Nothing Wrong With Her That $100 Won't Fix

It was a two race weekend for us. On Saturday, we did our first Cyclocross race of the season.

 I tried a lot of different things this year, and I'm still not sure what the results are yet. For cyclocross, I'm trying a few different things to get better. I'm generally either last or second to last in my races, so no matter what, I don't have much to lose.

1.) I didn't race that much during road season. Normally, I race almost every weekend from the Spring through the Summer and about halfway through cyclocross season, I am totally fried from racing. We'll see how it goes this year, when I only did  a few races over the Spring and Summer and did a lot more training.

2.) My two biggest problems for cyclocross races are fitness and fear. I thought I'd work on the fear part by trying to race with BMX pedals and not clipless pedals. That way, I hopefully won't unclip and ride on the tops of my egg beater pedals, which gives almost no power on hills.

3.) Being an older person, it takes a lot longer for me to warm my legs up than the younger ladies, and since cyclocross races begin with a sprint, I am usually spat out the back at the beginning of the race. So, I'm going to try and bring a trainer to most of my races and spin on it beforehand.

John raced first this time and won his category. He started out by crashing into one of the posts that holds the caution tape and getting it stuck in his spokes. He watched as every guy in his race passed him. He got back on his bike and said he used it as a big reminder not to spaz during his race. He must have learned it well, since we went on to pass all of the guys back and win. Go, John!

My own race went pretty well. they had a master's women category, which I always appreciate. I started out okay. There wasn't a long sprint, so I wasn't able to tell how much riding the trainer before the race helped.

There were two women in my category ahead of me at the start. I was right behind them when we hit the Dutch letters. It's a crazy spot where you have to ride your bike up and down a hill at tight turns. I've never been able to ride it before. On my first lap, I only mad it on the first part of the Dutch letters, when I had to get off my bike and run the rest. The two women gained a lot of time on me by riding it.

One of the women died after the first lap. She is normally much stronger than me, so I got lucky there. I passed her and another woman in another category and got pretty close to another woman in a different category than me, but I knew I wouldn't catch the leader in my category and none of the other women in my category were close enough to catch me, so I didn't go quite as hard as I normally would. I had a duathlon to race the next day and it didn't seem all that smart to kill myself when it wouldn't gain or lose me a place.

I won a t-shirt and bike cup.

So, in the end, I got second in my category. I was able to ride the Dutch letters the last two laps, with just a foot dab on the last hill and I rode more of the tricky parts of this course than I ever have before. My take-away, is that for now, I'll continue to use the BMX pedals and try to spin on a trainer before races and change it if I don't think it's working later.

Since they were one of the race sponsors, we got a free beer coupon for Peace Tree Brewing Company in Knoxville. Some other racers stopped in and we all talked ad nauseam about our races.

They don't serve food at the tap room, but we were able to order Mexican food and bring it in. I had chicken mole for the first time in forever and it was lovely.

On the way home, we stopped in Pella for some real Dutch Letter pastries for my daughters and encountered this Iowa version of a traffic jam.

Am I Living in a Box? Am I Living in a Cardboard Box?

I am THIS close to the weekend and it can't come fast enough.

For your cat viewing pleasure, I present Archie. Even though he doesn't quite fits, he sits anyway. It looks incredibly uncomfortable to me, but I'm not a fat, orange, cat, so what do I know?

The weather was as close to perfect as it can be today. At lunch I sat on a big boulder, on the stone patio between my office building and the dance building on campus and read my book, with only the music from a modern dance class to remind me of where I was. I am reading Tigerman. So far it is excellent. anything to take me out of the office and into my own little world, or another world altogether during a work break is A-Ok with me.

Wake Up and I'm Winning

I woke-up with a bit of a migraine on Sunday. Now that I'm taking over 500 mg of magnesium a day, very few of my migraines are unbearable anymore, but they can still be bad every once in a while. Sunday's migraine was workable. I did some biofeedback, took some Advil and worked on my pressure points and the worst of it was over before the race started. Hooray!

This was my first gravel time trial - another of those races where you race for a time, instead of racing with a pack and a place. In the past, I have been pretty nervous riding on gravel, I would brake going downhill and around corners and I would unclip on one pedal, when I would feel my bike sliding underneath me on the heavier gravel. Of course, being clipped-in on only one side takes away a bit of power...

While waiting for my time to go off, I was right by the start line, trying to turn around and going too slowly and I forgot to clip-out and crashed my bike in front of everyone. Awesome. Super pro. My friend Burne had a 30 second countdown before his start, but he was still reaching around his jersey pockets, trying to fish out his phone to get a picture of my, um..."triumph". He's a good friend.

My Italian racing CX bike, doesn't have any way to put a bottle cage on it. Since it was in the 90's that day, I was going to wear a Camelback, because I was still dehydrated from the day before, and the race would take me well over an hour with very little shade on the course, but the Camelback covered up my race number, so I put a bottle in my jersey pocket and stupidly, didn't practice taking my bottle out and putting it back in my jersey pocket on bumpy gravel before the race, Derrrrr.

 So, my race went like this: I headed out and did a great job (for me) of not braking on the downhills or when I turned and I never clipped-out (except at the turn around) and rode with my feet clipped-in for the first time during an entire gravel race. The downside, was that I was too scared to use my water bottle, because I wasn't sure how difficult it would be to get it back into my jersey pocket, and so I was starting to get REALLY dehydrated and dizzy by the end of the race. At one point, I felt like stopping, I was so out of it, but then how the hell else would I get back to civilization? So, I just kept pedaling my bike and went as slowly as I had to not to pass-out. Not the best race strategy, but you do what you have to...

Because I am an old lady, I was the only one in my category, and while my time wasn't great, I actually finished the race, and therefore, I was a winner. I won the cool t-shirt above with that Ben Franklin quote. Amen.

 After the race, our friend Burne asked us over to meet his new kitten. Ain't she a beaut?!

The rest of the day was spent napping, and then making a big dinner and hanging out on the porch. Even with the heat it was a perfect day...And we still had one more day before we had to go back to work. So many ways to win!

Find Me in My Field of Grass

Three day weekends can be so wonderful. This Labor Day weekend was very, very hot...But still lovely. On Saturday, I decided to do my first trail run since the Spring. In this case it was the heat...AND the humidity.

I was getting pretty dizzy from the heat on my way home and I ran past a house with an older woman (older than me, even) standing on her porch asking me if she could get me a glass of water. How nice was that? Reason number 5.796 of why I love living in Iowa. I declined because I was embarrassingly sweaty and stinky and I was only about a mile from home, but I was definitely touched by her gesture.

I've been having lots of allergy symptoms lately. I didn't really have allergies  until I was in my late 30's or early 40's, but now they seem to be like a full-time, year-round job for me.

After my trail run, I looked down at my shins and realized they were all yellow and lousy with pollen. That explains a lot.

I've been trying to be better about not spending so much money going out to eat. I love to cook, but we get so busy with work-outs and races and so we default to eating out more often than we should. So, this weekend, I tried hard to cook at home and make leftovers for lunches. On Saturday, I made breakfast for lunch. I used the leftover food from Friday night to make eggs with salmon, asparagus, onion and parmesan cheese, sweet potato hash and toast.

John heading up Cyclocross Hill, right as he noticed he had dropped his chain.

After I hydrated like hell and took a little nap to shake-off the early afternoon heat stroke, John and I headed to the Sugarbottom trails to play mountain bikes. we had a lot of fun riding. At one point, I thought I might try to get the guts up to try to ride part way down Cyclocross hill. I walked down part of it and thought if I rode the second  half, it wouldn't be as scary, but I wasn't brave enough yet. Maybe next time...

We did go out to eat on Saturday night. I wanted to take John out and see what the Red Vespa in Solon was like. It is a beautiful restaurant. We sat at the bar and our bartender was very nice and efficient. they had a decent beer selection and they warm olives as an appetizer was amazing. The only problem, was that there weren't many veggie or seafood options. They will substitute what you want for pizzas, but there wasn't a list of the veggies they had for substitution. John ordered the one veggie pizza they had. They also had a Margherita, but almost every pizza place has that and we're both kind of tired of that. I got a pizza that had eggs on it. It was supposed to also have pancetta, so I asked for them to leave it off, but it made for a pretty bland pizza without it. I might have to have someone check on better veggie options when we go there in the future.

Imagine All the People Living Life in Peace.

So, yesterday after work I was going to do a nice little, time trial, bike ride, but when I got home, I saw John's car parked in the street. I thought that was weird, but when I got closer to the house, I saw this.

Que' Lastima! One of the big, beautiful trees had cracked-off a very, large, limb. Lucky for John, he drove to work, so his car wasn't in the exact spot in the driveway where the tree limb fell. Lucky for me, It fell about a millimeter from my car and as far as I can tell, didn't even leave a scratch on it. And lucky for both of us, the tree is on the easement of land between the street and the sidewalk that the city is responsible for handling. I called the city and I'll find out when I get home tonight if it's been taken care of or not.

After all of that, I decided not to ride and stayed home and cooked picnic food for dinner. It was in the 90's around here and we don't have air conditioning, so it does behoove us to eat cooler types of food.

 All that drama just might have freaked-out Archie just a little...

...But Heidi found her quiet space and meditated right through it.

And We Don't Care About Our Own Faults.

I'm sad to see August, along with Summer, riding away from us. It was a big month for me in many ways. I was recovering from my July of vacations, Coadster moved in with us and John's sister visited. I screwed up my ankle for a couple of weeks when I crashed in that mountain bike race and couldn't run much then. Here are my August stats:

Miles run: Just under 60

Miles biked: Just under 600

Miles swum? swam?: 800 meters

Different types of bikes ridden: 5 of my 6.

Races competed in: 4 - 1 road, 1 time trial and 2 mountain bike

Books read: 5 - The Valley of Amazement/Amy Tan, Let the Great World Spin/Colum Mccann, Lucky Us/Amy Bloom, Island of the Blue Dolphins/Scott O'Dell, Oryx and Crake/Margaret Atwood

Concerts attended: 1 - Ricki Lee Jones

Blog posts written: 15

Days I played outside at some point: Every

Paintings or drawings started or finished: 0, but I did get the ink and the adhesive I need to complete the painting I'm working, so I think I finally have the logistics down...

House projects started or completed: 0

Days I was annoyed by my cats: Every

So, how was your month?

Time - Got the Time Tick-Tick-Tickin' in My Head

Thanks to Kirschen Seah for the photos. These are pics from a few years ago. I didn't get any from this year.

 Time for another race report. Last Sunday was the State Time Trial Championships. A time trial is a kind of bike race where you don't ride with a pack. We all start a minute apart and race for a time. We also ride those funny looking TT bikes with the straight bars, wear skin suits and shoe covers and wear the weird helmets. All of those things are used to make us more aero (read: faster against the wind).

Remaining in the aero bars, hunched over as far as possible, can be pretty painful when done for any amount of time. This particular time trial was a 40K (24.8 miles long). The goal of this race is to go as hard as you can for the distance allotted. Pacing for this type of race is everything.

I would say, that of all the road races, Time Trialing is my favorite. It generally favors older racers, because so much of it is about focus and not as much about being able to sprint. A few years ago, we had many more TT races in the Iowa City area, and I had many opportunities to figure out how to race them. I got better and better and when I did this race in 2013, I finished in 1 hour and 3 minutes and my average MPH pace was 23.3. This year, I only did one true TT race beforehand and boy, did it show.

On Sunday morning, we drove to Nichols, Iowa.It was pretty foggy. The race was supposed to start at 8, but because the fog was so thick, we were told there would be a half hour delay. I got my number on and worked on warming-up for my race. My chain was a little funky and every time I went into the big ring from the small, it dropped. Great. Since there wasn't much wind and very few hills, I figured I'd just leave it in the big ring for the entire race and not have to worry about the chain.

We were told that the race was being postponed again. The fog hadn't lifted. So, John and I went to the car and took a quick nap. I warmed-up again and then found out the race was going to be delayed for 15 more minutes. That was fine. I kept easy spinning and then lined-up for my race.

I knew I wasn't in the best shape for the race, so I was going to just try for a negative split (do the beginning of the race a little slower than the last half). Unfortunately, I think I went a little too slow at the beginning. I got passed by almost everyone behind me and I couldn't make it up by the last half. I think a lot of my bad pacing was from not time trialing enough before this race. I forgot what a decent pace was for me. Oh, well. I finished in 1 hour and 8 minutes. Five minutes slower than 2013 and 2 minutes slower than last year. I guess I have my work cut-out for me for next year...

Looking From a Window Above, It's Like a Story of Love.

We had a weekend of domesticity. We had a tough race to do on Sunday, so we had to lay-off the running and riding.  Since we'll be racing almost every weekend until December, it was probably a very good thing.

Friday night, I made one of my favorite meals for Coadster, John and myself - garlic butter salmon, baked potatoes and honey sriracha brussel sprouts. We also started watching "Interstellar" but started falling asleep, so had to finish in on Saturday night.

On Saturday, I thought I  might try and do a quick easy run, but when I woke-up, it was raining, so I said screw it and went back to bed. I needed the sleep.

When I finally did get up, I read on the porch and rank some tea to ease me into my day. Then I went to town, cleaning my living room from top to bottom, and sweeping up enough cat hair to make 5 new kittens in the process (EW!). I do love it when my house is all clean and cozy. It makes me not want to leave, even more than I already do.

I also got some seasonal stuff done, like making 4 batches of pesto sauce to freeze and have over Winter. I also made another vat of salsa, to have with the enchiladas and rice and beans we were having for dinner.

What was John doing during my flurry of work in the house, you ask? He was out in the garage, making it safe for trainer work-outs. He took our almost 20 bicycles and hung many of them from the ceiling, along with many of our different kinds of wheels. I can actually maneuver the lawnmower out of there now. Yipee!

I did spend some time playing the garden this weekend too.

I used to mow down or tear out these chives that kept trying to take over my garden, until I realized what a draw they were to the bees and butterflies. Now, I let them have the run of the place.

Vacation. All I Ever Wanted.

John emailed me the other day to ask about what kind of vacations I might want to do for next year. He was thinking about trying to get things lined-up in order to ask for vacation time as early as possible.

We had a few options and he wanted to know my thoughts. One option was whether we wanted to go to Cyclocross Nationals, which is in North Carolina this year. I've never been to the East Coast before, so that could be interesting and I think John would really like to go. I haven't been all that great at cyclocross the last few years, so it's not something I feel like I need to do, but we could go through Louisville and ride there and check out other areas to ride/hike and run around in North Carolina. Asheville is supposed to have great road cycling and I would love to see the Smoky Mountains. It's in the "possibly" pile right now.

 As you probably all know, I love going to a new place and discovering it by riding, running and hiking around it. seeing a new place gives me such a different perspective. I think John likes that too, but I'm not sure if he loves it as much as I do. Which leaves us to another option. RAGBRAI. John does love RAGBRAI. He is much more social than I am, so one of the parts about RAGBRAI, that can be a  little stressful for me, doesn't bother him at all. I do like RAGBRAI, I just don't love it. I get sooo overwhelmed by being surrounded by people, many of them drunk, and I have a harder time sleeping at night with the many drunk people partying close to our tent late at night. So, by the end of RAGBRAI, I am usually very sleep deprived (read: cranky).

I think John and I mesh pretty well, but we aren't exactly alike, and if we were, I'd probably be bored out of my mind with him, and so, like every other couple, we make compromises. There are things I do love about RAGBRAI. I love having a week of nothing to do but ride my bike all day on roads that don't have a lot of traffic. I also like the spectacle of all the craziness in every town and the cheesy photo ops. For me, I think it would be great to ride a few days of it every year. Because I know John loves it and I do like it and I want John to do the things he loves and I want to share that with him, I have no problem doing RAGBRAI for a full week next year.

In addition to RAGBRAI next year, I wouldn't mind taking a 3 day weekend up to Hayward , Wisconsin to do some cross-country skiing, especially if we don't get a lot of snow down here in Iowa. My birthday is on a Saturday this year. So, it might be fun to go to Madison, Wisconsin for a long weekend of road riding and mountain biking.

My fantasy vacation for next year, would be a trip to Utah to check out most of the National Parks. We could go for a week around John's birthday, or if he doesn't want to miss any cyclocross races, we could shoot for early September and include it during Labor Day weekend to give us an extra day. I have heard so many good things about the hiking, road riding and mountain biking in Southern Utah.

It will be interesting to see where we end up playing next year.

As They Speed Through the Finish, the Flags go Down.

thanks to Lisa Eggers for all of the great photos on this post.

Soooo, on Sunday I did my first real mountain bike race, that wasn't a training time trial race. It was pretty interesting, since last year I said mountain biking was just for fun and I probably wouldn't ever race it...

It rained the night before, which could have meant that the race would be canceled. Our trails can't handle tons of mountain bikes tearing-up the mud, and if it had rained too much, they would have canceled the race. Apparently, it rained jus enough. They gave us a two hour delay.

When we pre-rode the course, I slid-out on greasy corners a couple of times and used that as a warning to ride slow and steady during the race.

 The race begins going up a big hill on a gravel road. It's a great way to thin out the pack before you get to the single track section.

A race all depends on who shows up. I had no idea who I'd be racing against, and sadly, there were only 4 women in my race altogether. I didn't care if I was last or not, I just wanted to have a nice smooth ride and see what an actual mountain bike race felt like.

 I was second to last going into the single track. That gravel hill kills me every time. I figured I'd just see  how it went and ride as hard as I could. The first woman was a 17 year old racing phenom in the area in her first mountain bike race, riding a fat bike. She was easily in the lead, and I wasn't one bit surprised.

 I was able to pass the girl in second on an uphill part. I passed 2 of the beginner men, who started a minute ahead of us and then came upon a third guy who wouldn't get over to save his life. I feel bad for those kinds of guys who are so insecure that they can't let a woman chick them, but I didn't want to lose my second place and he was third from last and had almost nothing to lose in his race. So, the third time I said, On your left," I was much more forceful about it and he finally got out of my way.

I was worried about getting passed, because I knew I couldn't ride some of the things that the other girls could ride. So, I was trying to get out in front of the last two as far as I could, so they wouldn't pass me on a couple of the downhills I was too chicken to ride down.

I got to Cyclocross Hill and was far enough ahead of the two girls, that I couldn't see or hear them behind me. I got off my bike and walked down and then slid on the mud on the way up and wasn't sure if I'd be able to crawl my way up. Luckily, I finally got up, but not without a lot of teasing and heckling from John and the crowd- which I loved.

There was one spot where one of the beginner guys went through the tape. I missed my turn and got lost for a minute, but then figured it out and corrected myself and went back and found the right course. I was happy that no one passed me during that dumb mistake. I headed into the finish, and thought I was firmly in 2nd. Way better than I thought I'd do. The front runner's dad asked me where his daughter was. I had no idea. I thought she was way ahead of me. Turns out, she hadn't pre-ridden the course, so when she came to the part where the tape was down, she got lost and ended up DNF'ing. I felt badly about that, but it's all part of trail racing, I suppose. I ended up getting first and I won a new Camelback. They had great prizes. So, my first official mountain bike race is in the books and The Sugar Bottom Scramble was a lot of fun.

Oh, Oh, Telephone Line. Give Me Some Time...

 On Saturday we did the Courage Ride. It was a ride to raise money for cancer research. A bunch of our friends showed up and we all tried to wear our Red Shamrock jerseys. Red Shamrock is an organization that tries to raise money and awareness for the needs of Cancer survivors. Two great causes in one ride.

The ride was in Amish country - my favorite. John and I had a mountain bike race to do the next day, so we only rode about 68 miles and did that at a relaxed pace with our friends.

The countryside was beautiful and the weather was almost perfect - cloudy to partly cloudy and about 74 degrees. The wind picked up quite a bit, so heading South was a challenge.

The best part about riding through Amish country, is that they still have working pay phone booths, in case the Amish people need to make calls. We were really mature and spent time trying to stuff the phone booth and listening to the automated operator telling us to "Please hang-up and dial again". It's been a long time since I've heard that message.

John and I got home around 2:30. We showered and John took a nap and I read my book and then John went to the store and bought fun stuff to put in the veggie lasagna I made. I also made beet salad and they were both extremely tasty.