Fun Race!

Thanks to Chuck B for being out at pseudo-Mead taking pictures!!!

Warming up and catching up with Dean.

On the start line. Last year I never, ever started a race on the line. Now that's where I'm comfortable (far right). However, I'll admit I was a little nervous last night, especially since some Vitamin Cottage guys were starting on my wheel. It was impossible to know what the starting pace would be like. Lucky for me, it was coffee-shop-ride pace.This is what it looks like to be having fun in the pack!
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Women's local races are just not that exciting...small fields don't make for really cool racing. I've noticed this more than ever since I've been back from the large and fast fields in the NRC races. (See the last post.)

Tonight was a training race in Golden, where the 1/2 women race with the 1/2/3 men. What an adrenaline rush! Okay, I didn't push it, not for the first race. I won't mind trying some risky moves in the future (those that may result blowing up and ending up off the back), but for the first race, I wanted to prove my worth as pack fill. It's so fun worrying about position, cornering fast, not letting a gap open up. There were quite a few men from Einstein's out there racing, so it was enjoyable thinking that I have teammates out there. I still can't say I know all of them, but maybe these races will help. It was very cool racing with one of my old teammates from Twin Peaks. He's always been encouraging (which was key during the past couple of years) and it was a good chance to catch up with him and other Twin Peakers.

Sure, big deal, this was just a training race. But, it really opened my eyes to what I really enjoy about racing, and, sadly, I'm not finding that joy in the women's races right now. Maybe that will change as the season progresses, maybe I need to do more men's races. To be continued...

April Showers...

...bring May flowers. So what do May showers bring for June? This post is entirely inappropriate for today since the sun is shining and it's supposed to be in the 70s. But it has been raining enough to ask the question.

Spoiled

Wow, I really got used to the excitement of traveling all over the place in the early season. Now, May is here and I'm looking at the Colorado race calendar and my eyes are glazing over. Business Park crit #1 through Busines Park crit #6, road race in the middle of nowhere, circuit in the middle of nowhere...yep, super exciting.

I am also just really loving this training through racing thing. Basically, it involves going into races tired due to training. It pays off later in the season...or so it did last year...and I'm hanging onto a thread of hope that it'll do the same this season. But what's my competition doing? Maybe the same. How depressing!

My camera hasn't seen the light of day in awhile so my apologies for the lack of pictures or interesting posts. Today was the celebration of the mother's in my family. We thought we'd out-smart the Mother's Day crowd and celebrate a week early. It was very nice to hang with the fam and not talk about racing, though it seems to permeate most of my thoughts. It is so much a part of who I am, and I like it that way...but I'm not dreaming of winning one of these office park crits...though that's what's going to have to happen to be able to do the 10,000+ spectator downtown crits!

And now, before writing any more that really should be going in a personal journal, but I'm putting it here because it's so much easier to type than write by hand, I'll wish you a pleasant evening!

Weekend Races/Riding

This weekend was as good as it can get for perfect riding conditions. The racing was a bit strange, not too exciting since it wasn't coupled with any kind of epic weather.

See Sharon's account of the Deer Trail race.

And yesterday I headed out with the MOB ride and promptly found I had left my climbing legs on the rollers out at Deer Trail. Still, though, I got 7 hours of riding in and probably 6,500-7,500 feet of climbing in for the day. It was one of those days when going home wasn't an option.

Public Service Announcement

Attention all married men: guys, when a belly dancer shows up to work on your birthday, this is the appropriate reaction as Jeremy is demonstrating here. When things get even slightly normal around here, the sales guys spice things up. Much to our surprise, it was a female member of the management team who was behind this. And, FYI, the belly dancer performs at children's birthday parties?!?!?!

No pictures yet...

Argh, sorry to not get pics up here lately...or more posts, for that matter. My To-Do list is very long and it's only growing. This weekend was spent racing and there's really not much time before or after to accomplish much. And if there were time, there's not a lot of energy. Got a lot of great riding in this weekend between the races and the post-race rides. Did the Haystack TT yesterday (used a disc and aero front wheel, first time ever, pretty cool) and the AST crit today. The crit is a really fun course, where the uphill doesn't feel much like a hill and the descent is really fast. My amateur move of the day--sprinting for a non-prime lap. Oops. Oh well, good practice! Finally, the intensity isn't hurting as much. It was a good weekend for racing & it didn't end up raining or snowing, amazing since it kept threatening.

Look ma, no wrinkles!

I had to iron a shirt before going to work this morning since I'm going to be interfacing with people who will probably be wearing suits. This is the first time I've touched the iron in a year. It was a proud moment, so I wanted to share.

Vacation

This past weekend I vacationed in Florida with Eric and his fam. Like any obsessed bike racer, I couldn't leave the bike at home. But, for the purposes of discussion, this past weekend was vacation, since it involved a beach, crashing ocean waves, having a nice time with good people, eating well...even though Saturday was spent driving to a race (hey, the drive was pleasant, so it still counts as R&R time...of course, I wasn't driving so it's easier for me to say that) and Saturday evening involved speeding through downtown Jacksonville.

Thursday the flight to Tampa was pleasant. The in-flight movie was "Freedom Writers" with Jennifer Gardner. I was determined to get some sleep so I missed the first part of the movie, but judging from the last half, the movie is worth watching in its entirety. Eric was waiting for me at the airport, after driving a couple of hours to get there...and on the way back we noticed that where he had driven moments before had become a parking lot. Whew! Spring break in warm places like Florida (especially after such a brutal winter) yields traffic jams of epic proportions.

Upon arriving at his family's vacation home in Bonita Springs, we sat down to dinner and watched the sun set on the ocean. Not long afterwards, it was time to play mini-golf! The mini-golf place was nicely designed and I'm saying this more because the holes were at least twice the size of a normal hole found on a mini-golf course. So, it makes a really rusty mini-golf player such as myself feel pretty good. Come to think of it, I never heard the final score for anyone.

Later that night I got to learn, or begin to learn, euchre. It's a pretty entertaining game...quite fun to try to understand and to watch the players and the variety of reactions a seemingly benign card can cause.

Friday was a truly hot and humid day, but the heat isn't so terrible when pedaling along and creating a nice breeze. Eric and I had a really nice ride on the road, next to some pretty ritzy ocean-side communities. We wished that we could have gone for longer, but it gave us time to get the rental bike back (yes, they rent road bikes in FL), Eric took a long swim and I got in a nap. How easy to be lulled to sleep by the crashing waves and ocean breeze.

Once again, we watched the sun set and took in the last few minutes of calm prior to worrying about packing up and turning to race mode. Moments later, there was a torrential rain, it must have been all of the humidity becoming too heavy for itself. Hey, being able to live without cracked skin for a few days was great, the humidity is fine so long as jeans aren't necessary.

Saturday found us driving most of the day to get to Jacksonville. Countryside driving helped us avoid the interstate which probably saved us hours and lots of stress. Jacksonville is a pretty city.

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Jacksonville Crit

And Jacksonville knows how to put on a race, though I just read, through the blog grape-vine, that it doesn't actually count for NRC points. Oooooh, that mis-information could kill the race for next year. Pro teams usually don't attend non-NRC races and there were at least 3 of them (in the women's field) represented this year. With the race on the same weekend as Sea Otter, it makes it harder to attract the big-name pros. Laura Van Gilder showed and I was on her wheel at the starting line. The start/finish area was necked down by barriers so pretty skinny (no bigger than 2 lanes). Figured a good starting position was important (~50 starters).

This time, at the gun, I sprinted as I was taught to do in Redlands but couldn't execute there. That yielded good position early and I felt like my legs came to the race with me. It had taken some effort to snap out of vacation mode, but a long warm-up helped. It is possible that warm-up was long enough to tire me out, but the jury is out on that...especially since I did the warm-up to Colorado heart rates versus low-altitude ones (that would have been higher).

Cheerwine and Aaron's were the squads to worry about out there. The other girls? I had *no* idea who was there (a posted pre-registration list would have helped so as to have been able to Google everyone prior to the race). Another reason for good positioning was that I didn't know how much to trust the other racers. Which wheels were safe? Wasn't much time to figure that out. Within the first 4 laps (I can't remember), the girl right in front of me went down in a corner. The best-scenario was to hit her...to go around would have meant hitting the curb on one side or taking out more racers on the other. However, like all crashes, they happen so fast there isn't much that could have been done.

The crash wasn't bad (a little road rash on my elbow and knee, pretty topical), but my chain was pretty twisted and adrenaline kept me from fixing it myself. So I had to run to the start/finish and have them fix the bike. This whole process took two free laps...during the time when 6 riders that included Cheerwine and Aaron's got off the front. So, of course, the wheel-pit guys pushed me back into the middle of the now-chasing pack. Maybe I should have argued that I was near the front when I crashed (which I was), I could have been in the break had I not crashed...really. Obviously, no one knows and it was just bad timing. It's all part of bike racing. Some days stupid things like that happen. Other days everything goes well and you win the race.

So a lap after I got back with the pack, I tried to see if I could help close the gap to the break. One girl gave me a friendly push. I wasn't happy to know someone was on my wheel. She wanted me to stay on the front. Was this a ploy to get me to blow up or was she offering to help? I don't know. And I didn't trust any of the Cheerwine or Aarons girls left in the pack...they were interested in blocking. The rest of the race is fairly blurry in my memory. It was a challenge to stay to the front. I kept slipping to the back (on the downhill section, explain that) and having to make up positions in the uphill/into the wind sections.

I heard someone in the crowd cheering for me (and reminding me to move up on the laps where it applied). It didn't sound like Eric, so it was a bit confusing. I didn't expect to know anyone in Florida. Finally, I was able to look up, it was Josh from Twin Peaks! He and Val, Vince & his girlfriend had all come to the race together. It was really great to have the extra cheering...and to see friends. Josh has put a lot of effort yelling at me in races (Golden crit, Salida, amongst others)... :)

Finally, with two laps to go I decided I didn't want to finish in the back and made it back to a very nice place near the front of the pack. With one lap to go, heading through the start/finish, there was tons of bumping, it was the most contact I've had in any crit ever. Somehow it resulted in being squeezed to the back (I had been in the middle of the mayhem, stuck on whatever wheel I was on) and there wasn't time to recover for the final sprint (each lap was probably 0.5 miles in length). Final result--33rd. Not pleasing, but not disappointing enough to bring me down from the joy of the vacation.

A few short minutes after the race was over, the skies opened up an it rained hard, just in time for the men's race...and I heard there were quite a few crashes in the first minutes of their race. Then the sun set on their race and they were in the dark. It was fun to race late in the day, but I can live without racing on wet, dark pavement. Eric and I enjoyed watching the Pro men's race and spending time not worrying about anything besides eating and reflecting on the weekend.

Pictures will be posted soon! Time to get home and put the bike together again...

Elementary Math

A road sign in Fruita. This may demonstrate that the Fruita school system is lacking a bit. If one addresses an envelope to 11 4/5 Road, will it get to the recipient?