Twin Peaks Group Shots

The men all got into the spray tan stuff just before this pic was taken...

Look at these women, to be seen in future pictures as simply a blur of blue as we fly past...

Ft. Collins Vacation

Here's a short & sweet version of the weekend:

Brutal road race Saturday, but beautiful and very nice all-in-all. I enjoyed all of the descending and the happy power hills and the scenery...

The rest of Saturday was spend recovering. Eating, sleeping, drinking... it was oh so relaxing and since I didn't have my computer with me, I actually did these things.

Sunday was the downtown Ft. Collins crit--wow, was it exciting! There were attacks constantly throughout the race...finally, I have the jump I've been in search of all season (yes, after the brutal road race)...I attacked a few times and tried to jump on all of the attacks I was near. I spent half a lap on the front trying for one prime that I missed by an inch, but at least it didn't mean getting spat out as has happened before.

The finish left me in 10th & with $20 (the field was close to 40-large), but after having such an exciting race, it left me feeling pretty good. I headed back to my host family's house for a quick shower & then got back home to hang out with Rebecca who had come up from Durango for the weekend...finally getting to enjoy Denver and some quality off-the-bike time.

Picture of the weekend to come if I can collect enough energy to unpack my car and find the camera (yeah, I took one picture...hope it turned out!)

Now for this weekend

This weekend involved some seriously fun time on the bike. 95 miles yesterday, maybe 9,000 feet of climbing, oh yeah, with LT intervals thrown in for good measure. It was a fabulous ride. Basically, it involved riding to Estes Park from Boulder, so much of the ride was at fairly high altitude. Then this morning, I did a TT (on my own), in order to prep for Nature Valley...coming soon! Afterwards, a power nap was necessary as well as a shower and fresh clothes, so as to be able to race City Park tonight.

What's wrong with me? -I really like going into races tired. I think it helps me deal with the pressure to do well (so I'm the only one putting that pressure on, but it's real, no matter its source). Also, all of this training will hopefully make Nature Valley a fuller experience. I'd like to dedicate yesterday's ride to my Bike Hugger (aka Wines of Washington) teammates who had to race that distance and feet of climbing at Mt. Hood. I'm really impressed with what they've done this week (http://team.bikehugger.com).

Speaking of teammates, it's great to be back on Twin Peaks locally. They have the team tent set up at the races and they never tire of cheering. Hopefully one of these days my race is earlier in the day so I can hang out and cheer afterwards.

Blogging is for winners

Hi again, sorry for the lack of posts in the past couple of weeks. I watch quite a few blogs (RSS feeders make this possible w/o spending too much time snooping around trying to see what's changed on which blogs)...and it occurred to me that a large majority of bloggers are winners. Almost every blog is someone announcing another win at a race or successful book publishing or some other great accomplishment. And, of course, these people blog regularly (usually) and seem to always be winning something. Guess people who blog have the confidence to share their lives, which they expect to be successful, with the rest of the world.

So, therefore, since I have a blog, I am successful and expect to bring you some really awesome racing news before the season is over. Thank goodness it's a long season and there are lots of races. Of course, racing doesn't define success, but it's the coolest thing to talk about in a blog. And since racing well takes many of the same qualities to do almost anything in life well, I'll let it define how successful I am...at least to you, dear blog reader.

Last weekend (Memorial Day weekend) was an amazing weekend spent in Durango with Eric and some of his friends there & then some of mine in Denver. It felt like vacation and, being coupled with a bike race (Iron Horse road race and crit), I got the riding and intensity in that was necessary. The Iron Horse race is very mentally challenging with all of the climbing involved, but since they close the road to all traffic, it's worth doing it. Yep, even for a non-climber such as myself.
It was a unique experience to watch cattle being moved. Look how close they are! It took many men, on horses and ATVs, to keep these really loudly moooooing cattle going the right way. I thought that they would put cattle in a truck and take them to where they want them. Guess it's cheaper or easier to do it this way.

Lots and lots to share about Durango...not going to blog it because sleep is important to me. It's a great town & I can understand why everyone from Durango can climb like a mountain goat on the bike.

Back in Blue

For all of you wondering about my cryptic post a little over a week ago, finally, it's announceable-- I'll be racing for Twin Peaks for the remainder of the '07 season.

I learned a lot about trying to be my own team (there were 3 other women on Einstein's, but with all of us doing different races, we couldn't act as a team). Basically, I straightened out my priorities and know that what I want first and foremost is to enjoy racing with people who make it a full experience. It's important to me to always enjoy being on the bike and racing takes it's toll when there isn't a huge support structure. Believe it or not, to become a really great racer, it takes a lot of support by many, many people, not just one or two. Blogs and articles about great athletes show this to be true a lot. And no, I'm not a great racer yet, but I know my chances of being great are so much better when I'm surrounded by good people...getting free stuff isn't going to be what does it.

On that note, it's time to train...inside due to some seriously uncool weather...

Riding Paradise

After much hemming and hawing, Lana and I decided to stay local to her home and hang out and ride like crazy women this weekend (we needed to make up for all of the long rides we didn't do together this past winter since she moved). You heard that right, I decided not to race. There are so many chances to race in Cali, but why race when you can have fabulous rides, at race pace, and leave from home?

Boulder riding is nice, but I do believe the riding here is better. Of course, the traffic to get to the riding is a little more insane than it is in Colorado, but at least there's a bike lane on every road from what I can tell.

These pics are from the Friday ride--totally twisty-turny road all the way up, much of it just like you see here...and very steep. It varies from 8% to 20% grades. Excellent place to do some hard intervals!

We pedaled for 3 1/2 hrs, and stopped by the Stanford campus for a riding tour of the campus. It's a pretty campus, and big. We were interested in knowing what was going on in the background of this picture. College (probably frat) boys...

Yesterday (Saturday), I went on a very fast group ride with ~100 local racers--Lana's boyfriend, Aaron, took me there (Lana didn't want to go since we thought we'd be racing on Sunday). A few women on the ride are pro, there were quite a few women there. They weren't intimidated. No one talked much on the ride, people took it pretty seriously. There was a group of 4 deaf guys on the ride--they were "talking" more than anyone out there (they were signing to each other). Everyone is nice, I haven't seen this many friendly cyclists in a long time. Almost everyone waves "hi." The guys were good to give pushes to the women who were dangling on the back. After the ride, then, everyone was chatty and I went with Aaron and a few of his friends for some climbing. Total ride time was almost 4 hours and my legs were toast.

Lana and I caught the train to San Francisco--it was a double-decker. Doesn't take too much to impress us.
We made some new friends.

The North Beach area is very Italian and after wandering through China Town, we had some yummy Italian food, served by Italians. It passed the test of my critical taste-buds.

Today we did another long ride (over 4 hrs) that involved tons more climbing, with grades over 20% in places. It took us past massive, beautiful homes, vineyards, just absolutely lush, gorgeous places. We did some more intervals and when I found a guy flying up a climb, chased him until it was time to turn around (won't admit that I was tired and my legs were quite unhappy). Now we're relaxing and enjoying not doing anything (except blogging).

Wheels of Thunder

Saturday was the Wheels of Thunder circuit/crit race. During the time that I was in the race, it was fast, tactical, pretty exciting. It helped that there were at least 5 racers who are regulars on the NRC circuit and a few others with that strength, but who stay local. My race consisted of 4 laps, the last being a suicide ride in hopes of a $50 prime. Being out in the wind for half a mile really took its toll. I had totally underestimated the distance to the line and how much energy the wind would sap from my formerly fresh legs. The rest of the race was a painful time trial, trying to at least keep the pack in view just in case the pace slowed for a few moments which could allow me to rejoin them. No luck, just really good training. Oh yeah, and my cassette was loose. I was wondering why shifting was harder than usual, but I don't think that had anything to do with the final outcome.

Sunday was a fantastic ride up Super James, Ward and back down St. Vrain. St. Vrain is on the top of my list of fun, fast descents and it's incredibly beautiful (if you have a chance to look up). With all the rain we've had, it's green, really lush in places that are probably brown all year. The climbing was important since the next two weekends will be spent going vertical.

Stay tuned...I'm still planning on updating more soon (as the last post suggested).

I made a mistake

Okay, I've made 145 million mistakes since I was born, but I realized today that I made a big one a few months ago. I'll be cryptic in this post since I can't say too much, but hopefully in a couple of days, it'll be something that can be discussed openly here. A movie I'd highly recommend is called "Bobby Jones." It's about a golfer...but watch it anyway. I really, really enjoyed it (saw it while spinning on the trainer this past winter) and I've been thinking about a few key lessons it teaches ever since. To be continued...

If you drive a car, read this

Those who get fewer than six hours of sleep a night might as well be drunk. The Sleep Foundation determined that people who remain awake for 18 hours straight function similar to drinkers with a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.08 percent, the level states use to determine whether someone is legally impaired to operate a car.

--From Penelope Trunk's blog, one of my favorite blogs.

Read this article, too. Thank you, Penelope, for saying it like it really is.

Training Race, another perspective

Someone else's account of yesterday. Interesting, I didn't realize all that attacking was happening. Guess I'll ride up closer to the front next time and try to follow some moves. Oh yeah, something else that was cool (man, do I sound like I've never been in a race before or what?) was watching from mid-pack as the guys up front cornered, all strung-out with the sun setting in the background. It was beautiful.