A little time in heaven: BCSP

I think its pretty safe to say that Brown County pretty much fits me to a tee. I love to go there whenever I have the chance and it kills me to come back to the Northern part of the state. I come back only because I love my job, the people I work for and the people I work with. Aside from that, I would move in a heartbeat and so would my family. If I play the cards right (which I'm doing) I will have a vacation home there in the next 10 years and look forward to that day. Until then, I visit as much as I can. The last week I took Mom and we headed down for her annual Mother's day trip to a nice cabin in the woods. Its a dual trip for me as I also get my share of bike time in while I'm there. We took Sunday to get settled in and then the rest of the week I was blessed with the bcsp for longer trail rides. It is a great place to ride and I loved every minute of it! 

Mom and I had a great time and we even had a guest cat at our cabin that helped us feel right at home since we always miss our cats when we are gone. 

There is just something about having a little animal around to keep a smile on your face. This big guy was awesome and due to his Kiss like marking we named him Kiss for a few days. 

After about 4 days it was back to work for Mom, so I came home to make a quick drop- off of her and grabbed to camper, did some laundry and headed back to BC.

After cruising around the trails for several days, it was up to higher heart rate times to get in the DINO race #2 of the year. I was feeling a little "okay" with this race because it involves a lot more climbing than my big frame is skilled at. I woke up that morning feeling just okay, but ready to get racing. I saw I had some great competition show up and was really happy about that since I thought a lot of people might opt for the AL US Cup race. We had a great field of almost 20 gals line up! How sweet is that? 

I knew the steep hill at the beginning would kill, but  it really wasn't that bad. I paced up the first part, then picked up the hurt on the second half. Pretty good plan since I started dead last on the first part, but made it up to third by the midway point. I know I had the training to recover from the first section and was counting on some of the girls burning a few of their matches.  I know my weakness and tried to limit my losses as much as I could, but as a result AnnaJean D. was well ahead of me by the time we dropped in the woods. After that I focused on working up to second, which really didn't take me too long once we got to the more technical sections. At that point I was trying to salvage as much time as I could to the leader, but I simply wasn't the best rider on the coarse that day. I knew I would need to feel great in order to do that, but I really did not and just felt okay. Despite that, I felt I recovered well from the climbs and nailed the downhill technical portions as much as I hoped. I feel my cornering is really coming around which will only help me in the near cross future.  I think that mtb is a great place to gain some technical finesse for cross, especially in the women's field where having the ability to handle the bike plays big gains in results. 

I finished second in the race, holding off a late charge by the KY gang of Kiersta Tucker and Terri Meek. I did the best I could, even though I still look forward to a win at all times. The rest of the DRT squad had some great results with Andy Messer at 3rd in expert and Josh Johnson 3rd for sport open. Zach E. also had a strong result. Not to mention showings by Chad Murphy, David Coar, Scott Wagner, Coach Don G., and Dave Strole. Great job everyone! It was good to see everyone out to get their race on!

In foot/ ankle news: the ankle surgery part is getting stronger, I continue my PT at home a few times a week. The dislocations continue, but right now I feel I have more time before that surgery needs done. My lateral foot pain that I had before surgery has returned in a big way and now feels like a ice pick being jammed in my foot every time I go over any type of a bump. After talking with the surgeon, we have decided to get a MRI to see if there is a fracture or more torn ligaments. I'm so frustrated with this injury that it is making me crazy. I am trying to figure out what is going on, but I feel I just keep hitting dead ends. At this rate, I don't think I can walk without a limp for much longer, but am hoping something is just flaired up right now. But for some reason I have reasoned in my mind that I should have no problem with 'cross. Crazy, I know. But it would take a lot to keep me down at this point.

Stick to the facts Miss

I love the blog idea,  but I am learning it is not the place to voice strong opinions or vent public frustration. It is too broad and vague and can lead to misunderstanding. Not that I don't have opinions, but a blog doesn't really give the space or personal touch to exhibit them. I'm pretty much gonna stick to the facts and myself here.  Besides, I'm not trying to change the world with this blog, I just want to keep in touch with my peeps and update on my cycling passion. I love cycling and I don't want to get messed up in anything that would take away from what a great sport it is... just like I would never dope, it just ruins the whole point of riding. 

So moving on, I have been crazy busy riding and playing since my last post. Work has been busy too (which is good) but really makes my life pretty simple. Since I work pretty much 630am till 330pm or 6 pm, or 6pm to 6pm on call shifts (totaling about 60-70 hours a week) every other aspect has to be well oiled. I get off work, eat a meal I have already planned the previous evening, while my food is settling I do life business on the phone at the same time, look at emails and weather, decide what training route to take based on my DRT workout then  get dressed for a ride. I go out and have a blast on a ride then roll back home around 7 or 830pm, drink a recovery shake, take a bunch of vitamins, stretch, and do a few core exercises, the start getting ready for the next day. I take a shower, prep my lunch for work because the food I'm given in the doctor's lounge would kill me, then start prepping my dinner for after work and lay out my clothes for the next days ride. Then I'm off to sleep by around 10 or 11pm to get up at 530am. That keeps it simple. Eat, sleep, work, ride and repeat. Just like those corny shirts say. No wonder I don't have a boyfriend, there's just no time! 

I totally cherish days that work is slower and rest days from training, I can catch up on everything that is thrown at me. I do like the simplicity of it all and I really like riding my bike faster and improving myself as a rider. Plus, its all fun and games when its race day!

Fat and Skinny reports

So Fat and Skinny has come and gone for another year. The results for my "local" race were almost what I was shooting for, but I gave my best effort and that really is all I can ask. I started the weekend on Saturday with my first xc race of the year. I had a great competitor show up in Annajean Dallaire (who is pro) and I knew I would have to be on my game to stay close to her. She usually blows me away (last year) but I felt my legs were good and that since I had home court advantage I could hang. That's what I did for the first lap. Then on the second she turned up the high end and I just didn't have it yet. In the end she beat me out by around 2 minutes. I'm not too upset with this because I felt I had a good personal ride and did the best I could for where I'm at right now in my training. Besides being the first loser, I had a great time riding. I felt smooth and the conditions were pretty much perfect in every way. It really was a blessed day to be a mountain biker. 

Drt in general had a great mtb showing. Zach Edwards had a win in the expert class, Coach Don G. had a blazing ride for 3rd in the pro men, Mexlerworks Andy M. placed a top 5, and up and comer Josh J. bagged 5th in sport open. I can't state how stoked I am for Zach, he had a deserving win. 

After the race, I headed out to watch the road race finish up. My friend Anne Young was already finished and she ended up 5th for cat4. I was pleased with this for her also, since she was really improving her pack skills in the race. I also wanted to cheer for the local Hammerhead guys and they looked strong. Good to see you all out there!  Then Anne and I headed back to the Village, grabbed some primo food from Cerulean, and had a relaxing evening on the porch of the Clocktower going over the days events. It was a good end to the day. What a great time!

That night was a decider night for me as to whether I should do the crit the next morning or not. After seeing how the ankle was feeling, Don and I thought I could give it a try with a guarded effort in case the ankle became painful. We aren't pushing it too much since things are still healing up from surgery.

So I was really happy to be able to go to bed with thoughts of racing in front of my homies the next morning. 

Sunday warm up felt a little tight, but the legs came around quickly and I was ready to get going. The women's race had a super turnout and seems to be getting bigger every year. Great job of the organizers for getting more and more people to the community to see cycling. I stayed on for a couple laps until a 3 women break went, and I wasn't able to keep the pace and settled into leading the main pack for another 30 minutes by myself. The Alderfer girls did their job and slowed the pack to a crawl to block for their leader, but I become bored with the road games and just planned a personal TT. I felt strong and then things got a little shaky. Basically, girls got nervous and went down super hard and fast behind me. The bad part was that Anne was caught up in it and as I looked over my shoulder I could see her feet in the air and her head on the ground. Not good. I almost stopped dead in my tracks leaving 3 girls to gap me with 1 lap to go. No race is more important than  a good friend. I ended up finishing the last lap, very distracted, so I let the 3 girls ahead of me have their places and I finished in 7th. Probably not the coolest racing move to be distracted by a crash, but I care about people- its my job and my calling in life and I can't take that drive away. Big bummer for Anne (my riding partner) she had to be stretchered away in the ambulance, and thankfully came away with only some bad bruises and some things that could have been a lot worse. She has a broken wrist and will be out for awhile. She's a tough one thought so she will come back strong!

Otherwise, a good racing weekend for DRT and myself. 

as the world turns.

Seems like I have more drama lately than a episode of a soap opera. My newest drama is that I have found out that I need ankle surgery again to repair complications from the first surgery. Everything with rehab was going great until I noticed that my tendon behind my ankle bone started to snap over the ankle bone itself. As you can imagine that this is getting very painful and unfortunatly isn't getting better and I have been informed that it will not get better as long as the subluxations keep happening. So how does that happen? Surgery of coarse. At first it looked like it needed to be done sooner than later, but after seeing a ankle specialist we have made the decision to wait as long as possible (like after cross season) to fix it. There is the small chance the pain will subside, in which case surgery can be held off, but with my luck I'm not expecting that.

I will be honest, there has been lots of tears, anger, and F- bombs thrown around, but I think I am coming down from all that a little and now am trying to focus on moving ahead with the season. The problem is that the tendon could rupture at any minute from the friction so the season could be over at any minute. I guess we risk injury everytime we swing a leg over the saddle, so I am going to try and not let this slow me down mentally.

Here's the thing about a injury as a cyclist. We aren't in the NBA or NFL where every step of a athletes life is exposed (and thankfully so). As cyclist we live in our daily grind and a lot of times are isolated from others in training to accomplish our own workouts. What we do in the off season is alone a lot. Having a major injury is overlooked simply because there is no one there to look at it. The pain and struggle of just trying to make it to work is not seen, the countless trips to physical therapy and multpile home therapy seasons are personal. The trips to the doctors, the stress of being off the bike, the mental abuse that occurs becuase of it is only appaerent to those closest to us. So when the season begins in the spring and everyone is ready to race, the injured person is just seen as another two wheels in the dirt. That is true, but I think we often underlook the struggle that may be going on in the off season, be it illness, family life or major surgery. Everybody has their own personal challenges they must overcome in order to continue the daily grind of cycling. We should all try and recognize that and when those challenges are overcome that makes the accomplishments of that athlete even more spectacular. 

Personally, I'm not planning on slowing down much, I am working on overcoming this challenge because it is what was handed to me. I didn't want it, but we can't really chose the types of challenges we get. I will choose the challenge of racing and will cherish everyone of them until I end up in a cast again.

Ceraland showed I still may have it!

This past weekend was pretty much my favorite road race of the year  in Columbus, IN. Since I do a minimal amount of road racing, I guess this isn't saying much,  but it really is a nice place to put on a race. Anne and I headed down late on Friday night to set up camp at their camp area very close to the coarse. We ended up finishing our camp at about 130 am and finally got to sleep at about 2 am. Not much time to get in a good nights rest for a wake up time of 7am to start the pre-race routine.                                                                                                                           

 We were super stoked about the weather forecast and were pleased to find perfect racing weather once race time lined up. This area is so pretty right now as you can see above from the flowering tree near the start/ finish line. I thought little red bike looked  pretty nice up against it. 

We had a fairly good showing with some strong riders in the pack. This would be a great gauge for me as my first race back from major leg surgery. I was a little taken off guard at the gun and the 3 Aldefer riders took off full on to make a early, early break. I finally realized what was happening and started a chase after them, but by then the gap was already to big to make a solo effort after a 3 women break. So after riding with another Nebo ridge rider for a couple laps I decided to make it a TT effort to see where my watts would be and wanted to see how my cardio would hold up over 60 minutes all out. Unfortunately, the nebo rider decided to join the Citizen pack and draft off of them for a few laps while I hung out in the wind away from the pack. We agreed before the race that we would not draft off the Citz, but I guess she thought a 4th place would be rewarding to her regardless of how unfairly she earned it. Not to complain, but there are rules, and we must follow them. When people don't, it kinda ruins the day for those who didn't cheat. I'm just saying...

So, after a 30 min solo effort the race leaders came back around and I stayed with their effort without any real problem as they tried to drop me several times. I was very pleased with my ease of this pace especially since these gals are way more experienced road riders and are cats up on my cat3. I came to the line with them in the end and passed one in the sprint finish. Not to shabby, and I truly feel that I could have stayed with them had I not got caught off guard early on.

I finished in fourth place (or 5th since the Nebo rider is dq'd by several opinions for illegal drafting). I was happy with this result considering my training hasn't really pushed me into the red zone yet. Anne ended 1 lap down in 5th to me and this was a great showing for her and she has really stepped it up this year. Great job Anne.

The rest of the day was spent watching the other races and spent lounging around the camper. We were super tired from the lack of sleep.  Nice to have a camper on-site to get vertical and rest.

Sunday had us getting up super early to get a few hours of riding in before we needed to head home. We spent the day riding in and out of rain showers, but the temps were in the 50's so it wasn't that bad. I was super pleased about the ride because I saw several birds on my "must see" list. We also finished with Horseman's camp loop. This killed me a couple weeks ago, and I rode it like a totally different person this time around. Doing this climb better and having a good showing in the race really helped boost my confidence that I am getting back to where I need to be! I will be staying around home for the next couple weekends and am thankful for that. I love the traveling, but things start to pile-up when I leave too much. This weekend we have our DRT time trial series kick off here in Winona. Don does a great job with running these events and look forward to getting my first mtb race effort done with. After that, its Fat and Skinny time. Looks like I will only be doing the mtb race this year and skipping on the added stress of the crit the next day.  This is Don's decision and I don't really question his plan too much for me on things like this, I think he has more than proved that his plan makes champions. 

Girls Gone Camping

My first camping trip is in the books.  As I stated in the last post,  I had my first trip to Brown County with the camper and pulled Anne along with me in the new experience. After 40 mph winds on the way down there, I was pretty stressed after the 4 hour drive getting there. That broke me into driving a house on wheels pretty quickly. Once we arrived at The Last Resort park in Nashville, I was totally stoked at my ability to back the camper into its spot. I had to nail it since it was a cliff drop off on the back side. Dropping a new camper off a cliff would not have been smooth. 

Once we settled we headed out on a ride in the afternoon. I am always amazed how much I love the area, even in the early spring when it is still a little dirty out. The ride was a little tough for me and I was thankful I played the girl card by bringing CiCi along with the easier gear ratios. The hills are a major work over for me right now and with such steep grades,  the new 53/39 may have had me push instead of pedal. It was super sweet to finish the ride and walk into the camper and have everything ready for us when we were done. 

Day 2 of riding, or as I say, day 2 of my reintroduction back to real training, was perfect! It was just warm enough and sunny enough to spotlight the red buds in bloom.  It was cool to have a lazy morning start around the camper before heading out. Anne made us a great cup of air pressed coffee, she got some bike work done (in above pic) and after a hot breakfast we headed out on about a 4.5 hour ride. I was amused the whole time how all three of our bikes above did not have matching wheel sets (seen in the pic above). I don't know why this seemed funny since I'm usually such a stickler to detailing a bike to a tee, but since the day was so nice I didn't even obsess over it.  The evening was spent refueling and hanging out around the campfire and was reminded of how much fun I had as a young girl when we camped every weekend. 

After a good nights rest, since I finally decided to turn the heat on, we woke up for our final day of camping and riding. We had a time line to work on so we had to get up and get going. Don, Anne, and I headed out on a 2.5 hour trek for one last view of the overflowing creek beds and hills.  I was super stiff in the morning, but I was happy to loosen up and pedal comfortably along after a short warm-up. I was surprised how good I felt after the previous days of riding and finished wishing we had more time to keep going. Don finished off the ride in Brown County State park by taking us up the famous Horseman's camp ride. It was my first time climbing this historic hill and it was super tough. For those who think we don't have hills in IN, come and ride this! It has a grade that compares to some of the climbs in the tour de france. I was doing okay until I realized there was drool hanging out my mouth because I couldn't expend the energy to wipe it off. How's that for girlie? I can't wait to do it again and improve my time on it.

That was it, we hitched up and headed home. This time in the pouring rain. More excellent practice. Anne returned to her family and me back to work. Hopefully the next trip will be just as great and a little less challenging for hauling. We will find out soon, we are heading to Columbus, IN this weekend for our first race of the year. 

Hung out to dry!

This spring weather we are having is cracking me up. At least it isn't cracking me. So I spend 20 minutes yesterday getting on the multiple layers to go ride in the massive wind only to have my whole bottom half drenched with rain in about 10 minutes. Then the rain stopped the very minute I was finished. Ha! If it hasn't been raining it has been 20-30 mph winds here and sometimes both together. I was wandering on my rainy ride yesterday if there was any benefit to my complexion by having rain slam into my face at 20 mph+. I really couldn't think of any. I spent a great deal of mental effort yesterday trying to figure out how riding in the rain was helpful to me. I finally just resolved myself to the fact that my competition was training someplace else that wasn't so challenging, therefor giving me a hand up in cyclocross at some point.

 Honestly though, I rather didn't mind the cold, windy, rainy ride. Maybe that's not right, but as I say, once a person resolves themselves to something it isn't that bad. That goes for pretty much anything in life. You take what your given,  and just go with it and make of it what you can. If you don't like it, you put the effort in to change it. 

So, everything I have is just about dried out for me to hide in the basement and ride the trainer today after work. I knew it was gonna be a trainer day when I looked out at the birds on the feeder and they were blown away by the wind. I have a short ride of 1 hour planned today and that works out okay on the trainer. It also gives me a good excuse to get in 2 episodes

 of Battle star Galactica watched. My sister will be happy since a trainer ride means less laundry. She does the laundry and house cleaning in exchange for a free place to live. She hates Spring/ Winter and Fall because bike layers are constant. She said the best part of my surgery was no bike clothes to wash and no bender to clean everyday from recovery smoothies. I'm glad I could help her out with that, but would rather not have had to had surgery. 

Otherwise, I'm off for a few days from work and down to Brown County!  I hope to meet up with a several friends for some great long rides. Maybe the hills will break the wind a little. I won't know what to do with no wind, I'll feel so fast.