Wasted

Finally! My training gets really on track. I was struggling a little bit in January - weather, travel, motivation - but lately both my head and my legs have been where they need to be. Still unemployed (for the most part, more on that later) but totally taking advantage of the free time to ride ride ride. All this free time also makes it so much easier to attend to my rest, recovery, and nutrition needs. If/When I have a 9-5 it's going to be a struggle to not have this kind of time.

So, on the employment front, I am sort of employed. I'm working 5-10 hours a week helping with a couple middle school orchestra classes. For those who aren't privy to my dark life before bikes, I was a musician. Violin, tuba, and tenor saxophone. So now I'm using my latent violin skills for (minimal) financial gain. It's actually really fun. I've always loved teaching (spent a number of years teaching music, and was a music education major for a number of years) and I've really missed playing music since my jock-transformation. It doesn't exactly pay the bills, but it helps a bit. I've got a plan in the works, so hopefully soon there will be more profitable news in the job report.

Last weekend was our Touchstone Cycling team camp. It was rad - the girls are nice and awesome, and there's sooooo much serious talent on the team. We raced a crit on Saturday, and I was happy with my fitness, and very surprised that it didn't hurt as much as the first crit of the season typically does. I'm incredibly motivated by the strength of my team, and I feel like I have something to contribute. Good all over.

Right now I'm totally exhausted after finishing a third consecutive day of hard training. I love this feeling - coming home from my ride with barely the energy to eat a good recovery meal. Jeez . . . I think I just reached the end of my creative energy (not that my blog is especially creative, but you get the point).

Photo Essay

Cozad, NE - located on the 100th Meridian (whatever the hell that means). On the way across the country we stopped here so I could ride. Typical small town - we'd been parked for 2 minutes while I got dressed and a cop came up to ask us what we were doing. "Reno? Well now that's a big city. What're you doin' 'round these parts?" He was pretty cool when we explained, though. And I had a really nice ride in the sun.

When the brutal cold and snow of Northeastern Massachusetts finally broke my will to ride (fortunately only 2 days before we left) we did some skiing instead.


I finally got to Salem (actually I'd been there once, earlier on this trip, but only because I got lost on my bike, crossed a huge bridge, and found myself there)! We went to the Essex-Peabody museum, which is HUGE (especially considering it's only 20 minutes from Boston) and awesome. Next time I'm totally going to the witch dungeons (hahahaha, take that, kids who were mean to me in high school!).

Yes, the sunset was lovely. Cold, but lovely.

The way the sunset was shining on the trees it made them look like they were on fire. Just lovely.

Went to Cody's brother and sister-in-law's house in NH and built a sweet bouldering wall in their basement. Now I've got a serious itch to do some rock climbing (an itch that will be scratched in a major way this Friday at Touchstone Climbing in Sacrameno!).

This was my New Year's Eve ride. It was snowing (umm, duh, really Mare?). Weee.



Last day of the drive across the country. Serious boredom has commenced.

I saw this guy when I was riding in Maine! New do-before-I-die goal - ride my bike in every state. Even Arkansas. This trip I added 2 states to my list: Nebraska and Maine. Let's see, so I'm at: 1. Nevada, 2. California, 3. Oregon, 4. Utah, 5. Washington, 6. Colorado, 7. Massachusetts, 8. New Hampshire, 9. Vermont, 10. Montana, 11. Nebraska, 12. Maine. Okay, only 38 to go.

Proof positive I was in Maine. On an island, no less!

More scenic Maine.

That pretty much chronicals my 3 weeks "vacation". In fact we did a lot more than that, I just don't have photo evidence of it. I'm still unemployed (a fact that will hopefully change soon), finally logging some good training, and looking forward to Touchstone Climbing team camp this weekend! I'm sure there's more to add, but I'm totally fried from my ride yesterday (Cool thing #67 about unemployment: Rest days really are quite restful!) and can't think of anything interesting to say.

Eatin' chowda and hanging at the ba' (that's bar, to you non-New England types)

It’s snowing. Again. It wasn’t supposed to start until noon today – I guess it came a couple of hours early. I know I’m going to go ride, but I’m putting it off, putting it off. Struggling to find the motivation to spend 30 minutes getting dressed, bundling on every layer I can, then searching for a hill that takes more than a minute to climb up. Those are scarce around these parts. “These parts” being North-eastern Massachusetts. If you head west you can find “big” climbs (it really puts things in perspective when the definition of a big climb means anything lasting 10 minutes), but I’m without transportation. I’d considered taking the train, but that would end up being something like 3 hours each way, as you have to go south into Boston and then get on another line and head west. So I know I’ll do my intervals here, on a rolling little bit of a climb that might top out at 3 minutes if I pace myself. It’s just this week that my hill intervals will be so difficult (another cyclist perspective – when the difficulty associated with training is not the work-load, but finding a route that is long and hard enough) because on Monday we’ll be heading home.
And home, what awaits? Well, I guess I totally dropped the ball on the goings-on of late report, but to sum up, my return to Reno will involve selling of anything not necessary to life (my bike IS necessary to life) to pay next month’s bills, and a whole lot of job hunting. What will I do? I don’t know – serve coffee, go work at a gym, cocktail waitressing? All options are on the table provided they give me race weekends off and time to train, of course. But more importantly, home brings with it normal patterns and food, huge climbs to ride my bike up, my own pillow, and my dog. Even, heaven forbid I mention this as a positive, but my rollers, and resistance trainer. I know, I know, truly pathetic. But it’s days like today, when it’s just so hard to face the cold winter roads, that you sometimes just need to pop in a DVD and sweat on the living room floor.
I made this trip to the Eastern seaboard to see if I could stand to live here in the winter. I’ve been here in the summer, and if one can get past the poison ivy, mosquitoes, midges, greenheads, ticks, and god awful humidity, it’s actually pretty nice. Winters? Truth be told, they’re a lot like Reno winters, just much wetter. Not Portland wet, but not sunny Reno dry, either. They salt the roads heavily here, and that combined with the dampness has every bit of steel on my bike thoroughly rusted, despite liberal applications of WD-40, which I hate using on bikes to begin with. People don’t seem to ride outside here much during the winter – each day I’ve been out I haven’t seen more than one other person, if any at all. There’s very little shoulder to ride on, as it’s mounded with snow, and drivers don’t seem too concerned about my well being. The cross training possibilities are decent, but no better than in Reno (we have Tahoe for christ’s sake!). And the hills, oh, what hills? Seriously, I know that sounds stupid, but I always feel that, even with the lousy weather and limited ride options, living in Reno affords me the benefit of altitude (our house is at 4500’) and endless long climbs to suffer up. I feel, truly, that living at sea level (since I can hardly afford an oxygen tent) with nothing but flat to rolling terrain to work with will be a huge disadvantage. There are wonderful things here, too. The cyclocross! Oh, the cyclocross! It’s almost worth all the other crap to have a UCI race within 6 hours of you EVERY SINGLE WEEKEND in the fall. Almost.
Well, time will tell what happens. Mostly I want to live in Santa Barbara, but I think that may be a little out of my price range.

Nationals

Okay, my goings-on of late are going to require a separate blog post, so this one is just about nationals!

Last weekend I raced my first ever Elite national championships (of any kind). This one of course was cyclocross up in Bend, OR. As you may (or may not) recall, I travelled to Portland for the last round of the USGP, had a jolly good time, then rented a car and drove to Bend. Bend greeted me with sub zero temperatures and a lot of snow. I rode the trainer, ran on snow covered trails, and spent a lot of time that week with my feet up. Ahh . . . the good life. Teammate Beth arrived on Wednesday and we relocated to our host housing for the week. On Thursday I had to go out to the race venue to "work" at the booth my employer (now former, but that's another blog post) had set up. The big news of that day, aside from the slip'n'slide snowy course, was chatting up Kristen Armstrong and Katie Compton, both of whom stopped by the booth within a half hour of eachother.

Anyway, my race wasn't until Sunday, so I had quite a bit of time to kill in the meantime. I had fun cheering for Beth on Friday when she raced the 30-34 race, and I ate frites and hot chocolate to stay warm (and subsequently arrived home a bit more well padded then when I left). On Friday night I was getting ready to go out to dinner at the Bend Brewing Co. with Beth, when I reached in my bathroom bag and jammed my left middle finger into my shiny sharp new razor. I pulled my hand out and was horrified to see that a good chunk of finger tip had been lost in the process. After much elevation, pressure, and raiding of the house's Man Bathroom (the guy we were staying with is a flight nurse), the bleeding stopped, and Beth utilized her Air Force buddy first aid to help me patch it up.

I finally got on the course the next day and the relative warmth of the day had softened things out quite nicely. I have to say, I think the course they set up for nationals was super fun! The changing conditions changed the technical aspects of the course as the week wore on. After a couple laps I'd determined that I would be fine racing with my mangled finger as long as I A) didn't have to shift into my big ring (or could do so by reaching over with my right hand) and B) didn't have to use my front brake, which was really easy to avoid during my pre-ride.

Things froze up overnight, so when we arrived on Sunday morning the slop from Saturday had turned into frozen ruts, and the deep puddles were sheets of ice. There were a couple of races before ours, however, and many parts of the course softened up.

What is it like to line up 98th out of 100 women? Ummm . . . discouraging? Not really, because after such a lousy call up all I could hope to do is improve my position. I had two goals for this race: 1) to not be last onto the dirt, and 2) not finish last. I wanted to take a few chances, and ride aggressively.

The start was fast, but I made some passes and achieved goal #1. Instantly everything bottle necked and we were off our bikes, trying to run up the first little turn and get rolling again. As we remounted I got on a wheel, but girls started passing me right away. It took me about half a lap (at which point I think I was 3rd from last) to realize I was going to have to make some kamikaze passes and be a bitch if I wanted this race to happen for me. So I did! When you're taking the inside line on an icy turn to get around someone, even if you go into it just a little ahead of them, they'll have to slow down and let you by. Sure, it's not very polite, but it's a bike race, right? Gee, did I just figure that out? Anyway, I worked my way up to Beth, who had a somewhat better call up than me. I'd just passed a couple people when, on an off camber grassy hill, I came in a little too hot (taking chances, right?) and my tires slid out from under me before I had time to realize what was happening. I hit hard, wacking my head, shoulder and hip, but got up fast, wondering if I'd concussed myself (I hadn't). I glanced behind me as I was slip-sliding my way up the slope to remount my bike, and saw Beth also running with her bike, and another girl picking herself up from the course tape. Uh oh, did I cause all this carnage? Later Beth would tell me that we perfectly executed the rare and difficult synchronized teammate crash sequence. If anyone has a video or photo of this, I must have it. It must have been a thing of beauty. Anyway, after that I rode a bit more conservatively. My goal for the race was to get up to former Bella Shannon Holden, who finished about 45 seconds ahead of me at both Portland USGPs. I caught her, actually passed her at one point, but she passed me again and finished the race about 10 seconds up from me. I only gave away one more place - on our final lap about 40 of us were lapped by the top women. Katie Compton lapped me in the pits, Meredith Miller lapped me before the barriers, and Amy Dombroski lapped me just after the barriers. I moved way over and slowed down so Amy could go by, and a girl who'd been sitting 5-10 seconds behind me went past! I had slowed down before a slippery little "S" turn so I wouldn't accidentally take out a podium contender, and when this girl went by she totally almost did so when Amy caught up to her in the turns. I was a little irritated, but still felt that I'd done the right thing, even though it cost me 68th place. ;)

In retrospect I'm really happy with my cyclocross season. I set out to have fun and become a better cyclocross racer, and I truly feel I accomplished both of those goals. At the end of the season I was left feeling that with another year or two of hard work I can make contact with some smokin' fast girls. (Top 30 at nationals? That's a good goal.) Anyway, Bend was awesome, and I have every intention of going back next year!

USGP

I'm onto host house numero dos. This one is full of three teenagers, so not as restful as the first (more on this later) but warm and cozy and there's a hot tub in the backyard.


Bend is freezing (-10F right now) and snowy. We drove by the course last night and it's under about a foot of snow. I heard the inside scoop is that they're going to shovel all the snow off of it. This is probably for the best. Left alone it will probably melt and the course will turn to soup, then progress to frozen ruts, or we'll be sliding around on rutted ice. Either way I'm just as happy to see it go. But I'm a wimp like that. :)

Sooo, the Stanley Cup! Both days ended up about the same for me. It starts with well, a lousy start. I always feel like I'm doing pretty good until I look behind me and see no one there. Where'd everyone go? Oh, they're in front of me. Crap. Something to work on. I think I just need to start throwing elbows or something. Anyway, on Saturday that lousy start was followed by a big crash in front of me, so any hope of catching on with a faster group was gone. I ran around the crash and past the muddy section, jumped back on my bike, and then all the crashed riders rode past me. I need to get faster at the remount. Seriously. The course that day was mostly dry (dry? In Portland?) with a couple of rutted sections and a couple of slimy turns. Lots of roots sticking up to flat on, too. I avoided the flats, but as it turned out I rode alone for most of the day. I beat a couple of girls, but didn't even come close to cracking the top 30. C'est la vie. Next time. On Sunday it was about the same at the start, but no crash. The course had dried out a bit, but they'd added a couple more technical areas on the moto track area, as well as some "nice" mud pits. This time I ended up having a couple of girls to race against. I'd pass this one girl, get a gap, then she and her teammate caught me, her teammate flatted right before the pits, some other girl caught me and the 3 of us were riding together. With about half a lap to go I made a pretty cool pass on this off camber uphill turn. I took the inside line and just started hammering. I got a gap on the other two which I was able to sustain and even grow a bit until the finish. So yay! I won the "sprint" for 31st. Whoop tee doo. Really thought, it was fun having girls to race against, and I was happy I rode smart and hard and didn't settle for 35th. And for almost the entire race there were 5-7 girls ahead of me who I could see and, had I just a wee bit more power and speed, I think I could have hung with them.

I've raced in Portland twice before. The first time as a 3/4, and then two years ago with the Elite class. Honestly I don't think my finish is a whole lot better than it was 2 years ago, but I know I'm riding better, stronger, smoother. I know my technical cross skills have come a long way. So maybe by this time next year I'll have an extra watt or two per kilo and I can hang with some of my totally rockin' teammates. :)

Now I just need to get up the crazy enough to go ride in this cold, cold icy town.

Plans

I like this photo, even though it's kind of out of focus, because I'm smiling.

I've been planning my 2010 schedule and formulating my goals for the upcoming year. My schedule's posted on this blog - starting a little early and trying to use my cyclocross fitness to get some results and that ever elusive upgrade. Then taking it easy in April and May with just a few select races (some new ones! I love riding new-to-me roads) and then hitting it pretty hard again in June and July. My goals are as follows:

1. Get my *$&#*@*$ cat 2 upgrade!!! (why did Blogger highlight that as a link? What do you suppose it links to?)
2. Ride a sub-hour 40k time trial at Districts (should be cake - I shaved 3:30 off my time from 2008. Another minute? no problemlo.)
3. Race, and don't get time cut from, Cascade Classic, which I can't do without first acheiving goal #1.

My off season goal is to reach my race weight of 130. Just an arbitrary number, but it's proved elusive thus far. My "happy" weight is 140 lbs - can't believe I'm advertising that on the internet. Seriously, though, I'm 5'9" and pretty muscular. I eat anything I want to (really, I just ate 1.5 cannoli's that were in the coffee room) and this is the weight I hover at (sometimes a bit above). I'm comfortable with my appearance and my size, but I really believe that I'll be more competitive if I'm leaner. If I start getting down to that weight and my recovery or performance suffers then I'll have learned my lesson and start eating cannolis for breakfast again. For now, I probably shouldn't go eat that last cannoli. It is possible, of course, that I just really like saying the word "cannoli".

So my apologies of the next several blog posts fixate on food and weight and the like - it's for my own good.

From high to low, and season goals

Ugh, my back and neck kill right now. Not sure if that's a result of my bike landing on my head after a spectacular cartwheel down a hill, or if it's from all the damn driving. Either way, it's a good reminder that what goes up, must come down. Haha, get it? Like my bike coming down on my head? Sigh . . .



Yesterday I went down to the NCNCA district championship cyclocross race with miss 3 time olympian, Katerina Nash. She's a Truckee local, so picking her up was on my way. Sadly, despite 4 hours in a car together, I wasn't able to absorb her speed by osmosis. Still a fun time, and I say with no small amount of personal pride that she crushed it (undoubtedly due to the comfort of my car and my great skill as a driver). My race on the other hand was just pitiful. I had a decent start, managed to not get crashed in the first two turns (come on ladies, keep the rubber side down!). The first two laps were good, then I just kind of faded. I was racing right where I thought I should be relative to the other girls in my category, but then I just went backwards. Ugh. My third lap was kind of a disaster. After slowing down A LOT I had my aforementioned acrobatic crash (Katerina crashed there too, and almost the entire men's A field!). I ended up getting caught by 4 girls who I'd already passed and dropped, and a couple more who were way back, and a couple of women's B's, and a couple of 35+ ladies. I couldn't really respond, couldn't try to follow, just survived the rest of the race. I knew going into it that I wasn't feeling superb, almost a little under the weather, vacation hangover, so I'm not super bummed. I know where I should be, and can be, sometimes things just fall apart. This week calls for lots of rest, and sleep, and recovery, and good food, so I'm ready to rock and roll by next Saturday in Portland. It looks like it's going to be wet!

I'm also trying to think up goals for next year, and to get a rough draft of my season calendar. It's tricky, you know? The most obvious and obnoxious goal is to GET MY FREAKIN' CAT 2 UPGRADE ALREADY!!! But I feel like that's a given. I'm thinking I want to race the Cascade Classic and not get time cut. I want to do a sub-hour District TT (40k). I'm thinking maybe top 10 at Nevada City? Or is that waaaay too ambitious? Unattainable? Sigh . . . I don't know. And should I include cyclocross in my season goals? Cyclocross seems like a whole different season, so I'm thinking no. I feel like any decisions and commitments I make now are going to affect me for the next 12 months, so I want to make them worth while!