Write That Down

This might not be the most eloquent or entertaining post, but I wanted to write down a goal for the world to see.

I've been kind trying to refocus a bit since the Lumberjack and seems that all of my goals for the season are now either met, moot, or will not be met. 100 Days - met. Finish 2009 Lumberjack - not a lot I can do on that one at this point. Finish better than last in a DINO race - technically met, but moot since I catted down.

I still have the Pisgah stage race looming, and of course my goal is to finish, but it's lost its status of highly-focused, obscessive goal. I not ready to go through another eggs-in-one-basket experience like the Lumberjack. Whatever happens, I'm not going to take it personally.

Today starts a block of the meaty, make-me-faster training I've been missing. I'm a little scared of the pain, but I'm also excited at the prospect of seeing another bump in my threshold power by the time the month is over.

So I set a process goal for the next year: To raise my threshold power to 3.8 watts/kg by October 1, 2010. That means I've got to get a lot stronger and a least a little skinnier in the next 15 months.

There, I wrote it down. Now I have to do it.

A Dirty Job

Over the weekend, one of the girls that I race against mentioned her fear that sticking to a more rigid training plan would make cycling like a job for her.

Many times this season, my training plan has been all that I had to hold onto. After three years of whining and hoping for quick fixes, I've finally made a real committment to something despite having no guarantee that it will get me the results I want. So far, I am seeing great results on my power meter and not so great on the race course. Nevertheless, I keep coming back every day and doing what my calendar say to do.

So it made me wonder if cycling was like a job for me. I decided that it depended on what definition of job I used.

First I thought that a job is something you would quit if you no longer had to do it. Well, yeah. Most people I know would quit their jobs in an instant if they won the lottery. That would be because their needs for food, shelter, clothing, etc. would be met and their job would no longer provide any function in their life.

So a job is something that you do to fulfill a need and that you might not do if that need were filled in some other way. According to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, my day job takes care of my Level 1 and 2 needs and my cycling "job" covers the Level 4 and 5 range. The thing is that there is no such thing as winning the self-actualization lottery, so I pretty much have to have a job to cover that one. Of course, I have several sources of "income" in that area, including some parts of my day job, but athletic pursuits seem to be my career preference.

This season is paying well in the Level 5 area, but not so much for the less mature Level 4. My Level 4 self wants to pout about everyone else being faster than me and say "take this job and shove it". The problem is that I don't actually quit because I don't have another "job" to replace it with, so I just do poorly at the task at hand. This is the fight I've been having with myself for three years and it's gotten me nowhere. That's why I've decided to focus on getting my Level 5 needs filled and see what happens.

Of course, everyone fills their needs differently, so I'm sure not everyone who follows a strict training plan feels the same way. Personally, I don't mind that cycling is a job for me, because the "bills" need to be paid somehow and I can think of worse ways to do it.

Better The Second Time Around?

This weekend marked the first races of my second Cat. 2 mountain bike career. Well, technically, I've never been a Cat. 2; it was still Sport last time I did it. While catting down was a really hard decision to make, I think it was the right one, at least for now.

Saturday was a pretty good day for the most part. I did the STXC, but wussed out on the downhill, because it started raining really hard. I thought I had a shot at clearing some or most of it dry, but wet was another story. I think now I will officially concede my attempts/plans at completing the DINO downhill in the near future.

The short track went pretty good, I think. I expected to feel bad since I'm still really off my form due to my break from training, but I didn't feel bad. I honestly didn't feel much of anything, except the normal pain one expects to feel in that sort of situation. However, it was just bike racing pain and it wasn't distressing, so I guess that means I felt good.

I was the only girl in my class, so I'm now the Cat. 2 "state champion" for STXC. More importantly, I finished within what I felt was a respectable distance of the Pro/Cat 1 girls. Two of them were extremely good cyclocross racers who are way out of my league, but I was able to stay within 2 minutes of the third and fourth place racers. Considering that they usually beat me by 30 minutes in full-length XC races, that's pretty good.

Today was not so good. As I mentioned, the sky opened up at the conclusion of the short track races and it continued to pour until early this morning. The course was a muddy mess and my priorities quickly switched from racing to staying upright and going fast when I could. There were four girls in the class, but the top two were badassedly fast girls who just started racing this season. They finished within seconds of eachother in a time that would be good for the usual crop of Sport/Cat 2 women in dry conditions. I finished about 20 minutes later in third, in a time that was pretty terrible, but not unexpected, considering the mud. So, for today, catting down didn't save me one bit of butt-kicking, but it did save me one lap of mud-filled torture, and for that I am grateful.

No one was around to snap the requisite mud-covered pictures of me after the race, and I didn't want to sit around in the muddy kit longer than I had to, so here are my attempts to document today's conditions.

I Still Remember How to Ride a Bike

I even remember how to do Sweet Spot Bursts. Well, sort of. It was interesting coming off of nine days of complete rest and doing a hard workout. Three times 10 minutes would normally be "kinda hard", but tonight was more like really hard. I haven't downloaded my file yet, but I think my numbers were acceptable but no where near personal best territory.

Since I was on my "mid-season break" last week, I decided to take a break from blogging. Sure, I could have regaled you with tales of awesomely bad TV and movies and of spectacular feats of junk food consumption, but I decided just to wait until there was more cycling stuff to talk about.

Not that my Sweet Spot Bursts are that interesting. You probably would have rather heard about "Urban Legend: Bloody Mary" and the Brownie Batter Blizzard/frozen pizza combo the Monday after the Lumberjack. That day was pretty much Mardi Gras Lindsay-style.

Anyway, the only real excitement for this week is the "DINO Mountain Bike Challenge" coming up this weekend. I believe that it was listed as a "must do" in the 2009 VeloNews Race and Ride guide, but I can't find that issue to confirm. Basically, there's a short track and downhill race on Saturday and a regular XC on Sunday. I've said that I was going to do the downhill the last two years and I've never actually got up the motivation/guts, but hopefully it will happen on Saturday. I think the key factor will be if it rains before then and how much. That course reminds me of the nursery rhyme about the little girl with the little curl in the middle of her forehead, because when it's good, it's very, very good, and when it's bad, it's horrid.

A New Attitude

"Don’t worry about riding good or bad, let your mind run blank. It’s hard to explain, because all your planning etc goes around making it a long ride and being ready for a long ride. But when it comes down to the ride, focus on the trail right in front of you. Don’t worry about what’s next or if your nailed or flubbed the last section. Little tiny bites at a time make it really easy to swallow more than you probably can."

That was Jason's sage advice to me a few weeks ago after I struggled on a long training ride. However, I think I may adopt it as my new attitude towards cycling in general.

I'm surprisingly not that upset about not finishing the Lumberjack. Sure, I had to choke back a few tears when I handed in my timing chip early and spent a lot of the drive home worrying about what people would think when I dropped out after all the hype. I could have used my crash as an excuse, but my injuries actually did very little to hamper my performance. Despite three months of really solid training, I just wasn't fast enough in time for the race.

Given those facts, I can either get really pissed that my genetic makeup won't allow me to average 8 mph on singletrack for 12.5 hours after three months on a training plan that probably would have landed a person of normal ability in the top 10 or I can be proud of myself for sticking to that training plan for three months. I've chosen the latter. Because getting mad about my genetic makeup will not do any good.

Here's the thing. I'm not going to quit racing just because I'm not good at it. I'm also not going to resign myself to being a happy, smiley, back-of-the-packer with a "healthy attitude". I'm going to keep working and take this thing as far as I can take it, even if it doesn't go as far as I'd hoped. I'm going to stop caring what other people think, especially when they think I don't deserve to care about racing because I'm slower than them. I'm going to do what I want and I'm going to care as much as I want, because that's what I want to do. I'm not going let anyone tell me how I should feel, either.

What I will do is take the next week off the bike, because that's what my training plan says to do. When it tells me to start doing workouts again, I'm going to do them. Maybe I'll set a goal of putting together another 100 days, just for good measure. I'm going to try not to think about Pisgah too much and just do the work until October 15. Then I will accept whatever happens when that day comes. If I can not smash into some pavement on October 12, that's even better.


There's one other thing I've been thinking. You know how some people ride to raise awareness for charities? I think I'm going to start a foundation for TDD (Talent Deficiency Disorder). While there is no cure for this disease, I would like to prove that it can be effectively managed with proper treatment. Eventually, I would like to raise enough money to build the "Lindsay Rodkey Center for Kids Who Can't Ride Good and Wanna Learn How to Do Other Stuff Good Too".

The Lumberjack

Once again, I came home from the Lumberjack without my big "F". I used to not understand why people did things "just to finish". I mean, how hard can it be just to finish something if you train properly? That was before I realized how hard 100 miles of singletrack really is and how it gets even harder if you're abnormally slow.

Basically, I started out feeling fine the first lap. The pace felt good, I was eating exactly when I needed to, etc. My aggressive rehabbing got my crash-related injuries under control to the point that my butt-pain threshold was in sync with my lactate threshold so basically my butt would tell me to back off about the same time my legs did. The pain wasn't bad, just enough to remind me when I was going too hard.

The course was divided into three almost-even sections, because there was an 8-mile inner loop that we did first, and they had an aid station 8 miles into the outer loop. Then there was a 9-mile section back to the pit that was the hardest.

The start was on a paved road and it took about 10 minutes to get to the actual singletrack. After I made it up the first hill, which turned into a bottleneck hike-a-bike for all but the very front of the pack, I just tried to settle in. Then I realized that I needed to complete each section of the course in about one hour to make the time cutoff. So I hit the first one at 1:08, which was less than an hour after the 10-minute roll-out. Then I hit 16 miles in 2:03, and I was feeling really good about my pace. Then the last 9-mile section took a lot longer and I ended up finishing my lap in 3:18. I needed to average 3:20 for the first three laps to make the time cutoff, but I really wanted my first lap to be about 3 hours so I'd have some wiggle room for pit stops and a little slowing down on the next two laps.

Since it was already over 3:20 when I left the pit, I knew that I had absolutely no wiggle room on the next two laps. I tried to pick up my pace on the first 8 mile section of the second lap, but I actually ended up going slower than I had on that section the lap before. At that point, I knew there was no way I was going to make the time cutoff, but I tried to convince myself to at least ride up to the cutoff and get 75 miles in. Unfortunately, I had pushed myself too hard on the last section and my stomach started feeling bad. I slowed down a lot and ended up skipping my next gel, telling myself I'd eat at the next aid station. I slowed down a lot after that because I really had trouble holding it together once I saw that making the cutoff time was out of the range of possibility.

So I stopped after 50 miles really disappointed but not totally surprised. My best ride up until that point was 41 miles in 6:15 and yesterday I did about 51 in 7:10, which is a reasonable improvement in distance and pace, even with feeling bad the last 17 miles. I was hoping the course would be faster than the trails I'd been training on and that the taper would give me a big bump in speed, but neither really happened. I pretty much raced like I had trained, which is what is supposed to happen. I didn't do "bad"; I just didn't have the time to get as fast as I needed to.

Lumberjack Pictures

Cooking my "gourmet road trip" dinner at the cabin.

First time through the pit area.

Leaving pit.

At 33 miles.

Sticking with my nutrition plan.

Unseated

I actually chose this title a couple of day ago based on my planned workout, but it's a bit ironic in light of actual events.

The original reason for the title had to do with the plan to get out of the saddle and sprint my 6 x 15 second efforts all proper-like. The thing is that, in the last three months, I've blown away all of my previous bests for all critical power ranges over 12 seconds. However, my 5, 10, and 12 second bests are still stuck back in October when I last did sprints for cyclocross. Until now, I've resisted the urge to throw in some some unnecessary sprinting just to increase those numbers, which mean practically nothing in endurance racing, anyway. However, when I saw 15 second intervals on my plan, I thought that just once I could put up some vanity numbers.

Talk about a morality lesson. I was in the middle of the first one cranking the pedals and rocking hard. I'd just told myself to "stick out my butt" to try and smooth out, when I felt a jolt and then my bike coming out from under me. All I could think in the deceptively long interval before I actually hit the ground was, "Holy crap, my first road crash." As I hit the ground and started to slide, "This isn't as bad as I thought it would be." As I continued sliding, "Crap, I'm going to tear up my shorts." As I slid to stop, "Okay, this hurts. Can I get up? There's a car coming, so I better."

Only upon getting safely out of the road did I realize that I had just crashed really hard three days before the Lumberjack. Since I was still in the "knocked silly" stage, it was too soon to tell how hurt I actually was. I even seriously considered continuing the workout.

Unfortunately, I have a three-inch radius of pain around my tail bone that allowed me to ride home, but I couldn't get over 90 watts without extreme pain. Now I can't even bend down and pick something off the floor. The good thing is, I don't think there's any bone damage and I'm just crossing my fingers that the pain lets up before Saturday. This is definitely not how I was planning on feeling tonight.

The worst part is, I can't even explain how I crashed. I don't know if I was just cranking too hard and twisted the bars or what. I guess it doesn't really matter, because all I can do now is hope I'm in okay shape by Saturday.

I did set a season best 5 second power, but I don't think that's going to much of a consolation prize if I messed up my first A race of the season to do it.

~~

P.S. Please excuse any spelling or grammar errors. I'm in a lot of pain right now and don't feel like proofreading.

Day 100

From my FasCat New Athlete Questionaire, February 23, 2009:

What is your biggest goal in the next year?
a. Put 100 days of consecutive training together (planned rest days okay, skip days are not)
b. Finish the Lumberjack 100
c. Not get last in my category at a DINO race (local series)

Well, the counter started on March 9 when my first FasCalendar took effect, which means that today is Day 100. I didn't really do the math when I set these goals, so I had no idea that the first two would come together in the same week. Now all I have to do is get in a super-easy 45 minute spin after work today and I will be able to check Goal A off the list. Despite the pre-race nerves that I've already had for over a week, I'm pretty confident that I'm ready to complete Goal B this weekend.

Things No One Told Me About Mountain Biking

Today I was selfish. That really shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that knows me very well, but I have mixed feelings about the fact that I stayed home and did my ridiculously easy 1.5 hour ride when there was so much else going on.

By staying home, I missed both the Midwest Women's Mountain Bike Clinic and the DINO race in Ft. Wayne. It all goes back to a few months ago when the organizer of the women's clinic asked for volunteers. As soon as I saw the date, I wondered if she knew it was the same day as a DINO race. After a few more requests for help, it became obvious that she knew and just didn't care. It's not that a DINO race is soooo important that girls who race wouldn't be willing to miss it for a good cause (and I think some did), but I thought it was kind of rude of the organizer, who doesn't race, to completely not acknowledge that racing is important to people who race and politely ask us to make a sacrifice to help out.

This is the first time I have spoken out publicly about this topic. Until now, I have simply not replied to any request or forum thread and kept my feelings to myself. It seems like there is already enough friction between the racers and the non-racers in the mountain bike world, and being the self-absorbed racer that I am, I'd rather just stay out it.

I think my approach has been good, in general, but I still feel a bit guilty because it's not really about my feelings, or those of the clinic organizer; it's about helping women who want to mountain bike get better. Part of the problem is that I was so into advocating women's mountain biking my first couple of years, only to have my efforts run into a brick wall, that I gave up and decided just to worry about myself. Which is what I did today.

I still don't know if clinics, etc. do that much good in increasing long-term female participation in the sport. Sure, participation is increasing, but I think it's a side-effect to the rapid growth of cyclocross. 'Cross is relatively safe and unintimidating to a new racer, and now some of the girls who started with cross are spilling over into other disciplines. It's pretty much the marijuana of cycling. In the end, it seems like the girls who really want to become good mountain bikers will find a way and the ones who aren't so committed will fall away no matter how much encouragement they get.

So what would I have taught if I'd decided to help with the clinic? I'm not sure that I would have been that great of an instructor, but I felt like writing down some mountain bike lessons that I've learned along the way that I wish someone had pointed out sooner.

1. I raced almost an entire season before learning about getting out of the saddle in the "attack" position for descents. I just kind of figured out how it was supposed to be done after a few months of watching other people. When I finally decided to try it, I started on the straightest, shallowest downhill I could find, and pretty much death-gripped the saddle with my thighs.

2. Once I was willing to loosen my death grip, I realized that all of the drops that I was afraid of weren't so bad if I would lean back behind the saddle. Adam told me this when I first started riding, but the problem was that I had to learn to get out of the saddle to get behind it. Oops.

3. After about a year and a half, I ran into Sally Marchard Collins at Brown County one evening and she ended up giving me a lesson on counter-steering so that I could corner faster. I spent quite some time trying to copy the move at low speed, but despite all of my slow-mo "stay upright and tilt the bike towards your outer thigh" practice, I never officially got it. I think some of it eventually absorbed and I'm pretty sure I do it now without trying. I still can't do it when I try.

4. When descending, keep your middle and index fingers ready on the brakes and grip your bars with your ring and pinky fingers. I actually raced two seasons before figuring that one out. I used to put all four fingers on the brakes, but then I had a nasty crash when my hand bounced off the bar on a high-speed descent. Not long after that, I was looking at pictures in Velonews and observed the correct hand position from the racers in the magazine. I didn't crash hard again until the Brown County race a couple of weeks ago.

5. Finally, it is easier to straight over a rock or root, even if it is a bigger bump for your front tire. I first realized this at the Ouachita Challenge, and it was confirmed at the Brown County race when the girl in front of me was trying to steer around everything and going so slow.

After reaching this conclusion, I really don't understand the idea that new riders should start out on a hardtail because it will help them "learn to pick lines better". It seems to me that usually what appears to be the harder line is a actually the better one, and having a full-suspension to help you through it isn't going to impede your progress.

Of course, regardless of the type of bike one is riding, it's always better to learn to roll over stuff in a technically correct manner. I still don't think I have this one down. Instead of popping my tire and putting it where I want it, I kind of "monster truck" over stuff. It's kind of amazing how far I've gotten using this technique, but I will probably never be able to do this with it:

From www.sonyalooney.missingsaddle.com. Very cool picture.

Too Big for Twitter

I'm doing some last minute planning for the Lumberjack and I came across this on their website:

The aid station will be stocked with Perpetuem this year, not Heed. There will also be Powerade, oranges, bananas, nuts, cookies, P&J, jerky, gummies, Hammer Gel, e-caps, pretzels and Coca Cola.

MMM, free jerky...

A Worthy Goal

Her eyes are cold and restless
Her wounds have almost healed
And he'd give half of Texas
Just change the way she feels

But he knows her love's in Wellston
And he knows she's going back
Well, it ain't no normal bike race
It's that damned old Lumberjack

It may not be the coolest thing to paraphrase the words of former Oklahoma State University javelin thrower, Garth Brooks, but it's a pretty accurate assessment of this week. It's too late to train and too early to pack. All that I can do right now is rest and do a few short intervals. (I'm SO setting a personal best for my one minute power tonight.)

Although Adam officially went on record about his feelings regarding endurance racing this week, he's actually being very supportive. I think he's actually just happy to see me excited about training and racing again. Sure, it would be more convenient for everyone if I could find this kind of motivation for DINO races, but that's just not going to happen.

The other day someone asked me if I was crazy for signing up for the Pisgah Stage Race. The short answer is yes, but the more I thought about it, the more logical it seemed. For someone with my lack of natural talent, winning even local races would be a difficult feat. So I could work really, really hard to accomplish something that's not even that great (I understand it holds more sway if you're a guy) or I could put in the same amount of work to accomplish something that only a few people are even willing to try.

All I know is that for the first time in nine years, I have actually set a goal, stuck to it for over three months, and put in the necessary work day in and day out without fail, no matter how hard it got. I think the key is that I've finally set goals that were achievable, but are still worth achieving, at least to me.

Fully Loaded

As my coach would say, the hay is in the barn. (At least I think that's what he means when he says that.) Today I capped off the 16.25 hour week that marked the end of my training load for the Lumberjack. Tomorrow is the beginning of my two-week taper. It's a combination of rest days, super easy rides, and a few short intervals.

Luckily, there is no more mountain biking left before the race, because after nearly 10 hours of mountain biking this weekend, I'm a little tired of it. I know I'll have be on my bike longer than that for the race, but it's a little easier when I'm in a race because that's what I'm supposed to be doing. However, taking that much time out of my real life, plus all the driving, and the explaining to the husband why I disappeared for most of the weekend wore on me a bit. I know it will pay off big time, but I'm glad to be done for a while.



Saturday I was supposed to do a 6-hour endurance ride, and I decided to do something a little different. I had never been to Versailles State Park, so I drove 1.5+ hours both ways on mostly two-lane roads in the hope that some new terrain and smaller crowds would inspire me. The good news is that it worked out great and I had a very successful ride, with no real pain or fatigue even after 6 hours and 15 minutes.

I even had a riding partner for the first two hours, since a guy named Steve who arrived about the same time as me offered to show me around. It worked out pretty well, as he was about the same speed as me, and I didn't feel overtaxed trying to ride with him. He even took my picture standing on the Old Versailles-Milan Highway. Yes, some of the singletrack at Versailles used to be a "highway". I think that must have been in the horse-and-buggy days, but it's still hard to imagine now that it's a 18-inch wide strip of broken rocks.

More rocks at Versailles. I thought this feature was cool, although only about a mile of the trail was rocky.

Today was a toughy. Although my long mountain bike rides are usually followed by a Suck-it-up Sunday spin on the road, today was one more trial before I earned my rest. I was assigned 3.5 hours on the mountain bike with 2 x 20 minute Sweet Spot. My legs felt terrible when I first started out and it took 45 minutes of messing around on the Pine Loop before I decided I needed to just get down to business. Once I actually started my Sweet Spot efforts, I actually felt decent. I guess this will be an important lesson for my Pisgah Stage Race training. I finished off the last two hours after the intervals feeling not-so-great, but still riding at an okay pace.

Right now, I'm so tired and so glad to be done, but I'm proud of myself for what I've accomplished so far. Now I just need to rest up for a couple of a weeks, before I head to Michigan to harvest the fruits of my labor.

A Little More Dirt

I found more inspiration on Cycling Dirt today. It was just what I needed to see. Maybe I should buy a single-speed.

Jason called me yesterday to discuss some training calendar stuff. He'd already seen my last post and also thought that catting down in XC was a good idea. I still had my race plate on my bike when I was getting ready to ride yesterday. I guess I'll be trading it in for something a little less flashy (with triple digits) next time. I couldn't help but think of the immortal words of Gwen Stefani: "I'm about to give you away, for someone else take."

Wednesday was a Zone 2 ride out Highway 45 and across South Shore. On rainy days, the "highway" is always so empty past Unionville. It gave me a chance to snap a cool picture of the foggy greeness in the Yellowwood State Forest.

Post slow-mo endo over a rocky dip

Finally, I made another attempt at Schooner Trace last night. I hadn't really planned on it, but the urge suddenly struck and I went for it. The trail seems to be drying better than when I rode it April. At the time, it was significantly wetter than the rest of the system; now it's about the same. I guess the trail still isn't officially open, even though people have been riding it for months, so I don't think any maintenance has been done since they finished the cutting. There are tons of trees down, so that made for a lot of stop and go. I know the trail's supposed to be hard, but I'm still hoping that the finishing work improves the flow a little. I did manage to tip over a couple of times (once into a patch of poison ivy), but crashing at 2 mph hurts a lot less than smashing into a tree at 15-ish.

Compared to Standards

Courtesy of Cycling Dirt


I saw this video after I posted the picture of myself on the paved climb at BCSP. Here is what going up a paved climb on a mountain bike is supposed to look like. About the only thing I can copy from the Luna Chix is the skinsuit. Maybe some day when I own a sweet carbon fiber hardtail with a bottle cage, I can wear my beloved skinsuit without looking like a dork. I can ditch the hydration pack and stand up hammer. Rawr.

Speaking of XC racing, last night I started giving some serious consideration to catting down to sport for the rest of the DINO season. This is following the second year in a row at Brown County where the sport women's field only did one lap, while I managed to have something bad happen on the second lap and DNF. Both years I was 20-30 minutes off the back of expert girls, while there was a large well-balance sport field with plenty of girls closer to my speed. Afterward, I was left staring at the results thinking, "I would have done okay in sport." At least I would have gotten off the course before disaster hit.

The DINO women's classes have come a long way in the last couple of years. When I was in sport class, I was mid-pack when a lot of girls showed up and top 3 when it was just "the usual suspects". It wasn't exactly auto-upgrade material, but I upgraded because Angela was upgrading and she was the only person faster than me who I could count on to show up at nearly every race. The distances wouldn't be that much longer and I would have at least one other person to race against every time.

However, when the next season came around, making sure I had at least one other person to race against was no longer an issue. The fields had grown larger and stronger and I'd gotten slower after upgrading instead of faster. All of the sudden, I had to deal with an onslaught of sport girls kicking my butt and 30 minute gaps between myself and the next expert woman. The standards had changed.

So here I am, back on the upswing fitness-wise, but I'm still falling very short of the expert class standard. I realized this morning that, while finishing the distances for expert races isn't an issue (what's 18 miles when you're shooting for 100?), I am nowhere near the 1:30-1:45 time guideline that the promoter lists on the website. The fastest I've ever finished an expert-distance race is 2:05. This was not something I thought about before I upgraded, because there was very little precedent for what was required, but now it seems that I'm the only girl in the class who is consistently much slower than that time estimation.

All of this leaves me wondering if it's time to take a step back. All I know is that I'm starting to hate XC racing and that I've pretty much dreaded the last two races. It would hurt to downgrade, but it would be much less demoralizing to be beaten by sport girls if I were one of them. The shorter distances might even give the confidence to ride a lot harder than I have been. Even though I can ride for hours and hours now, I'm having a hard time making past 1 hour at XC race pace.

I know that getting faster is supposed to be about learning to suffer, but isn't bike racing also supposed to be fun? I suppose it depends on the form of the suffering. What lesson/fitness gain am I achieving from slogging through 2 hours of self-inflicted torture because "I was supposed to be faster than this by now"? Perhaps it's time to accept where I really am and focus my efforts on competing against girls of similar ability, rather than beating myself up over the people I can't compete with.

BCSP Picture

Nita sent me this picture of me on the opening paved climb from yesterday's race. I'm not sure if I'm grimacing or laughing at her singing "She's a Maniac" for me while I was climbing. I actually remember trying to make up new words about "a college-town girl on a Sunday afternoon" the rest of the way up the hill, but it just wasn't coming.

I'm sore in some weird places today and a little bruised, but I don't think my crash caused any real damage. That's good, because this is my last week of real training before I taper for the Lumberjack and it's a doozy. I'm scheduled for 16 hours, with 6+ of singletrack on Saturday, and other 3.5 more on Sunday.

Bike Racing and Waffles

Today was the DINO Brown County race. I rode my first lap in the time that I wanted, but just about everyone else rode it a lot faster. I haven't seen the times yet, but I think the course might have been smokin' fast today judging by the speed of the pro/expert guys that lapped me.

Unfortunately, the race didn't end well for me. I was robbed of the opportunity to blast the opening downhill of the of the race on the first lap because I got stuck another rider who beat me up the opening climb but was descending pretty slowly. The really sucky part is that I like to use the momentum from the first downhill to carry me up the next uphill, but today I had none, so I felt like I wasted a lot of energy.

Anyway, I think I made up for my missed opportunity by being especially reckless on the twisties and downhills of the second lap and I ended up paying for it dearly. I clipped a tree at a high rate of speed and somehow managed to accomplish the most painful crash of my life while barely getting cut up or dirty. I bruised my hip and my knee, but I'm not really sure why it hurt that bad. I think it was just shock, but I felt like I'd throw up from the pain. I lay in the middle of the trail for what felt like a really inappropriate amount of time (it was probably really 30 seconds) and finally rolled over to the side. I wasn't able to get my bike off the trail before a guy came up behind me. He moved it off the trail for me and kept going while I watched a bunch of guys go by and tried to decide if I could stand or not. After a couple of minutes, another expert girl who was behind me due to a flat came by and made sure I could stand and get on my bike. I was able to ride in my granny gear, but I wasn't in any condition to try and make another pass at the Aynes climb in that condition, so I took the shortest way back.

Although I like going out to eat after races, it was kind of unnecessary since we were 30 minutes from home. Adam's birthday was on Friday, and I got him a waffle maker (which he had asked for). So instead of Cracker Barrel, we had afternoon breakfast at home. He made the waffles and I reheated the frozen turkey sausage links. It was a pretty good meal.

Questionable Conditions

Mrs. Bigglesworth questions my taste in beverages.

Last night I did something a little out of character. I actually made a conservative decision about whether trail conditions would allow my Thursday night skills ride to happen. Of course, the decision was influenced as much by work conditions as by trail conditions. Things were very hectic and I spent most of the afternoon wondering if I would even get to leave at 5:00. I did, but I was exhausted.

I knew it had rained some during the night, but I didn't know how much and there were no trail updates on HMBA from anyone whose judgement I trust. It was overcast and windy and it the radar was showing a big blob of rain in the vicinity, so I decided to ride on the road rather than driving to BCSP and having the sky open up as soon as I got there.

Of course, despite the radar image, I got hit with about three rain drops my whole ride, but I found out later that the trails were pretty slick. I'd had a very specific plan about what I wanted to accomplish last night skill-wise and slickness wouldn't have helped it. Basically, I wanted to work on fine tuning some insights that I'd gained during last weekend's ride. I seem to clean most of the Hesitation Point and Walnut trails about 50% of the time, but I wanted to work on doing it a controlled manor, rather that my usual point-and-shoot method.

I'm also hoping to give Schooner Trace another shot sometime soon, but newer trails don't dry very well, so finding the right opportunity is hard. I've made the goal of clearing it before I leave for Pisgah, since I will need all of the skills I can get to make it through that race.

Anyway, last night was kind of a bust training-wise, because I just went out and spun around without doing much. My legs feel rested, so hopefully that will lead to a good performance at the Brown County DINO race on Sunday. I'm still feeling a little ambivalent about having to race at all-out cross country effort. I feel like I will definitely find some mojo on Sunday, but the question is how much, how soon, and for how long.

Going Back For More

So much riding and so little blogging, I don't even know where to begin. I had nice little ride reports planned out in my head for the last three days, but was ultimately too tired and busy to put any of them down on the interwebz. Now I'm so behind that I will have to try to summarize in the interest of brevity.

Saturday was another big mountain bike ride. Luckily, this time I had good legs and good weather. I still didn't cover as much ground as I would have liked, because fearing that I'm quickly burning myself out on the loops, I chose a slower and more congested route to mix things up a bit. I spent the first three hours riding from the campground and covering the entire BCSP trail system, except Schooner Trace, which is the new "double black diamond expert trail" that I still won't mess with outside of Thursday night skills rides. After that, I went back to the campground to refill my hydration pack and then headed out for another couple of hours of out-and-back. It was hard going back out, because after my break, my body started yelling at me to stop. Many, many hurty body parts. Luckily, I was eventually able to get over it, which will be important because the Lumberjack will be require "going back for more" a total of three times after the first lap.

Sunday I had to go back for more in a very unexpected way. I woke up feeling like I'd been run over by a truck and procrastinated all morning. Finally, I forced myself to leave for a four-hour ride at around 3 pm (great idea). I just kind of turned the legs and couldn't really decide on a route. Normally, four hours on the road would mean a trip to Nashville, but I just wasn't feeling it. Knowing that I would be slow, I decided to do my normal three-hour route, and depending how slow I actually was, tack something on at the end. It was hot and humid and I ended up going through one of my two bottles in the first hour. I knew that trying get through three hours on one bottle was a bad idea, so I tried to hatch a plan to get more water. I detoured to the Morgan-Monroe State Forest shelter, hoping they might have a spigot somewhere, despite not having running-water bathrooms, but I had no luck. So I decided to ride almost all the way back to town, get water from the "bikers" water fountain at the fire station, and choose a new route based on my remaining time. By the time I got the water, I had killed two hours, and I was able to think of a good route to finish the last two. So it turned out that on Sunday, going back for more actually made me feel better, as I was able to complete the ride fully hydrated and thinking, "It's just two more hours" rather than dealing with the four that I had been dreading all day.

Finally, I capped off my long weekend with the famed 2.5 hour "BBQ Ride". I didn't eat any barbeque on the ride, but my in-laws came down and took us to eat catfish for Adam's birthday, which is later this week.

In sum, I finished the weekend with 12 hours and 16 minutes over a three day period. Until recently, that was a really not WEEK, not just long weekend. Sure, I'll have to do about double that in four days at the Pisgah stage race, but I have nearly five months to get ready. I just have to find a way to get past the second day garbagey feeling.

Product Placement

As I mentioned the other day, lately I'm getting a lot of rest days to make up for the fully-loaded weekends leading up to the Lumberjack. I thought this would be fun, but I'm getting a little stir-crazy (my last post as evidence), not to mention that I'm running low on blog material. So I'm thinking back to the bad old days of last winter when days off were the norm and I was low on material. What did I turn to?

1) Lame-o written displays of emotion (covered on Monday)
2) Proselytizing about fabulous (or un-fabulous) cycling-related products that I'd recently encountered.


I've been meaning to mention the upcoming debut of Women's Cycling Magazine for a while, but between my lack of other material and the fact that the June 22 release date is soon approaching, today seemed like a good day to do so. I'm not sure how widespread the word about this new magazine is, because I only knew about it from a Bicycle Retailer and Industry News article that Adam emailed to me. However, after further research, I realized that the proprietor is a fellow Velo Bella (but not the one on the cover). Although I am generally skeptical of "women's specific" cycling products, I figure a real live glossy magazine about women's cycling has got to be a good thing, especially if all of the covers feature mud and pained expressions. Hopefully, subscription numbers will be high and this will be our chance to tell the cycling industry that we're here, we have no fear, now make us some decent bib shorts.

A Weekend on the Brink

The last couple of months I have been giving a lot of thought as to how I can avoid the mistakes that lead to my dropping out of the Lumberjack last year. It seems that the last week has been dedicated to the less rational aspects of this preparation. If freaking out will get me any closer to success, then this week has been a huge leap for me. Unfortunately, I think it's just the opposite. However, I'm not sure there's any harm in listing three of the fears that have turned me into a shaking, anxiety-ridden mess during the last week:

1) The fear that I'm doing badly at my job and everyone hates me. I've been going through this on and off since I started my new job, but for some reason I've had a strong feeling that "sky was falling" for the last week or so. I think this has to do with the fact that the lines of what I'm actually supposed to do are a little fuzzy. I like the freedom of working without a lot of close supervision, but I think I would perform better with some more clearly defined objectives of what I'm trying to accomplish. Plus, even though I really like the job in general, I'm still me, and I'm afraid my anti-social curmudgeoness is going to get me into trouble.

2) The fear that I'm tough enough to finish the Lumberjack, but still too slow to make the cutoff time.

3) The fear that the HMBA is going to send an angry mob with torches after me for my actions regarding number 2.

Basically, after everything mentioned above I panicked because my first chance at doing a long mountain bike ride on semi-fresh legs was about to be foiled by a thunderstorm at 2 am on Saturday. So as I lay there with my heart pounding, I decided that if the rain was gone when I woke up, I was going to ride anyway. So I did, but I felt terrible because even though the trail was 80% slick but firm, 20% was a little too soft. That, combined with everything else on my mind this week, I rode like total crap. I got in 5 hours, but it was the slowest 5 hours I've ever done that didn't include hike-a-bikes. I'm sure I still got some fitness out of it, but not the boost of confidence I was hoping for.

I'm really not sure why I'm such a nervous mess lately; I thought I gave up crazy back in February. However, the thing that got me feeling better a few months ago (besides my new job) was the realization that I had to keep going and do what was good for me (eat well, sleep well, train well) even when I my mind and body were telling me that I "needed" to sit on the couch and eat junk food. I think that will all of the extra rest days that I've been getting lately, I've been letting myself slip into some bad habits of thinking I deserve a little junk food, a little couch time, a little less structure. And maybe I do deserve a little bit, but I'm afraid I've been taking too much. The extra days off the bike are physically necessary if I want to make it through the few monster weekends I have left before the Lumberjack (12 hours over three days this coming weekend), but I need to make sure that I'm still doing something productive with my time. While I'll never be one those "Oh I just love to ride my bike" people, and I've never had a runner's high, I have to admit that weeknight intervals make me a nicer person.

So even though I've now made it to day 70 without a missed workout, I can see where I've been wavering in other areas and it's time to pull myself back from the edge. I need to back off the junk food and go to bed on time. I also need to take more action to be a good employee with a good attitude rather worrying about who might think I'm a bad one. I need to do the workouts on my training calendar as well as the weather will allow, and trust that doing so will bring me success. Finally, I need not ride on muddy trails. It's just not worth it for my peace of mind.

Sandbagger

Normally, I don't like sandbaggers, but perhaps this will lead to something good.

This road has been closed for about eight weeks, because part of one lane caved in, presumeably due to the onslaught of hydrogeological activity every time it rains. I can only guess that it's taken the city so long to fix it because the road runs through a park and is not on the main car route to anything important business-wise. However, the road is a key thoroughfair for cyclists.



The most annoying part is that someone is taking great pains to make sure we can't ride through. For a few days, the logs will have enough open space to ride through, but a few days later, they will be rearranged so that one must dismount and climb over. And you can't safely do a super sweet cyclocross dismount in road shoes on pavement. It just annoys me because cyclists aren't generally very heavy people, so I think the chances of us collapsing the road are pretty low. If the city is so concerned for our safety, why don't they fix the freakin' road already?

Hopefully, the sandbags and backhoe are a sign that things will be fixed soon.

FTP: Fantasy Threshold Power

Tonight I did two sets of 2 x 3 minutes in Zone 5.5, which was harder than threshold, but not all out. I'm not sure what specific training adaptation I was supposed to gain from this workout, but I like to think of it as a "fantasy threshold" workout. I say that because the workout was at the power level where I want my threshold to be in a few months. It was a chance to "hang out" at 200 watts without having to commit to a full 20 minutes of it just yet.

I'm only mildly embarrassed to admit that my "fantasy threshold" is 200 watts. It probably seems pretty low to most people, especially guys, but from my observation and research I feel pretty confident that I will be "good" by the time I reach this level. Not elite, but good.

I'm not sure where the elite benchmark is, because most people guard there numbers pretty closely. I don't blame them. If I had more at stake, I would probably not let my competition know the details of my training and fitness, but I doubt that anyone reading this is getting too worried just yet.

No matter how much you think you know about the competition, you really don't know anything until you race. It reminds me of a part from one my favorite books, The Triathletes, about what the Hawaii Ironman would be like if everyone just showed up and compared training logs. However, being a true story and not a work of inspiring fiction, the working class privateer that I rooted for throughout the book goes home empty handed.

So I'm happy with my arbitrary goal of 200 watts and I feel like tonight got me just a little bit closer. I know there are several other major factors that will or will not contribute to my success this season, but it's nice having just one that I can monitor on a daily basis.

Snot and Liquid Shot

Failed attempt to capture my goopy gel flask.

After two months of successfully completing pretty much every scheduled mountain bike ride on my training plan, I finally had to miss a semi-major ride due to mud and a trail running race at BCSP. So I was stuck on the road bike both days this weekend, which is kind of weird and boring this time of year. Luckily, Saturday's scheduled workout was 3 hours with 2 x 20 minutes Sweet Spot, so at least I had some structure to pass the time.

It went pretty well, despite nasty wind and nasty allergies. I normally don't even have allergies, but I guess the combo of wind and rain lately has things growing and blowing in such a way that even someone less sensitive can be bothered. All I know is that my mountain bike ride at BCSP last Thursday, as well as my Saturday ride, were both filled with lots of coughing, a sore throat, and lots of nose wiping. Mix that with sun screen and a goopy flask of EFS Liquid Shot in the pocket, and I had one nasty jersey by the time I was done. Not as bad as the people riding the Dirt, Sweat, and Gears that day, but not clean.

Speaking of goopy gel, I'm going to be spending the next few weeks honing my nutrition plan for the Lumberjack 100, and I just realized how much of the stuff I'm going to be consuming. I've got an almost new bottle in the refrigerator, but I put in an order for two more this morning. One is to get me through the last month of training before the race, and is one to be consumed the day of, along with some cookies and bananas to supplement.

Getting used to eating more food on the bike has been hard for me, but I'm getting there. The problem began a few years ago when I learned that on average, a trained athlete can store about 2000 calories of glycogen in their muscles. So I figured, why eat anything on a ride where you're going to burn less than 2000 calories? However, Jason keeps emphasizing the fact that I need to eat while riding and racing, and I have to admit, I feel better when I do.

It's kind of funny, because my latest training schedule has the entry:"BBQ Ride: 2.5 Hours" on May 25. At first, I was very confused, but then I realized that it was Memorial Day the "BBQ" was just a little joke. However, with all the emphasis on eating, I imagined other possible implications: The actual BBQ ride where I was forced to consume ribs while maintaining Zone 2 or higher, so that eating gel and cookies on the bike wouldn't seem so bad. Luckily, I'm pretty sure that's not what he had in mind.

Finally, I've been wondering if I should work in some sort of extra "energy" type supplement of the caffeine/taurine/quercetin variety for the last half of the race. I'm not sure where I got this idea, and I've pretty much come to the conclusion that it's not worth it, unless I go with something simple like de-fizzed Coke. Or I could use my personal favorite source of neuro-stimulant:

Yes, a big bottle TeaSource Chai at mile 75 should do it (along with the ribs, of course). I have a secret dream of being sponsored by TeaSource and wearing a jersey with graphic pictured above. I doubt that will happen, though.

The blurry text in the picture says: "Delicious, vitalizing - economical, too - costs less than 1/2 cent a cup," says Mr. T. Pott.

2009 Zipp OVCX Schedule

2009 Zipp OVCX Cyclocross Tour:

September 20: CycleSport Cyclocross - Landen, Ohio

October 4: Tour de Louisville – Louisville, Kentucky

Cincinnati International Cyclocross Festival
October 9: Darkhorse Cyclo-Stampede - Covington, KY (UCI)
October 10: Java Johnny's - Middletown, OH (UCI)
October 11: BioWheels/United Dairy Farmers Harbin Park - Fairfield, OH (UCI)

October 18: DRT Consulting Cross - Bloomington, IN

USGP Weekend
October 24: Papa John's Derby City USGP #1 - Louisville, KY (UCI)
October 25: Papa John's Derby City USGP #2 - Louisville, KY(UCI)

November 1: Gun Club Cyclocross - Cincinnati, OH

November 8: Promotion Cross - Lexington, KY

November 15: Infirmary Mound/Cap City Cross - Columbus, OH

Indy Weekend
November 21: Southeastway Cross – Indianapolis, Indiana
November 22: Brookside Cross Cup / IN State Championships – Indianapolis, Indiana

November 29: John Bryan State Park / Ohio State Champs - Yellow Springs, OH

Zipp OVCX Finale
December 6 Storm the Greens / Kentucky State Champs - Louisville, KY

~~~

This was in my email this morning, and it seems way too early to be thinking about this stuff. Of course, I saw a training article from Cyclocross Magazine on Twitter a couple of days ago advising how important it is to start your base training in June. Yes, June. Base training. That's totally what June is for.

One good thing is that after a couple of years of 'cross recession in Indiana (while the rest of the country was booming), we are finally going to have a whopping three USAC sanctioned races in the state and even one in Bloomington. Unfortunately, it's the same weekend as the Pisgah Mountain Bike Stage Race, so I won't get to embarrass myself in front of a local crowd.

Looking over the schedule, I'm not sure how much of a 'cross season I will actually have this year, since mountain bike season will last through November. I might sneak in a little 'cross in between, but I'm not sure. We'll see how masochistic I'm feeling come fall.

The Hunger Is Back

Like, literally.



Even with an extra day off this week, I still haven't returned to the full-on, coming-out-swinging, rip-some-legs-off good feeling I had a few days after the OC, but I feel okay and had good workouts the last two days. My appetite has also returned with a vengence, since it got a little blunted toward the end of the last training cycle. However, I've been really hungry the last few days, and I consider that a good thing. Sure, I'm still trying to lose my 2008 weight gain, but I'm down eight pounds from February, which is pretty good for someone who wasn't actually "overweight" by medical standards and isn't counting calories (just reducing dietary junk). While sudden, biting hunger during the workday requires lots planning and an abundant supply of fruit and nuts stored in my desk (yes, I am a squirrel), I take it as a sign that my body's adapting to the training properly.

I got training plan for the rest of May and the first week of June today. That's going to be the remaining bulk of my training for the Lumberjack. By the time I start my next calendar, I will be tapering (woohoo!). Things are looking a little different this month. The weekly volume is about the same as April, but it is skewed more towards higher weekend volume, with short, intense work during the week. I'm also getting more rest before my weekend endurance rides, so hopefully I can actually ride well during these sessions, instead of just gutting them out.

Okay, I'm 30 minutes past snack time, so I better eat something.

State of the Lindsay Address

In keeping with my newfound love of gratuitous visual aids, I thought I'd share this pretty little picture that Jason sent me yesterday. It represents the cumulative effect of my first 50+ days of big girl training. It is also justification for the extra day of rest that I was granted today, as I have been in the negative fatigue-wise for a while. It looks like I came very close to zero before my race on Saturday, but I sure didn't feel it.

Mostly I'm just proud of the neat little "up, up, and away" peaks and valleys that I've been making. I haven't followed a training plan so perfectly since my freshman year of college, and well, I was a freshman in college. I had a lot less responsibility in those days, as well as a naive sense of invincibility about injuries, talent, and self-efficacy.

So I will take this opportunity take one last drink of water before I step out into the desert of pain. I have six and a half weeks to get ready for the Lumberjack 100, and I want to make every workout count.

Belated Picture

I've been trying to be better about adding some visual stimulation to my posts, but Saturday just didn't lend itself to much picture taking. However, I just read that there were 25 girls in the Sunday crit at the Northern Indiana Fat and Skinny Tire Festival, of which the DINO race was also a part. I was looking for results and stumbled across this picture of myself from last year.

Just imagine the same trail, the same dead look, different helmet and gloves, and a whole lot more pink stuff on the bike. :)

A Side Note

There is one small detail that I forgot to mention in my report of the DINO Warsaw race.

The music that is played over the PA system during DINO races is eclectic to say the least. However, I was a little shocked to hear that "Had A Bad Day" song playing as we were getting ready to line up for our race. Really? I'm sure it's occurrence at that particular time was random, but why is that song even on the playlist? It did very little to help my gurgling stomach and wobbly legs get ready to face the pain.

I tried to think of a song that actually could have helped the situation, but I can really think of one. Of course, "She's A Maniac" is my official "jam" for the season, but I think that would have actually made things worse at the moment, as well. Who wants to hear about the "wire between will and what what will be" when you're standing on the orange spray paint stripe between "will and what will be" knowing that the two will likely not converge that day?

DINO Warsaw

I almost feel like my race report for the DINO season opener in Warsaw could be, and mostly has been, reported in my Twitter feed.

It was a spectacularly bad race. I didn't feel good on my warm-up, but I hoped I would feel better once the race was underway. We had probably the biggest sport and expert women's wave in DINO history, including most of the usual suspects, most of the Louisville women's MTB community, a girl who came over from Illinois, and a few others. It should have been a good day for me, but when the gun (air-raid siren, actually) went off, I was OTB before we even hit the woods.

I tried not to worry about it too much since my pre-race state indicated that I wouldn't be capable of a strong start. I figured if I could stay calm, maybe my legs would come around and I could pass some people in the second lap. So the first few minutes were spent thinking "oh the pain, oh the pain" through the evil sequence of sharp up and downs that make up the beginning of the race. It's a very power-based course and I had no power at all. You kind of have to maintain a minimum speed limit or you're screwed on all of the power climbs that usually have a root or some loose sand that you have to get through before cresting. My legs never came around and I didn't have the strength to crest many of the climbs near the end of the lap. I quickly became demoralized after several dismounts.

I ended up going about two minutes slower than I did last year, when I had an equally crappy race. However, my average heart rate yesterday was abnormally low for an XC race, which means that there was something besides run-of-the-mill slowness going on. My guess that I didn't recover as well this week as I expected to. I going to take it easy on my ride today and tomorrow is scheduled off, so I'm expecting a good workout on Tuesday. If I'm still not riding well by then, I might start worrying a little more.

Superstitious

While bathing my bike last night, I decided that three and a half weeks was long enough for my Ouachita Challenge zip ties to stay on my handlebars. Last year I had a crazy idea to leave them on for the rest of the season, as a reminder of my accomplishment in finishing the race. Then the season kind of turned to crap after that and I forgot the zip ties. They didn't come off until a couple of weeks before THIS YEAR'S Ouachita Challenge. So I decided to take an opposite approach this year. I went ahead and cut them off as a reminder that merely finishing the OC WON'T be the coolest thing I do this year.

No More Cryin'

Hesitation Point, BCSP at sunset last Thursday

I have successfully survived another training cycle, which was capped off with a 14.5 hour week that ended yesterday. Furthermore, today the 50th day in a row that I have successfully followed my training plan. I'm halfway to my arbitrary goal of 100 days, and it's kind of fitting that today is a rest day.

Last week I made reference to my being a drama queen the accumulated fatigue that I was experiencing. I've since realized that I'll soon need to move beyond simply tolerating the fatigue (a new development in itself) to full embracing it. The reason? I am giving serious consideration to entering the Pisgah Mountain Bike Stage Race, which is slated for mid-October.

I have pretty much wanted to do a mountain bike stage race since I learned that such a thing existed just few months after I began racing. At the time, there were no stage races in the United States, and only the La Ruta did not require a partner. This made the dream of stage racing seem really remote and far off.

All of the sudden, there is plethora of stage races available in the United States and Canada, and most of them now offer a solo division. I then considered the possibilty of doing a stage race as soon as 2010, if 2009 went okay, of course.

Then I heard about a relatively affordable four day race East of the Mississippi that I theoretically could do THIS YEAR and I got all excited. They even pay age group prize money, and there aren't a lot of girls who are 29 and under who do endurance mountain bike racing. With nearly six months to prepare, I think I can do this.

A week ago I was feeling pretty confident about my endurance racing goals for 2009. Then I got a little worried about my endurance ride on Saturday. Is there still a chance that I will be too slow to finish the Lumberjack, despite all of my hard work? I'm reminded that, even though the last seven weeks feel like a long time, I really haven't been "working hard" for that long.

I feel a little scared about comitting to something so big with the Lumberjack still looming. However, I know I'll work harder if I have something to work for.

Mofo II: Enough With the Granny Gear Already

Yesterday was the last major workout of my April training cycle: the big mofo singletrack ride. The weather was much more cooperative than the last time, as it was sunny and 80-something and the trails were about as perfect as they can get in April. That also meant a lot more people out than last time, although traffic wasn't too much of an issue.

My last singletrack endurance ride left me frustrated, because I only managed to get 26 miles in the allotted four-hour period. Part of the problem was that I used my small ring a lot on that ride, because after three weeks of hard training, my legs burned every time I tried even baby climbs in the middle ring. Yesterday, I was determined to better, even though I woke up that morning already in a deep state of fatigue. Luckily, once I started riding, I didn't feel that bad. I was able to complete in the whole loop in my middle ring no problem, so I was hoping that would improve my pace a lot more over last time. Unfortunately, it didn't really help that much. I managed to cover 33.3 miles (four laps) in 4:48.

My scheduled time had been 4.5 hours and I was hoping to get five laps, and the plan was to go back to the parking lot and refill my hydration pack after three. I finished my third lap in 3:25 and saw that there was no way to get in two laps without going way over time-wise, so I decided to one more lap without a water refill. My water calculations had been correct, as I ran out of water very early in the fourth lap, but I just wanted to get it done and get out of there. It's funny how the mental distress of just knowing you are out of water on a hot day can slow you down.

I did manage to go a little faster than last time, but this ride shook my confidence about the Lumberjack a little bit. I rode exactly one third of a hundred miles, so if you triple my ride time, that comes out to 14:24, which is well past the Lumberjack cutoff time. The good news is that I still have eight weeks to prepare, the Lumberjack course is faster than the Brown County loop, and my legs will be perfectly honed and tapered for the race, rather than flat and toasted like yesterday.

I still have a three-hour "survival" ride this afternoon, and when its done, I'll have about 15 hours for the week and a big rest week ahead.