"Go Sit the Bench and Think About it"

It was pretty rare that I heard that command from my coach when I played basketball. Usually when I did, I deserved it. I kept a pretty strict approach to basketball and approached the sport as I was brought up on it: fundamentals first. Since basketball was everything to my area I grew up in and since I was discovered young (about the 2nd grade), ball was one basic drill after another before ever getting to play a real game. And since my Dad was a sports official, and often reffed my games, I had to keep a pretty tight ship. He cut me no slack and actually held me to much higher standards than those playing around me. Those fundamentals and hard work standards made me who I am today and when I start getting a little out of line, I always tell myself I need to sit the bench and think about what it is exactly that I'm doing. Not just in sports, but in all walks of life.

I felt I needed to sit the bench after French Lick.

Of coarse I really wanted to go to the WORS US Cup race in WI last week. At least in my heart of hearts. But I wasn't sure if I should. Did I need to take a break? Of coarse, its hard to bench yourself. Its even harder as a grown up when you think you know what's going on. Its also hard to get benched when all is going the right way. For example. Back in high school, I stole the ball from the the other team, got down court in a clean break all by myself. All my coaching told me I knew I should go in for the easy lay-up and take the sure points, but instead I decided to pull up at the 3 point line and take the shot there. To me, I always felt more comfortable with a outside shot than a lay-up and I didn't see the risk, but it was obvious to the crowd, and the coaching staff, that this was a crazy move, as I felt the entire packed gym hold their breath and stare me down at the moment the ball released my fingertips. The fact that the 4,000 or so people were completely silent, made the swish of the score even more crisp. Swoosh... I slowly turned to my coach and smiled. He was not amused and told me that if I would have missed I would be warming the bench... hard to bench you when all goes right. Of coarse I never doubted that the ball wouldn't go in, and I knew it would the second it left my hand. I was confident. Just like before French Lick (FL)- I had won my last 4 races, but I felt I was getting a little ahead of myself.

I was on a race streak, which was great, but I started to feel I should be winning all those races no matter what. Really, Nicole, Nik, Nicke, nikthesleeper, nickeraecole? Or whatever I want to call myself today... I really had to step back and realize I am still recovering from surgery and if I expected to kill it every weekend, I need to sit my butt down and think about it a little. Get real girl. So I did. I just wasn't benching myself because I felt I was punishing myself for getting 3rd, I was doing it so I could get into a little better focus on training and moving more toward some of my main goals later in the season. I have no doubt that I could have went to WI and claim a podium spot, just like I landed that 3 pointer, but I'm gonna save that shot for another day. A day when I am more confident the shot will go in.

Racing is great, but it limits training, and while I want to do good at mtb, I have bigger plans for cyclocross. By skipping a few races here and there, I can focus on my on the bike and off the bike workouts, and not to mention, get back to a regular calorie by calorie focus on my food, and a good sleep pattern. I am a sucker for a race and would probably do so every day of the week if it were possible, but that makes missing a few here and there even better for me. What hunger I don't full-fill for racing today, only makes me starving for competition later. And when your sitting on that bench all alone, you really want to get out and play the game after watching everyone else out there.

When I was benched in basketball, I would go home, or to the practice gym, late after the game and start doing fundamental drills and free throws under the street lights or until the janitor kicked me out of the gym. And so goes it now for cycling, so it's not like I have been sitting around all week. I have been focusing on the fundamentals of cycling and training hard.

I'll be ready to check in again soon to the game, I've thought about it.

"The appetite of the lazy craves and gets nothing, while the appetite of the diligent is richly supplied."
Proverbs 13:4

Ya Win Some... and Some Ya Don't

That's right.

I was gonna title the post "You win some and you lose some." And for about 48 hours after the race I felt like a loser, but placing 3rd at a venue that has a lot of climbing, 6 months after surgery with a left leg functioning less than 40% isn't really losing. Besides, anyone even going out there in 105 degree heat, and muddy conditions wasn't a loser even if they were last place.

So that's how it ended: I placed third behind Nikki D and Amanda Mckay.

I spent the remainder of Saturday evening after the race trying to reason just how and why that happened. I thought my power was improving and I felt prepared for this venue. Where did I possibly go wrong? Well, I didn't really go wrong. Some days people are just better than you, and some gals are just better built for certain races than me. Tough pill to swallow- but its the bitter truth. The top two gals were lightweights. Mountain goats. Four stroke engines... and well... I'm not. I'm not a climber, I'll never be a goat, and I'm more like a 2 stroke engine. Which leads to the other problem I had that day. I over heated my engine. I refused to admit to myself that the fact that I had goose bumps and lack of sweating 30 minutes into the race may have played a factor in my overall performance. Even though I recognized it in the race and intentionally pulled back on my pace, I forgot all that information in the end. If anyone has ever ridden a 2 stoke dirt bike (which I did for many years) you know they don't do so well grunting around doing sustained hill climbs in the woods. They do great in short, punchy situations. Try and run the motor too fast for too long and you'll blow the engine (which I have also done).

(This how I felt: burrrrieeed! In the pain cave)

I knew I either had to back down on the 2nd ascent of the race and let Amanda pass me, or blow up completely and DNF. I choose to back down. By the time I backed off I was almost gone, but I kept fighting the fight, which I am now proud of, and hung in there. I spent the next 45 minutes trying to recover. After getting a bottle hand up from teammate Brien Fields on lap 2 of 2, I started to come around in the next 10 minutes and actually put the remainder of the 2 hour race together. But as I'm sure you can do the math. I spent too much time blowing up and recovering in comparison to actually racing... some days you just struggle. I struggled, but I was happy to rally and hang on for 3rd and enjoy the last downhill section.

Adding injury to insult, the super sweet pine section was for some reason rerouted through a crappy, muddy, unused fire road. This was bad for me since it was covered in poison ivy. Being that I'm super sensitive to the stuff, the oils from it being raced on all day became inhaled by me and over the next couple days I formed a full blown internal inflammatory process. That means swollen eyes, wheezing, fatigue, blistered face lips, and a weight gain of about 6 pounds from swelling. Nice! Guess I maybe deserved that for beating up on myself mentally... but the rest of the sweet trails made up for it.

I spent the remainder of the weekend being mad at myself for not doing better. I now wish I wouldn't have done that. In all honesty, I did the best I could and gave 100% of what I had that day. That's all I can ask of myself. I'm sure the Colts didn't think they were losers after scoring a loss near the end of their perfect season before the playoffs. I bet they learned from their loss and started moving on to the next game... Matter of fact, I almost sure they did. If history proves right, they finished the year pretty good. Really good!

I plan on doing the same.

I fought the good fight.

I finished the race.

I kept the faith.

I thank God for giving me the faith and opportunity to do all of the above!

Being Well Rounded

I've always been a big fan of pushing my limits physically, and its been fun the last couple of years to really grow as an athlete again and focus on improving my fitness as much as I can. My cycling coach with DRT Consulting has really helped me with that. I have always been athletic and most "skills" have always come easily to me. I learned how to downhill ski after doing the bunny hill one time before heading to the big hills. Stuff like that. I had a few years of career training that I had to step away from serious athletic training, but I have enjoyed the last few years of finally getting settled with my anesthesia practice and being able to focus on cycling more.

While athletic, I always seem to have to put in a little more effort than some to keep my strength and fitness at the top level. Add on top of that, the need to rehab from some serious surgery the last few years, has had me working double time to be in top form. I have been very pleased to say my hard work is paying off by seeing improvements in my fitness levels. Let's face it, we all work really hard on the bike to be at the top level, but I am hoping some of my off bike routines will maybe give me a little extra edge come cross season. Besides, I am doing some extra things to get my surgery leg back to at least 50% by that time.

Darrell Carr (pictured above) is the mastermind behind the strength/ core workouts. He's a former D1 college wresting national champion and is very knowledgable about pushing the body to its best. On days that Don has me doing core workouts, I get some major workouts in from this guy. He looks so nice and sweet, but I really think he tries to kill me at times. I was introduced to D. from fellow rider and personal sponsor supporter Matt Johnson of Johnson Chiro. Darrell has his simple (but tough) workout rooms in an old embalming room of a revamped funeral home that is Matt's office. I always get a kick out of this. I tell D. that if I die during the workout at least the funeral facilities are kinda in place.

The cool thing about Darrel is that we do a lot of non-typical gym stuff. Most things we do never involve barbells and standard equipment. The majority is done with kettle bells, balance balls, TRX, and just plain old body stances. Just when you think you have something down pat where it's almost easy, D. switches it up to make it incredibly hard again. As you see above, we have moved on to doing squats on a balance ball after standard squats became easy. I was doing about 300-400 body squats a set, now the ball forces me to use my bad leg or fall on my face.

Here we are doing a little trx exercise. Having your legs suspended does a cool job of making a simple core exercise ten times harder. As you can see from the tan lines, I still do my time on the bike. D. and I do several exercises mixed in my workout that are seen in popular things like P90X and TRX. The difference is that he has picked the ones that improve cycling and cyclocross strength such as barriers, and dismounts, as well as focusing on things that get the hip flexors to get the pedal stroke more connected with the core. He also focuses on my personal weaknesses. Its easy revert to doing things in the gym that your good at, but having a personal coach doesn't let you do that. Weaknesses are the focus, not strengths, that way balance is achieved.

It's a real blessing to be able to have the help from experts around me like my cycling and core coaches. Some moments I don't like them very much because they put me in the hurt locker, but I really love it deep down since I have seen great improvement over the last year. I started at around 25-27% body fat a few years back and now I can say I'm down to around 10- 11%. Finally, a body fat level that is categorized in the "elite athlete" column! They give me the direction, but it still takes a personal work ethic to follow it to be a well rounded athlete.

Aside from that, my very least favorite thing is doing what you see above- ankle PT. Not sure why I dislike it so much, but I have so many thera-bands I'm gonna start a PT supply business. I think I need to start thinking of PT as "training" and maybe that will help. Has anyone ever liked PT?

I guess I better get used to it because having one side of my body be totally weak isn't well rounded. So I'm gonna stick to it and get better.

The French Lick Kenda Cup qualifier is on racing tap for the weekend. I'm curious to see how the turnout will be, its probably the biggest stakes mtb race Indiana has ever had, so that's pretty cool! I look forward to doing my best and seeing if some of this dedication can pay off some more. I'm looking to improve on my DRT XC race times from a few weeks ago, should be fun trying. The cool part is that Summit City Bicycles in Fort Wayne has been working hard to get some 29er race wheel in for me. I can't wait to try these hoops out, everyone keep your fingers crossed that the mail system is 100% on delivery to the shop this week.

This way, my bike will be well rounded also!

Well, I guess I've been slacking a little on the blog post and am a bit overdue for an update. I keep having a couple plans for posts here soon, but today I will just settle and bore everyone with a couple race updates and such.

The last couple weeks have been busy as the last 2 races were on the road at French Lick and Brown County. I was lucky to be able to get the RV out for the year and take it along for each of these weekends, which makes race day really convenient, but takes some time and hard work to get it going for the year.

I have been in a bit of a mental funk as of late, which seems to be a little odd for me in all honesty. Looking back, I realize I was just really taking a little time for reflection about what's important to me. I think its easy to get caught up in the constant obsession with training and racing and somewhere in there we need to step back and assess what we're really doing with life. This self reflection was probably brought about partially by my recent book I just finished: Uncommon by Tony Dungy. It was his second book and I highly recommend it for everyone. Very, very good. My time aside from everything else I have been doing has been spent reading another really good book: The Bible. I committed to reading it start to finish after being inspired from my surgeon, and my recent struggles that have come about from dealing with all the challenges that have come with surgery. I always read bits and pieces, but never in this manner. I'm pretty sure events in my life recently haven't been random occurrences and you'll be seeing a few Bible quotes from here on out to draw on my belief of the amazing power that God has in my life (and yours). I'm not a Bible beater, but a little faith put into a blog won't kill anyone! It will probably do the opposite in fact.

In other news, I'm totally stoked to be able to shave my both of my entire legs without road blocks at the moment. I took out my skin sutures last week from the pic above and my friend Dr Cook, did a nice job on it. He thinks it looks a little rough, but he's a bit of a perfectionist and I don't think a wider scar is gonna make or break me at this point. The good news is that I don't seem to have a stitch, cut, dirt rash, poison ivy, hematoma, or scape on me at the moment. Knock on wood, but I hope that holds out for a while. Smooth legs feel nice for a change.

So I also seem to be on a bit of a winning streak. Which is pretty cool. As of this writing, I have won my last 4 races I have entered. One of these was the DRT French Lick XC. I was excited to preview this venue for the upcoming pro cup (or whatever its called) and turns out several other gals were too! We actually had a great female turnout for the race and I was excited to see more gals at the DRT event which is run so professionally. Maybe this can become a trend? Anyway, the venue was super fun. Lots of variety and a good mix of flow and tech in my book. It's a bit of a climber coarse, which isn't my specialty, but it has enough spots for me to lay out some flat power. The thing about it was is that it was rough. This was compounded by the mega heat and humidity of the race day. Being that the trail is newer, it had new trail bumpiness and I was really wishing I had a 29er full-suspension after my coarse recon on Saturday. I knew it was rough since my 1 hour ride had formed a super painful saddle sore in that short time of riding. Aside from that, I loved the place. It had a great natural beauty as you can see from the trail pic above. I kept a easy, steady pace for the first 2 laps to not overheat, and then after seeing I had a good lead, I chilled out on lap 3. I say "chilled" because I started to get a little heat stroke and noticed I had some goose bumps. So it was slow down, or drop out... and dropping out isn't how I roll. In the end, it was a 2 hr 45 min effort. A long race. I payed for it for about a week and a half, feeling like death from the effort and dehydration. I look forward to the Dino race there in a couple weeks to see how I can improve more.

Next up was the popular Brown County State Park Dino race. I love the turnout for this race, and I love riding here, but I wouldn't say its on my top places to race. Even though BC is probably the trail I would consider my 2nd hometown place since I frequent there so much, it really doesn't play into my strengths... and that means it has climbing. That's why I go there often. To train my weaknesses, and over the years my weaknesses really aren't all that weak in perspective to other people I race, they are just things I have to force myself to concentrate on. After all, I can't always ride in the rain and wind on a flat stretch of crappy, sketchy roads.

Anyway, I won the race! I felt I rode a smart pace for me and gave it just as much as I needed to win. I was pretty happy about it since we had a strong field of gals here too. I really spent the whole week prior trying to fuel my nutrition with clean foods and worked really hard to get back hydrated. It nice too, when I have a calm work week that didn't have me up in the middle of the night too much. That I can't control, but I'm getting better at sleeping when I find the chance. It really takes a concentrated effort to put it all together on race day, and I was able to put the whole week together for a good race. Its not just about riding a bike, its everything in your life. If you want to be good, you better be prepared to sacrifice more than the next guy beside you. Its the whole package.

After the French Lick race, it seemed like this race was so easy and short. The temps on the day were perfect and my race time was 1 hr 31 min. I was hardly winded after this and felt I could have rolled on to do another lap, especially since it was so fun on the 29er. The only bummer part was the never ending struggle to pass some of the sport men. I had so many dudes to pass it was like working my way through a concert crowd in a stadium trying to get a concert tee shirt. Struggle. While most of the guys get over for the pass, there seems to be a few more these days who hate being passed by a girl. All I have to say is: dudes, I'm faster than you. No offense, but I probably put in more training, riding, and strength workouts in a week than you do all month. I've been racing some form of bikes for 15+ years. It doesn't make you less of a man, so face it, deal with it, and get out of my way before I tire rub you causing you to crash and rack yourself. That would be real embarrassing now wouldn't it?

Yep, that's it for now. I'm looking forward to a little home race this weekend with the kcv club at Winona. Then its back on the road again as the competition will be stepping up even more with two national level races.

Lastly, I leave you with a great quote from a great man that passed on this week. He was not only a inspiration to me on my way to being a All-State basketball player, but lived a inspiring life. RIP John Wooden.

Material possessions, winning scores, and great reputations are meaningless in the eyes of the Lord, because He knows what we really are and that is all that matters.

Make sure what you do and how you act on the bike is how you want God to know you. Racing doesn't change your true character, it just brings it out for others to see.

Better to ride well and lose?

So Coach Chuck Noll always told his players that its better to play well and lose, than it is to play poorly and win. Right on Chuck! I'm with ya. Don't get me wrong, I love winning, but it just never feels quite the same as when you have a great day no matter what the outcome. I won a race today at the Drt Winona TT and even though I posted a decent time, I had a poor race. I happened to win since I was the only gal out there, but I felt I could have beat a few more guys on the list. Even though I had a full minute improvement on my lap from previous tests that were not as muddy, I just didn't put it all together. It was kinda like I had planned to make an awesome red velvet cake, went to the store and bought the best ingredients and came home and put it all together, except it just didn't come out quite right. Yeah, my cake was a little flat today, but I guess that gives more all the more reason to try the receipt again- I have all the stuff, I just need to get it right... and one of these days it will go perfectly again and I will stand on that top step with my head-up and not down as above. I would truly rather race well and lose, but I know there will be wins too that I will also win as a result of racing well.

So I've had a blast here the last few weeks training, or maybe just blasted by some rain while training. I have also had some testing on the ankle last week with Dr Porter. I know I haven't updated on it lately, and since I've been getting a lot of questions how its been doing, here's the low down:

I am now rounding the 6 month mark since the major reconstruction revision and about 9 weeks since the scar debridement surgery. What I fooled myself into thinking would be a quick recovery, I'm learning is not quite the case at all. I'm doing really well on the bike since we don't rely on lateral movement much, and I've been training hard, but ask me to play a little B-ball or walk on uneven ground and I am handicapped. I had a cool opportunity to take part in some testing of the ankle's and surgery leg's dynamics, ROM, and strength at the Methodist Sports Med facility last week. It's all kinda involved with lots of details, but basically, I still am only at 30- 40% strength and function on the surgery leg. That may be okay for an old lady who walks at Walmart, but not for a elite cyclocross racer. As is obvious, I have some major work to do still. And so I will. Since I'm a number person, its nice to see the deficit with software and we are going to test again in 2 months to see how I've improved. It's gonna take time, and lots of it! Projection from DrP has me working on this for another year minimum to get back to normal, but I'm no stranger to hard work, and I will just have to commit myself to the therapy and let my body do its thing. The good thing is that, come cyclocross season, I should be strong enough to not fracture my ankle from the weak muscles (please take time to knock on wood now), and be able to perform at a higher functional level than last year! Rad.

(The ankle now at 6 months is much smaller than the first month as shown in pics! I've lost about 4.5 inches off my calf muscles. I'm always surprised how dead my ankle looked right after surgery compared to now... yes, that's the same leg)

As far as the thorn in my side, the nerve pain and damage, it continues to be a big issue. DrP injected the area with steroids to see if that can calm it down. Whowsers! That totally was not fun! It was very painful and even though I've had a lot of injections in my life, this topped the scale. Its still super sore 5 days later, but hopefully in a few days I will see a improvement in the nerve pain and swelling. Regardless, I'm sure we will figure something out, and I'm just thankful to be able to train and race through it all!

Anyway, that's a quick update. As always, thanks to everyone for the well wishes and thoughts. Its funny to think how we focus so much on the "day" of surgery, but the repercussions of some surgeries to recover from can take so long and encompass a lot of what you deal with every single day. I didn't "go" through this injury and leave it behind the day the cast came off; I'm "going" through the work of getting better every moment still 6 months down the road. There is very few times in the day that I forget that I have a rehabbing ankle. That being said, I'm totally thankful for such a cool support crew that has helped me with it! I know its been a long process, but everything is so worth it!

Otherwise, I'm back to work, life and training this week before heading down to the French Lick Drt race next weekend. Looks to be a fun venue and I suggest everyone try to make it to preview the DINO race there later in the year.

But bring your A game, I'm gonna try to put together a receipt for success, and win or lose, I'm going to strive for a good race.

Ground Hog Day in May?

So I've now had 2 weeks off of racing and I've really been enjoying the time at home, training, my own bed, and time to get my spring yard duties done. Spring is a bit of a crazy time of year for me since I continue to desire to have some landscaping and flowers around the house. Spring cleaning up on top of finding some long days in the saddle, to continue to build base, can lead to some late nights. I've decided to have a man mow my yard full-time this year which has really taken a load off and I'm thankful I can do that. This gives me a couple more hours in the week to do some other things that need done. As you can see from the picture above, one of these things was getting some hooks up in the garage to put wheels and tires on. I think I need a few more hooks to complete the deal. Its also a busy time for my birding activities as nesting is going on and territories are being established , so the feeders and nesting materials require some extra work.

Its also been nice to not be on the road so much. The nice weather has allowed me to pretty much commute by bike around town and to work, which I love doing. Especially since it is bike to work month. I haven't filled the gas tank in 2 weeks now! Nice. Of other note: KCV has partnered with 1000 Park Bake-afe in Winona Lake for Bike To Work Day on March 22 at 0700 to all who ride to work that morning to give away some special treats. I will be working in another city that day, but what a cool thing for my locals otherwise!

I've had a busy last 3 days of some fun training, coupled with some unexpected drama. I am actually stalling my time by blogging right now to give my body a little more rest before I head out to ride my last 3 hours of this training block that Drt Consulting has planned for me. I started my training Friday after work by doing a tough workout with my strength coach Darrell. I'm starting to feel really strong again core wise and I can really tell how connected my body is on the mountain bike because of it... but man are those workouts tough! I followed that by a early morning ride with the local group Saturday morning for a few hours. I then did tons of yard work that afternoon. I was exhausted, but I love tcb! Sunday morning, ground hog

day, I headed out for a epic mtb at Winona. I was able to meet up with Dave Strole and Josh J. for a lap. They were both flying and I was still trying to get my groove on. Cool to see my teammates riding so strong! After they headed home I settled into what I thought would be a nice, steady 3 more hours of riding on some perfect trail. At hour 2 that proved otherwise. I was flying down the goat trail hill to the bridge crossing and looped my bar end around some old trail fencing and found myself lying in a bank of dirt. It was one of those crashes that you don't even know what hit you and all you know is you are suddenly going to crash hard. I almost saved it by overcorrecting to not fly off the bridge, but ended up paving some new trail with my new xx gears. Not cool. I also flatted my front tire and was bummed to have to spend time fixing it before I could get back to riding. Anyway, bruised knee and elbows- no big deal. I have my crash out of the way so I can move on.

Well, not so quick there Nik. I enjoyed the rest of my ride and nearing my time on the trail that day I decided to light it up and head out of the last portion with some quickness. Well, seeing how's it was my ground hog day, that didn't work out. I railed a blind corner and found myself staring at a huge hog across the trail and me being the animal lover I am decided to swerve and miss it (I actually just did this out of instinct). It was a slow-mo crash and I knew I was heading for a tree and after that I knew I was heading for

an arrow trail marker, and then the ground. Yep, I ping- ponged off the tree with my bar, then tried to miss the post, which I mostly did, then slammed torso down to the ground. I simply was in the wrong place at the right time as they say. I gashed my calf on the plastic arrow, I think, and landed my back side on some forest, and knocked the breathe out of me on the ground. I laid there thinking I broke my ribs, but then after catching my breathe I was more just hoping I wasn't laying in poison ivy again, and I kinda had to laugh at the whole situation of the thing. So as I was looking at the poison ivy, I wandered what kind of plant has a bloody look to it. Oh, well, guess I'm spurting blood all over from my leg like Thor did from his arm that one year in Le Tour. Hmm, okay, guess I have to break out my old trauma ER knowledge and play EMT. Good thing it was cold that morning and I had my arm warmers in my pocket, they made a perfect tourniquet. That's another thing my Swiftwick products can do! I went down to the creek and cleaned off the bloody mess, saw that I could see the muscle hanging out, fixed my bike and headed home. I was just thankful this happened at the end of my ride and didn't interupt my training! Seriously.

I would have snapped a pic of the wound, but I didn't want to get blood all over my Iphone.

I went home and injected some lidocaine to take away the burn and thought I would close it myself, but one nice thing about working in anesthesia is that I know a few surgeons here and there, so why not have them fix it? I called my friend Dr Cook and he said he would be glad to fix me up and I met him at his OB/GYN office within the hour. Sure beats the ER. I know that sounds unfair to some people, but we put in a lot of crazy times together in surgery and we try the best we can to take care of each other and Dr Cook is man that follows this code. God only know how many gazillion sutures he has put in in his life, so a few more is no big deal. Anyway, he was going to put in a simple running stitch to make it look nice, but he thought better of it since I told him I had more riding to do Monday and he thought the runner would rip open, so he went with old school single closures. Its not like I really care about scars on that leg anymore, I think I'm far from my leg modeling days. He put in some muscle stitches underneath and about 8 or 9 stitches on the skin layer and I'm good as new! Well, maybe a little rough this morning. Maybe a lot rough. I know that all seems like a bummer day, but I really didn't mind it too much. I'm thankful to know some people to help me out, I got all my riding done, my bike is intact, and I don't need major surgery. What is a major incident for some people, isn't too bad for me anymore since I'm so accustom to major surgeries.

I'm now off to ride the road bike for a few hours in the rain, and of coarse I will have my eyes peeled for ground hogs or whatever else my be darting across the road. I don't want a ground hog day repeats!

Check this out!

So check this stuff out people. I have a couple of really cool companies on board this year that I want to share with you all during this post.

First off, I'm really excited about a company that is located right here in Northern Indiana, but you wouldn't know the difference between them and some Belgium company that is cooking embro in a damp, stoney basement somewhere while prepping bikes for a snowy cross race. Let's face it, we all love rides that require embro (at least I do) and the couple at Winston's Brand have great products for these days and other items too!

I'm excited to have Winston's on-board this year as a sponsor because they have a good thing going for them. I've always had a hard time finding a embro that gets my legs up to the warm level, but the stuff Aaron cooks up is the only product I have ever used that does the trick... and I've used a lot! While not a big name company, it's refreshing to use a product that is being produced with the passion to just get the product out there for people to enjoy. Aaron and Mary at Winston's do just that. Check them out occasionally at www.winstonsbrand.com to order online. They have all you need from summer blends to chamois cream... along with the best logo ever. Nice!

Next is another company based in TN and that's Swiftwick. They advertise as "the best you'll ever wear" and that's no joke! I was given a pair of these socks 3 years ago and loved them so much I wore them for every race since then. That's a lot of use and not a single sign of breakdown! They have since improved on that design and have several options of material and cuff heights now. They obviously "wick" swiftly as the name implys, but they also have a snug fit in just the right places without being too tight.

My favorite is the merino 4. I swear, its the best wool sock I have ever put on my feet! I also love the arm warmers and they are perfect for a little chillier ride then the standard spandex type arm warmer. I also find the olifen 1 to be a great sock to wear to work everyday. These socks add compression value and coming off of foot/ankle surgery, that's been a huge help! Dr Porter, my surgeon, Indianapolis Colt's surgeon, and one of the leading ankle surgeons in the world took a look at these sock and said that he like them! Yeah, you should probably get some.

In order to do that, make a trip on over to Revolution Bike and Bean in Bloomington. As of yet, they are the only Indiana shop that has these bad boys. We all know the RBB is on top of the game, so go get some socks and a latte! Otherwise, if you can't get into see those guys, take advantage of this offer. The cool folks at Swiftwick will spread a little love through me to hook you up. You can use a one time coupon code to get 15% off your online order at www.swiftwick.com. Once you place your order, type in NicoleRaces1 to get the discount. You should see "you're a friend of Nicole's, you're a friend of Swiftwick! Enjoy 15% on your total order from Swiftwick." Now go order some stuff! You won't regret it!

So that's the word, I am enjoying a couple off weeks from racing. I'm just training, training, training. Matter of fact its a chilly, rainy, day today and I need to head out for a couple hours of riding before work. Good thing I have some Winston's Hot Embro, some Swiftwick socks, and my Drt kit to help me enjoy the ride!

See ya!