half of the race. Then all of a sudden, Paula came rocketing past me, attacking off the front. It was AWESOME! I kind of sat there, blocking a little, then slowly the field started coming around to chase her down. She was off the front for almost a lap though!

I was feeling fine the whole race, it was fast, but it never got too hard. Then, with 10 to go, as we rode by the start/finish line, I heard the awful sound of bikes crashing against the barriers and the road behind me. Oooh. I didn't look back, but it sounded like quite a few people. We made it halfway around the course when the lead car neutralized us and the whole field had to stop and wait while the chaos was cleared. I guess about 7 people went down when someone got caught on the barriers. My teammates Sarah and Paula were right next to it when it happened, but fortunately they were able to avoid it. One woman broke her nose and collarbone, I think, so they had to bring an ambulance onto the course to get her.

Everyone was a bit shaken up when they restarted us with 6 laps to go. It was a quick finish and I just tried to stay near the front until the end. I managed to hang on alright and crossed the line in 6th place. So that was a decent result for me. And my cousin Kate made me feel like a rock star, she was so excited! It was really fun to meet some of the other racer girls and I already can't wait for tomorrow!

Oh, and at dinner tonight (yum, another wonderful homecooked meal at my aunt and uncle's), my aunt gave me an interesting tidbit into my life. She said that when I was a baby, I liked to be "jostled" a little. Apparently, I would start crying unless you held me on my stomach with my head down a bit and jostled me. Interesting.

Superweek - Sheboygan!

2006-07-20T20:30:00.000-05:00

Yesterday after work, Sarah, Paula and I loaded the javs onto Paula's car and headed to the races! I'll upload some sweet pics of our race car soon, so come back. We're down here at Superweek, racing the women's cat 3/4 races. Barb is here too. Today was our first one, in Sheboygan, Wisconsen.

It was definitely an interesting, challenging, and fantabulous race. Except the finish. I managed a whopping 28th. Not so hot, BUT the rest of the race was GREAT! I'm definitely chaffed that the final finish results don't really tell the rest of the story. So I will. Barb and I lined up at the front of the pack, which was probably about 35-40 women. There were two Bettys, two Gopher Wheelwomen, and four Bellas representing the Twin Cities, nice. The announcers were stretching their vocal cords and were sure to tell us that there would be quite a few primes with socks, money, and...wait for it...a smoothie machine. Whoa boy. They talked it up, held it up, rotated it... dang, you'd think it was the stanley cup or something. Finally the official blew the whistle and Barb and I almost took each other out on the line. But we got over it and Barb started out fast on the front of the field. No one else wanted to pull through, so on our first time through the start/finish, they rang the bell for a prime lap - just to get the field going a bit. SB of the Gopher Wheelwomen attacked, and luckily I saw it happening and jumped on her wheel just in time. We got a decent size gap and I pulled around SB to see if we could get a break. Apparently, though, I went into the next corner super-aggresively and gapped her off my wheel. So I actually managed to solo across the line for the prime, winning... the SMOOTHIE MACHINE!! Believe me, I was psyched. I kept working a bit and stayed pretty far off the front for a few more laps, but there was no way I could hold it alone. A couple girls bridged up to me and we worked together for a bit, but then one of them attacked and took off by herself. By this point I was like, "please please let me sit in the field and rest for a bit now." And the beauty of it was that the field was actually big enough to do just that.

So I sat in for a while, telling myself not to burn anymore matches for a while, but as soon as I caught my breathe I started mixing it up again. Barb was also in there throwing in attacks and chasing people, and I felt like we were working really well together. Paula and Sarah rode closer to the back of the race, but they both drifted up to say "hi" once, which was sweet. The whole race was so amazingly FUN - it was like a men's race almost. There were people attacking all the time, and chasing and bridging and the pace stayed high the whole time. They were also doing quite a few primes, which added to the excitement. At one of the prime laps, I attacked a split second after this other girl, which worked out really well, because then I ended up on her wheel and the two of us had a decent gap. Amazingly, I managed to come around her for the prime - she was probably saving something for the finish (which I didn't do). So, in addition to the smoothie machine, I notched a $20 and two pairs of socks. Towards the end of the race, in the last couple of laps, the pace was still pretty decent, but with one lap to go we slowed down to a crawl, as no one wanted to pull. I hate that! I was imagining a bunch of 30+ women careening around the final corner, everyone busting their seams to try to wind it up for the sprint, and I could just see a gigantic crash with bikes and bodies all over. I decided I really didn't want to be involved in that, and I really was pretty toast anyway, so I attacked with half a lap to go and strung out the field a bit. So, when we got to the final corners, it was a bit safer and I was totally blown. Thus the 28th. BUT! Bella Paula, (a cat 4 in a cat 3/4 race) got 13th! Nice! Unfortunately, it was one place out of the money. But there's always tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day. I can't wait. I love race vacationing.

Anticipation...

2006-07-16T18:19:00.000-05:00

I'll get to the anticipation part later...

Last Thursday I went up to the track again, as has become a weekly habit. There were an amazing 10 women in our field, and even more amazing, 6 of them were Bellas - Becca, Barb, Sarah, Jodi, Megan, and me. The first race was a 10 lap scratch race, not my favorite, but it's a pretty standard warm-up race. So we all headed out, and Barb had a nice attack about halfway through. I tried to hold off the UofM girl but she went around me on the outside and jumped on Barb's wheel. So I latched on too, and the three of us were off the front a bit. With about 2.5 to go, I attacked, got a gap, and somehow managed to hold off the others to win the race. Alright!

Next was the Keirin. There were a couple heats, and then a final. Gilby took it in the end, and I got 4th. The last race was supposed to be a 30 lap scratch race, but all of a sudden the whole sky got dark and rumors of a tornado started circulating. When it started thundering and lightning, the officials called it a night, and we all went home. So in the end, there were three of us ladies tied for the omnium -- me, Gilby, and the UofM girl. Sweet!

In other news, I've moved! I'm now in my third house since moving to Minneapolis. I'm pretty psyched to be here, living with my teammate Paula, and we've got a nice basement full of bikes. Also, it's been ridiculously hot.

And the anticipation...what's that all about? On Wednesday, Sarah, Paula and I are leaving to go to Superweek! We're heading out after work on Wednesday, and racing Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Hopkins Crit

2006-07-10T20:23:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was a special day, for a variety of reasons. First, it was the one-year anniversary of the day I met Stratton. Yep, let's go back to exactly one year ago, when I, fresh outta college, decided to check out the Twin Cities as a prospective place to live. I had met Margot while racing in the fabulous ECCC, and she first mentioned the idea. Throughout my senior year of college, I had managed to completely avoid making any decisions about my life in the following year, but once I got home (yes, to the UP of Michigan) for the summer, I realized that it was time to get on it. So I headed on down to the Cities to check it out. Margot and I came up with a few good reasons for me to live here.
1. The cycling scene is pretty sweet.
2. There are jobs available.
3. Housing is (comparatively) cheap.
4. There's plenty of art/culture/entertainment -- all that metropolitan stuff.
5. MN is still a blue state, and the Twin Cities are really blue.
6. It is still the midwest. I love the coasts, but there will always be something so endearing about the midwest...
7. I could pretty much drive everything I owned from the UP to the Cities in 7 hours in my Honda Civic. Not bad.

And, while I was checking things out, I went with Margot to the Hopkins Crit, 2005. Where I met Stratton, and a couple other Bellas. Let's not relive that race. I got dropped like a bad habit after a few laps. And I was pretty intimidated. In spite of that, I managed to get a job, sign a lease, and move on down.

This year's Hopkins Crit went a lot better for me. They had a separate cat 4 field, where Sarah and Paula represented the Bellas in the lead group.
photo from skinnyski.com

I'm sure Gilby and Annie have some reports about that one too. The women's open race was a bit later, and most of the cat 4 Bettys decided to do that one too. And I was the only Bella in the race, out of 14 women. Kind of a tiny field.

Anyway, we started out pretty quickly, and I went up and sat at about third wheel. There were a couple attacks, and then I heard someone say that we had a big gap. Awesome! I love it when I find myself part of a breakaway group that I didn't even realize was happening. There were 6 of us, and then there were 7, and then there were 6 again. Two Bettys (P and K), two Flanders ladies, Anne, and me. It wasn't an easy race. Teresa attacked again and again, and the rest of us chased her down again and again. After a while, we lapped the rest of the field, but to be honest, I barely noticed. I was pretty focused on staying close to the wheel in front of me.

photo courtesy of Matthew Pastick

In the last few laps, I nearly got shelled off the back of the breakaway group, but Betty K was there to help me back (she is Awesome!) Then, with 2 laps to go, we came around the third corner and there was a crash. Betty P was down. I was just far enough behind her to swerve and miss her, and fortunately, she was OK. After the crash, though, our break sort of splintered. I ended up with one of the Flanders women, and after playing cat and mouse for a lap and a half, she decisively kicked my butt in the sprint. Oh well, I still came away with 4th place.

Of course, we all stuck around to watch the men's P/1/2 race. Some guys lapped the field. Some guys won some money. They can probably tell you more about it. Thanks to Nature Valley/Penn Cycles for putting on a great race.

Thanks also to Sascha, for hosting a post-race TdF-watching BBQ. And to Annie for sharing with us her obsession with pie. Yes, it was delish. I'm blatantly stealing this photo of the pie from her blog.

And I'm out.

Track gets even better

2006-07-06T23:21:00.000-05:00

It's been a while...the lack of posting over the weekend is due to the fact that I was at home in the U.P. with a ton of family and many others. It was great to be home for a bit, catch up with people, and ride the mtb trails right out my back door!

Tonight, I went to the track again for the Thursday night races. How fun! There were 8 women there tonight, and 4 of them were Bellas. Wow. And we had some good teamwork going on at different points throughout the night. The first race was a 10-lap scratch race. We got some pre-race pointers from Pete, but we didn't quite manage to get organized until the end. Alan girl attacked pretty hard with 4 laps to go, and Gilby went with her. They got a little gap, but then Sarah started to chase them down. I got on her wheel, and as soon as we caught them, I attacked. It was all good for a bit, but I couldn't quite hold it till the end and got caught by a UofM Girl.

Then there was the miss-n-out. Steve tells me this is his favorite race on the track, and now I can see why. As we were lining up, I heard someone from the crowded stands (yes, we actually have fans) yell for me. I looked up, and this guy said, "that's right, my money's on you Karla." No idea who he was. But the pressure was on.

Rocker took the early lead on this race as the first couple of people got eliminated. After a couple of laps, I pulled into the front and pretty much stayed there the whole race. I didn't really have to worry about being eliminated, and I could hear who was getting eliminated each time. Until finally it came down to me and Gilby. I went up track to get her to pull through and then jumped back on her wheel. And it just didn't happen for me to come around her again for the final sprint. She rocked that race for sure. Nice job.

The last race of the night was a 30 lap points race. We started out at a nice leisurely pace, actually so slow that Megan started to worry we were going to fall off the track. But things heated up for the first sprint. A bunch of people went for it, and I may have pulled off a 4th. I'm not sure. But as people slowed down after the sprint, I decided to attack. From then on, it was a solo race for me, much like Stratton's race a couple weeks ago. Hats off to the teammates on this one!! I got a little gap off the front when I attacked, and after that, the Bellas kept the pace in check and pretty much made sure that no one could chase me down. Apparently there were a few times when the pace was so low that Sarah almost clipped her pedals. And I just kept hammering. With a couple laps to go, I caught onto the back of the field and that was it. I won! Fun stuff.

Oh, and, the Tour is happening. I think Landis is going to win. That's pretty much the extent of my tour commentary, so if you'd like to read about the tour, try somewhere else.