Sweet Cherry Pie

So here it is!  The Cherry Pie Road Race report !!!  My very first road race in Oregon, and first race w/Ironclad.

I left early b/c my teammates are 4s (for now) and their race was a few hours before mine.  Dave (team manager) and I went to the finish to watch our 3 ladies come in.  Anna came in 1st with a sizable lead in her very first bike race ever.  She looked pretty elated.  I've never watched a teammate ride across the line 1st, so this was a pretty exciting thing.  She apparently got away after her second attack, with 10 miles to go in the race, and hammered away alone until the end!  Stephanie came in close after Anna, and Lana right after that.  Lana has been racing for a while, but this was Steph's first road race (since we aren't counting the time she flatted a few minutes after the start of the road race she did last year.)  So good spirits all around.  The team win pumped me up for my race too.

OOoooooh just watched the men's olympic speed skate short track race AAAAAAH so great!

So my race was two laps of 26 miles.  1/2's, 3's and Masters raced together.  We were mostly 3's, with 4 2s and a couple of Masters.  The course was rolling hills, no sharp turns, nothing sketchy, and a big uphill finish.  At the start Dave was giving me the lowdown on all the chicks lining up.  This being on a team thing is pretty alright..!  I was nervous as hell at first and felt awkward on my bike.  But I found that I had no problem moving around in the pack and felt pretty comfortable riding bar to bar--sooooo happy I went to Superweek!!!  I was also kind of concerned that I'd realize I should be a Cat 4 and not a Cat 3 out here in Oregon.  Weather was great--50's, no rain, overcast.  Oh, I can't grab my bottles very well... after I changed from Am Classics to the Bat cage because I thought they looked cool, the cages are stiff... must practice that....uh...such..a...doofus...

The beginning of the first lap was fairly slow and we kept together.  Toward the middle or end of the first lap, one girl got away.  Dave had told me that she was really strong.  She didn't have any teammates so we let her go..  Oops.  At the end of the 1st lap, I made sure I was toward the front, and stayed on a wheel up the hill so I could catch the the break.  Caught the break without much trouble, and I guess we dropped about 1/3 to half the field. 

I felt good going into lap 2, much less nervous and more comfortable and agile on the bike.  Three Cat 2 teammates seemed to be running the show.  The ten of us got to work putting on a strong chase after the girl who got away.  We had a sweet rotating paceline going.  Why don't we practice this more?  It was so fast and efficient, but since I'm rusty on those moves I think it took me a while to realize what I needed to do to maximize recovery time.  I'll get it though, next race.  About halfway through the lap i started to feel it.  I ate some and drank and tried to catch every second of recovery I could.  By the last 1/4 of the race, I felt like I was going to die.  Or puke.  Or fall over.  Or never EVER race bikes again.

We kept coming up on riders from the men's field thinking it was the chick who got away, and then we'd be disappointed and speed up the chase.  I remember at one point almost losing the draft, and then realizing that if I didn't catch it I'd get dropped, so it was either do or die.  We got to the small hill before the finish hill, and I held on, and then went to the finish hill and I wanted to stop...  I couldn't get out of the saddle.  I was so tired... I don't remember anything, just pushing too hard at the beginning of the hill, and then getting too tired to carry it out, and letting a girl pass me.  I heard my team cheering and couldn't think about anything other than puking or falling over.  Then it was over and I was sooooo relieved....  !  I came in top ten, maybe 7th in the 3's but the results aren't up yet.  We never caught the girl who got away--she was amazing !!!!!!!!!  And she's a 3, and last year was a 4.  Wow.

And for some reason I want to keep racing bikes!?  I never dig that deep.  I know that's what bike racing is about, but it so hard for me to go as hard as I possibly can...I have to find a real good reason within myself.  So after yesterday's race, I feel like I've achieved a lot just by getting to that point.  And, by staying with the top half of the 3's and the 2's.  (I'm a real Cat 3! )  So next race, I know I can get there if I'm willing to hurt! Yay!  The last time I felt like that was Snake Alley, but I won that race.  It's kind of a refreshing feeling to see where I am now and where I want to be.   The road spread out in front of me...  It was a great start to the season (ugh, remember hillsboro!?)  AND I can't wait until the other Ironcladdies cat up!  what can we do then?!?

No snow here !

whoa that's a lot of snow !  It's been a bearable 45-50 degrees here in PDX lately, with a few scattered showers  :-)  Seriously kids, west coast winters are the way to go.  If you can manage to fly out of your airport, we have an extra bed (and we'd find a mattress for it before you come!).

Amos is so cute !  He has a hilarious look on his face.  Has Axel been cooking special anti-inflammatory meals for him?

Let the chalky soy protein cravings begin!  My first road race, Cherry Pie, is Saturday.  I'm a bit nervous!  I don't have teammates in my race yet--that will change soon--so I am racing alone.  It's about 50 miles, not too hilly, but a nice hill at the finish I guess.  I'm excited.  AAaaarg.  It's February !  Race report to come, I promise.  It's going to be great fun to go with my team and warm up under a tent and have a spot for all our food and bags and stuff.  It'll be a bit of a change from the Race Corolla and not knowing who has the keys.

Yesterday I freaked out a little about my life and what I'm doing with it.  To use a lame cliche, it seems that I've put all of my eggs in one basket..... and that basket is a bike handlebar basket.  I just want to race bikes.  I'd do more things, but with working a normal job, I don't find the energy to do more than go to work and ride (Or rather, ride to work) and then eat good food and get enough sleep.   I've decided to get into some other things though--volunteering and maybe some community classes-- but more about that later when I actually do something.  I was feeling down yesterday, but then I got on my bike this morning and everything was good.  And I think when racing gets more crazy things will be different.  Good different.

M time for bed. Niiight..

CAT lady

Some of my favorite felines:

Amos.

...Conjures memories of race vans and warm ups.

I <3 Stouts.

And now a recent addition to the list of favorite felines:


Golden Cheetah.

Developed in part my fellow snowed in cyclist to south, Dr. Jamie K, Golden Cheetah is a software package that allows you to download and analyze Schmower Schmap data. I've been playing around with a bit this evening and it's got some excellent features. Best part is, it is released under an Open Source License. Try it out. It's pretty sweet. And way to go JamieK!!

P.S.: it's STILL SNOWING. AAAAAHHHHH!

C & B

I really can't take this anymore...

Snowed in

Not a whole lot of bike riding on the east coast; I am snowed in and it sucks.

Philly apparently experienced one of the largest snow storms in its history last night and during the day today. I was at my team's cocktail party last night up in Germantown and it was a really slick and snowy drive back. Not cool. This morning I had to walk the whole 2 miles to campus from our apartment for a meeting (an unfathomable distance for someone who is used to jumping on her bike and being there in 15 minutes) only to find that all sources of caffeine were closed due to the State of Emergency that had been declared due to the massive amounts of snow. Not. Cool.

Lucky for me, I have a new toy to play with. I recently purchased a Nikon D90 (yay for technology loans!!!) but aside from using it to create our new banner, I hadn't had much time to run it through its paces until today. I am smitten. Though I easily could have purchased a set of carbon wheels for the wheel barrow of cash I dropped on the camera, it will allow me to continue to develop my photo skillz (which will hopefully help me land the job that will pay for carbon wheels...).

Week 1 of training went okay. Not great. The combination of the added time it takes to get to decent roads out here and the diminished time I can to devote to riding is frustrating. I need to get into a get-up-early-and-get-your-ass-out-the-door routine if I'm going to do this training thing properly. And it needs to stop snowing. Seriously.

so. much. snow.

WHOAAAAA A NEW LOOK!

OH SO HOT I LOVE THESE COLORZZZZZZ !!!!

WHoaaaaA!

This is what I did at work today:

swimmin swimmin swimmin. Courtesy Denver of TE for the foto... We have fun sometimes :-)

Barely made it to work because i forgot to set the alarm. Good thing Dan's alarm went off for a ride he ended up skipping. I was out the door in a flash and made it just fine.

Did some jumps tonight on the trainer; 3 x 5 of lotsa power fast feet few second hard jumps. As usual, I didn't think it would be that hard and...it was. It didn't help that I was having trouble concentrating. Tomorrow maybe I'll hammer on the way to work and practice some lotsa power hard fast feet up the hills. If my legs aren't tired. I know shouldn't do it two days in a row... but uh uhh sometimes sometimes, well I'm just not organized with my training right now. I'm just getting into a routine. It will help now that I'm on a team and the season's starting and there's some structure.

Last night I ordered these bars. Tastes like PB&J ! Now I need to get on some drink. We're sponsored by OS BUUUUT the drink has fructose in it... My beef with fructose is that after a few days the simple sugars start eating away at my teeth. Yes..I know...but seriously... I had to give up the gatorade on our trip to Portland because my teeth hurt so bad. The teeth can't handle that for a season... So we'll see, maybe I'll have to opt for one of the leading competitors. See Axel, it still holds that I can't give up my teeth for cycling. If flossing cuts into my training time, so be it. I will never cut the handle off my toothbrush to save weight. Um yeah, so teeth...right, time for bed, bye...

Chan: let's just take the pepto pink out of the banner and get rid of the ads because we've only made $6.00 in the past year. (?)

ugly, ugly, ugly, colores.

HOI! So i just joined Ironclad woot the team, the bicycling team :-) it's going to be funnnnn

but now i have to go to sleep because i am an old, old, old woman now.

goodnight.

Tis the Season!

Hoi. My non-base training started today with, as all good training schedules should, a day of rest. It went well. Tomorrow I'll actually ride. I'm pretty excited. Up until this past weekend we had pretty decent weather out here considering it is January (Mid 30s-upper 40s?) which allowed me to get some good rides in. And I've been doing about as much trainer work as I can handle without going nuts!

I had my first Sturdy Girl team training session last weekend. Despite showing up way late (for those of you who have never attempted to drive in New Jersey I would suggest building at least 15 minutes of getting lost time per 5 miles traveled into your itinerary) it went pretty well. There are some strong ladies on my team and I am pretty sure I will learn a lot about riding with a team of more than A.Miles.

As for the collegiate racing scene, I am trying to get a women's team together for an occasional ride. I don't think there are any other A's to race with, but I can't get anyone to upgrade to race with me if I don't coerce them into riding and trying out racing first! The weather needs to cooperate a little bit more before we can get a good group going, though....

The semester is only 3 weeks underway and I am already swamped with projects, papers and proposals. I got to choose my classes this semester and they are a lot more exciting and geared towards what I want to do when I get out of here. It's finally beginning to feel like I'm in graduate school and not just continuing to slave away as an undergrad, which is a good feeling. But there's also a lot of responsibility that comes with it. Sometimes I freak and think about giving up riding, but then I come to my senses and remember that riding keeps me balanced. Everything in moderation.

On Thursday Axel and I are going to see David Byrne, author of The Bicycle Diaries, speak at an urban sustainability forum at the Academy of Natural Sciences. I'm pretty excited. Then Friday is my team's fundraiser cocktail party and the Penn team's potluck dinner. Yay!

MMm ciclistos...

So i didnt say a whole lot about much about HOW WHAT the group rides are like out here. First of all, they are TEAM rides that I'm talking about. TEAMS. You seem to have to get invited, but once you are there, everyone is really cool. Fenders are a must. Unlike in the midwest, where everyone complains about the gravel-y sound of rocks up in your fender on a ride, in Portland you look like kind of a douchebagette if you don't have a fender. I didn't use a fender on Sunday (it was peeling the paint off Mad One) but it was sunny. Poprad is getting fenders, and will be the choice ride for any un-sunny day.

On the first group ride Dan and I went on, there was a dude on a fixie. IMAGINE a fixie mixed up with GEARED bicycles! I never saw that in the midwest either.. He climbed the long hill also, which impressed the hell out of me. Then he dropped off and went his own way. Very nice.

There is a lot of climbing here. On Sunday we made a point to ride on Sauvie Island, where it is flat. The cars buzzed us and flipped us off and yelled---it was outside of portland by a few miles. You have to ride somewhere else to get away from hills, which is kind of funny when I'm used to riding somewhere else to ride up the SAME hill multiple times. Everyday I ride up a few steep hills on the way to work, so it seems like no big deal anymore.

I rode with Ironclad Cycling , which the team I'm thinking of joining soon. All of the women are Cat 4s, but half of them are catting up soon probably. They ride together a lot, and race well as a team, which are both pretty important to me. I'll be the only 3 on the team for now. That's fine, because right now I guess I'm just seeing what Oregon racing is like in general. I really liked everyone on the team ride and the vibe was great, so yeaaaaa.... noice, all good ;-) I was extremely impressed when Dave pulled out a hamm's tallboy before the hill climb !!!!

---

today i got a new pair of knickers; the 1st pair of knickers, wooooooooot, sugoi, sould be noice..

i you go to Teamestrogen's website you can see my new career blossoming as an athletic apparel model. see if you can spot it. ha !

sunday is a ride 'round Hagg (?) Lake with Ironclad; a preview for the Bananabelt series. I like bananas, maybe Ill do well? It's supposed to be hilly. Everyone out here is telling me " OH Such-and-such race is..well..it's hilly...uhh" and I secretly but not so secretly say WOOOOOOOO YES HILLY! while they say Uhhhhh hilly... sounds fun. Of course, there are a fair amount of crits here too, and some strong crit riders, and apparently it doesn't rain all summer like I thought it might.

I can't wait till road bicycle racing season. Can you tell? Starts in two weeks... !!!!!!!!!!

My new dream, as of this morning's commute, is to get strong enough to lead Daniel out in the weekly men's 3 PIR races. We'd be such a good team if we could get that together. I don't think, though, that if he is strong enough to win a race that I'd be able to keep up.

Ahh tomorrow I think I'll ride, but I need to make it a priority to go shopping for essentials, like toothpaste and floss, and powertap hub batteries. I forget these errands when I just ride all weekend. Last weekend I rode a lot of hours and moved, so I got nothing done except for some new muscle and more space. But no new groceries. Ohh Dan says we can do taxes now!

Ok goodnite. Dan downloaded the NIN discography so I guess I'm in for the most depressing sleep ever. Happy trails.....

PDX group rides !

HY.

Last Sunday Dan & I went on our 1st Portland group ride with Team Beer. (Dan's new boss is on the team.) Mid 40s and misty. We met at Bakery Bar (best scones in pdx. and cakes. and food made out of eggs.) and rode west out of the city on Cornell. The first climb was long.... there was a guy on a fixie with us too, and he made it. Can't imagine doing that ! We turned onto Thompson and climbed up that. Maybe Cornell doesn't go up...I can't remember. In any case, Thompson was the long climb. I kept up with the guys until the very end, and they got to the top a couple of meters ahead of me. Then we rode along Skyline--gorgeous road!!--and up Old Germantown. I can't remember then--maybe back to Skyline?--but we climbed more, and then went back down to the city. It was a fun,fun ride !

I saw this huge salamander going up Germantown and thought it was a dinosaur. You know when you're climbing, and you're working so hard that everything you look at looks really big? Well I saw this salamander under me (didn't squash it!) and it looked like this. I also spotted dozens of sweet VW busses. The view from Skyline is so pretty, you can see the low mountains near the coast if it is clear-ish.

Dan & I agreed that it's really nice to be riding with other people, not just each other. But when we are climbing we always fall into the same pace.. it's cute :-)

The week went by like always... rode to work in the morning, and home from work once. It stayed light out halfway through my commute home, and I arrived only 10 minutes later than I would have had I taken the MAX. Woot. I used my work desktop calculator nrrrrrrr and realized I ride a lot of hours a week with this commute. Yay for the suburbs.

Today I went on my 1st group ride with Ironclad. I was supposed to go last Saturday but was sick (and followed Axel's advice and got better by Sunday thx Axel now how to I get cankles?) I'd like to maybe join the team if things go well and we all like each other :-) and so far I like what I see! A few of us met at Dave's and rode out to Sauvie Island, where we met up with a few other people. There were maybe 20 of us? 15? There were 6 or 7 women. Everyone was really cool and friendly and we rode around the island twice at a conversational pace. Sauvie Island is great because it's right next to Portland, but it's all farms and kind of redneck. Just like home... except for the nude beach. Then we raced up Newberry(?), which is a 2 mile climb up the west hills. The guys raced up, and then the girls. Winners got sweet prizes. Mile one was steep as hell and hard. Mile 2 mellowed a bit and was much more manageable; there was a slight downhill spot where I could spin my legs a bit before climbing again. I made it up first among the women AND won one of these! After the hill we were all pretty much toasted, so we descended back to Portland and stopped at a cafe in NE. Mm vegan chili.. Then home. I'd been gone from about 10:45 to almost dark and Dan-o was worried! Fun fun fun day. I love bikes. Oh, the view of Mt. Hood from Germantown was GORGEOUS! It was HUGE and glowing white. That's what she said..

Other news: Dan & I are moving to a one bedroom apartment downstairs! It's in the same building, but on the 1st floor ( NO MORE HAULING THE BIKES UP!) and the unit is at least two times larger than our place now. We already moved the bikes & tires & stand & wheels & trainer etc and it looks like a team lives there or something. Tomorrow we'll move the rest of the stuff and get some hooks for the bikes. I'm pretty excited to have a regular sized fridge and stove !!!!

Oiii goodnite.

Nutrition.

Home made bread by Axel. I'm so proud!

Topped with a little protein for a post-ride snack.

Oki, I'm just messing around with the colors... we'll find something that pleases the eye eventually...

I sweated out the toxins, am eating a lot, and am staying warm, as per Axel's advice.

Ooh technicolor! this color reminds me of a cat sweatshirt I had in 2nd grade.

i want to start blogging again

HOI!

I'm sick with a cold ugh.

Portland has been treating us great; high 40's and getting used to the rain. Beautiful rides, views of Mt. Hood on clear days, lots of green grass and daffodils in January, vegan food everywhere, early morning commutes to work ^_^

The racing scene has be a bit perplexed. You don't even have to train out here during the summer, there are so many races. (Though Joach would not condone this.) I'm contemplating joining a certain team if it turns out to be a good fit for all. Group ride tomorrow at 11 (not too early!!!!!) and I hope I'm fit enough to go by then. We'll see.

I started doing plyometrics at lunch, and I've felt the burn all week. Trying to increase my POWER! I'm pretty strong and light and fit, but I'm not super quick. My jump is awful. My sprint is worse. So, I'm trying to work on it by doing some plyometric exercises and sprint workouts (forthcoming..). I'm optimistic!

Also I'm following this easy training plan to work up to doing 100 BOY pushups. My upper body is hella weak, and I found myself being slowed down over barriers during cross season when my bike got heavy and caked with mud. Monday my max was 3 pushups, and now it's 10 ! Wooooooooot

Ok...and I ordered a pair of running shoes. Saucony running shoes; like, real running shoes, not the flat footed kind you wear for fashion. Got to start running for this sprint triathlon I'm doing with everyone at work in May. More about that later....

Um, so I've been resting since i woke up and still sick.. now I will make a kale honey ginger emergenC orange smoothie and try to get well. uh. welcome back to fastgrrrlz...

EURO MULLET

Axel decided he needed a little change in his life to ring in the new year. So I gave him a haircut.

Business in the front.

Party in the back.




Post holiday update coming soon. Until then, Happy New Year!

Collegiate Racing RAR!

ECCC schedule for Spring 2010 has been posted. Looks like nationals are in Madison, Wisconsin. I just can't seem to get out of the Midwest....

hoi !

raining in portland and contemplating whether i want to ride all the way to work or take the max...

cross race was so so fun on sunday!  more details later....  i crashed into someone's team tent at the start, but luckily missed the people warming up on trainers.. my rear wheel fell off in what brambly part of the course.  i  ended up 11th in the race which isn't too fabulous, but it was fun.  i think i ended up 11th in the series b.Chan.  and my front tire is completely flat and both hubs are super loose and my bike is generally all wobbly...  

oh but time for work.  ugh.  train or training?