Burned.

As in, out. As in, no more bike racing please! I'm full! Well, for another week or so, anyway. In the meantime I've been running and swimming (fear of drowning is a powerful motivator).

So . . . my two week trip to Massachusetts to visit the boy has morphed into 4 weeks. Just gotta figure out a way to tell my boss. Do you think he reads my blog? Cause that would simplify things.

"Mr. Boss, I'm not coming back."

I'll miss my puppy, but my mom loves him nearly as much as I do and they'll have fun.

But I'll get to swim in the ocean, and work in a great bike shop, and race Fitchburg again, and take those pictures of the treehouse that I was so negligent in getting last year. And I'll get to get the hell out of Reno for a little while. Don't take it too hard, Reno, I love ya and all, but maybe we need to spend a little time apart.

So I'm pretty stoked. I have about a bazillion things I need to do in the next week and a half before I leave, but I'm sure if I ignore them they'll go away.

Peanut butter by the forkful, because there are no clean spoons!

That's what's for dinner. Cody's on the other side of the country, so there's no incentive to do the dishes. Forks make servicable utensils when the peanut butter is chunky.

Had a nice weekend of un-racing. By which I mean, I attended races, paid lots of money, and then didn't do much racing. Just not feeling it. Although I had a lovely ride up Mt. Hamilton with the Kitty People on Sunday, which was almost certainly the highlight of the weekend. Or, the last 20 miles or so were - fun fun fun downhill fast stuff through a cool canyon. I think I set a new course record for the slowest time on that course. Fortunately I don't think they post times, so no one need know what that time was.

On Monday I went to the Memorial Day crit in Morgan Hill. I was a wus and just raced the 3/4 race, I don't think I got my heartrate above 140 the whole time. I had a lousy position going into the final stretch, and sat on the wrong wheel. So I was, er, near the back. Probably the less said about it, the better. Hmph. Anyway, disgruntled as I was, I had my car packed up within about 5 minutes of finishing my race, and I was on my way back home. Felt lame for not sticking around for the 1/2/3 race, but sometimes you've just gotta call it a day.

Looks like the ladies kicked some butt at the Golden State crit on saturday, though!

I only took one picture this weekend - of my dog on his first trip across the Golden Gate Bridge. Why, you may ask, did I go through San Francisco to get to San Jose? Don't ask, I reply, it's not a good story.

Until next time . . .

It's snowing.

What's up with that?

Kern. (Yeah, that's the most imaginative thing I can come up with for a title. So? You think you can do better?)

Back to the real world . . . as I count the money I'm supposed to be depositing over and over and over and over again because it never seems to add the same, I'm deeply distracted by the Bangles' Manic Monday playing on the radio. How stupidly apt.



Despite strong premonitions of doom as last weekend approached, I survived Kern. I can't even count the number of times this weekend I thought my brain was going to melt out my ears. So . . .


My tt on friday was, er, not very good. It was blazing hot and there was a headwind both ways. How is that even possible? Er, yeah, and when I got back to the tents Barrett, one of our fellas, told me that my wheel had twisted and was dragging on my brake. Um, yeah, right, I know how to tighten a quick-release. Really I do. I just thought the time trail wouldn't be hard enough without the added resistence of a dragging brake. Right. So that was a bummer, but it was neat seeing all the Bellas roll in after the TT with identical expressions of horror on their faces. Marian SoCal joined me there and we proceeded to get lost on the way to the hotel, and then lost on the way to dinner. How many Chester Aves. are there in Bakersfield? Er, 3 that I've counted so far!


Woke up bright and early to drive out to the circuit-y road race on Saturday. It was a really neat little valley with a couple of rolling hills. And it was actually kinda green and cool once we got away from Bakersfield. Anyway, the whole group seemed into having a nice easy ride and saving their energy for the hill climb in the afternoon, which was fine with me. We all sprinted for the time bonus points (which ended up being pretty meaningless after all was said and done, but they're still fun). All the girls in the 3s were cheerful and nice and it was a very pleasant little racey non-race. Going into the finish I found myself on the front, and decided to stay there since it was better than sprinting from the back. With about 30 ft to the line I kinda resigned myself to mid-pack, but was totally thrilled to see Jenna sprinting around me and a couple of others to take the win. She had a totally impressive burst of speed up that hill. We sat around under the tents afterwards eating all the yummies that had been set out on a table and trying to stay cool and chatting about our races. It was really nice.



We packed up (well, mostly the guys packed up for us) and headed over to hotter-then-hell-Havilah for the hill climb. Everyone rode pretty mellow up to where it took a serious turn for the steep, and then the climber girls hit the gas and we all fell into our respective places. I saw Jenna chasing one of the girls down up the hill from me and was stoked to hear that she caught her. I know this is kinda sick, but I really enjoyed the climb. It was a super fun little twisty road, and the higher we got the cooler the air felt. There were some nice little tailwind sections that made me feel like super woman (if super woman was a mid-pack cat 3) and coming around one corner to see and hear Bob Liebold playing his odd silver clarinet was definitely a highlight. Plus, the whole thing was a mile and 1/2 shorter than I'd anticipated, even if the last 1K was the longest I've ever ridden. But at the top there was a big table laid out with watermelon, and it was a ripping descent back to the cars. Well worth it. I think I was 6th? Something like that.



Sunday was another early day, but we only had 2 laps of the course to look forward to, because some of the other 3s had petitioned to take it down from 3 laps. Whew, good call. It was soooo hot!!! Marian SoCal attacked mercilessly from the get-go much to my glee and the frustration of the other teams. It was awesome. About halfway up the main climb in the first lap the group was whittled down to five of us in the lead - me and Jenna and three others who rounded out the top five, so that was cool. Everyone was really friendly again (the girl who won is crazy fast and also insanely nice. Seriously, it's insane how nice she is. Like, she needs help learning how to be mean.) and worked together and kept the pace high. We stuck together up the main climb on the second lap, but things kinda fell apart on the descent and even more so on the final grunt, which was the hottest, steepest, mostest awfullest climb ever. Fella Tyler dumped some cold water on my back as I was approaching the line and it was the greatest thing ever. Jenna was 2nd, ahead of me, in 5th. But, notably, I beat the next person back by 16 minutes! The break was smokin'. It was way fun, and even funner to hose myself off with cold water afterwards. Oooh, nice.

But enough about me. My teammates are awesome, and I wish I could race with the 35+ ladies because they have so much fun and work sooo well together. No, I take it back, cause me and SoCal and Jenna had a blast, too. In fact, I just have such a tremendous amount of respect an admiration for all my teammates. It's wonderful. And the awards were awesome, and the whole thing was a blast. What else can I say? I guess just that it was well worth the incredibly long, long, hot hot hot drive. And I can't wait for the next one. :)

Now I'm drinking a big RedBull and eating cherries and rice chips and trying to get motivated to get some work done before I pass out at my desk. What a way to start the week.

Lazy Saturday

So, I know I should be out doing some gnarly ride, and I know that if I don't I'll pay a price for it next weekend. But I'm sooooo lazy today. Finals totally kicked my ass, and there are a hundred other things to do today. Our house is a disaster, the dog feels thorougly neglected after this past week of minimal walks, the Reno River Festival is going on downtown and I really want to head down there to watch and hang out, and there's a huge pile of gravel in the driveway that needs moving. And I could probably go straight back to sleep right now. But I won't. I think I might go do a bit of shopping (got my "tax stimulus" rebate yesterday - might as well use it to stimulate the economy. Right, like that'll work). So my plans of climbing over Mt. Rose today and then dropping down to Incline are slipping away. Maybe a little less ambitious a ride later today.

So, the Giro started today, right? With the TTT? Yeah, so what, right? How freaking cool is it that Slipstream Chipotle won?! If that isn't an argument for cool looking kits and 1000 calorie burritos making people faster, I don't know what is. ;)

Oh yes! And collegiate nats is this weekend, too! I actually qualified, somehow, but decided that it would totally destroy me to have to get ready to go to Colorado during finals week, and I'd probably come back waaaay to tired to make it down to Kern next weekend. But the Stanford girsl won the TTT. See? It's okay that they dropped me like a bad habit, they're national champions!

Okay, I think I'll go do . . . something. I dunno what.

Study Break

Why I have inserted a picture of pudding? Well, pretty much because pudding is great. If I buy banana pudding Cody won't eat it, too, so that's an added bonus. I was thinking about mixing peanut butter into my banana pudding - doesn't that sound divine?

I have three finals today. Weak. Well, just two more. I already took one of them. It wasn't too bad, I guess. The next two are gonna kill, though. I should probably just keep studying, but I think I've already reached my brain's capacity for the day. No more taxonomic categories of pathogenic microbes, or phylogenic relationships of humans and apes and dusky sea sparrows, or whatever they're called. I guess it doesn't matter, since they're extinct.

But after tomorrow I'm done!



I raced the Coolest 24 hr race last saturday. Only I did the 8 hr version. And I was on a 2 person team. So I'm not really all that cool. But we did win. That was fun. Our team was "The Shady Ladies" which is the name of a brothel out in The Middle of Nowhere, Nevada. We thought that was pretty clever. 'Specially since we stepped on the podium with cans of Miller Lite in our hands. Anywho, the race was really well organized, and for a good cause (cancer research), and the course was incredibly fast and fun and dusty. It was nice to race the knobbies again, too. I should do more of that.



I raced a twilight crit on tuesday night. I've stepped it up and am racing with the Men's Bs now. They are seriously the sketchiest group of people I've ever ridden with. I was just happy to survive. And, incidentally, finish with the lead group. But mostly I was just irate that these dudes kept almost taking me out, and actually took eachother out on one occasion. Sorry, not too into sacrificing myself and my bike for a twilight race. Or any other race for that matter. I don't have health insurance.



Okay, back to studying, I guess . . .

UNR Race Weekend

Ah. It's always nice to get to sleep in my own bed before a race. And to not drive. I'm dreading the drive down to Kern (Bakersfield . . . sweet) in a couple of weeks, so every opportunity to not drive is welcome. So, my school team, UNR, hosted WCCC championships. Lots of folks drove up from LA and San Diego - way too long to drive for a bike race. But hopefully they had fun. Here's a few highlights.

My friend's yellow van hooked up to the porta-potties. So classic. Interestingly enough (no, actually not interesting at all) during this race season I've heard more names for porta-potties than ever before. (See, I told you it wasn't interesting.) But they're still porta-potties as far as I'm concerned. Also notice our awesome volunteers, many of them who raced, and some super awesome significant others who came out to lend a hand.

This isn't really a highlight, more of a low light. People seemed to have a hard time staying upright in the 120 degree turn at the bottom of our course. Ooops.

Cody raced the D's, and I was very proud of him. Ironically, the men's D's were the only field where no one crashed on the sketchy corner. I think that tell us something. It says, "Hey, you folks may be fast, but you don't have the sense to not attack in the corner that already took out 10 people. Get a clue." Sorry, that was unnecessarily hostile. But my weekend was kinda full of unnecessary hostility, so I feel that it's in keeping.

Speaking of which, there was a whole lot of negative racing going on this weekend. This is me sprinting it out in the crit alone after I almost got taken out in the gnar corner in the 2nd to last lap. That was after I towed the "chase" group around for, oh, 18 of the 27 laps we did. A few girls got off the front after the first crash. They were super duper strong. Anyway, every other girl who was in my group had a teammate in the break, so they all just sat up and let them go. Once I realized this I figured it was better to go down fighting, so I went to the front and hammered as hard as I could for the rest of the race, until the aforementioned crash left me alone in the wind. Bummer. Sure, I didn't really think we could catch the lead group, but if I hadn't been working so hard I'm pretty sure we woulda been lapped, so it was totally worth it.

Haha, more hostility - during the road race on the previous day I told the group I was with to "Chill the f*** out and start being nice to eachother." A couple of girls were being all bossy and mean and kept sniping at everyone else and I just couldn't take it anymore. Oddly enough, my totally out of line comment seemed to do the trick, and everyone started being nice. Either that or they just decided I was a horrible person and then didn't want to talk to me at all? Whatever. I'm usually pretty nonconfrontational, too, so that was pretty out of character.

The lesson from this weekend? Okay, every weekend? And the occasional week day? I love racing my bike. But I guess I already knew that so it's a stupid lesson anyway. Back to the real world . . .