New Stuff

To go along with my odd feeling that the 2008 season never REALLY started, my 2008 team kit just arrived in the mail today. It's very, um, black. In addition to the normal bibs and jersey, I also got a thermal jacket and short-sleeved skinsuit for early season 'cross races. It may be weird, but I really love wearing skinsuits. The long sleeve one I got last year was my favorite thing ever, but I'm a little worried because I discovered that the new one has a man-chamois instead of the pretty pink women's one like last year. It's very thick and weird feeling.

Since Campbell was laying on the bed during the photo shoot, I decided to contrast him with the black cat on the shorts. However, the light in our bedroom is weird and the picture didn't turn out too well.

In other news, I rode my bike TWO DAYS IN A ROW. It shouldn't be big news, but it kind of is right now. I'm slowly getting back on the right track.

The Lindsay Rodkey Reunion Tour: Coming to a Town Near You (If you live in any of the towns listed below).

The reunion being between me and my bike(s), of course. I have more or less disposed of my classwork and only the final paper remains. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and I have taken Thursday and Friday off work to ensure that I can spend a long weekend riding, writing, and relaxing and still have my sanity intact on Monday. More importantly, this weekend marks the transition between the sucktastic season that never really got off it's feet, and the remaining months of racing that I hope enjoy before packing it in for another long winter. So starting with an easy spin tonight, the following is a list planned stops in the Lindsay Rodkey Reunion Tour:

August 17: DINO Logansport, IN. The site of the greatest sport race of my career. It rained, people crashed, it was awesome.

September 14: Town Run Park, Indianapolis, IN. The DINO finale on the "7-mile BMX track". I may or may not do well, but it will be fun.

September 28: Warsaw, IN. 12 of the 24 Hours of DINO and my last shot at endurance racing for 2008. Just pedal (but not too slow because the course is rolly and maintaining speed is important).

October 10-12: OVCX's Cincinnati Area Three-Day International Cyclocross Weekend. Pretty lofty title to kick off my 'cross season. The Sunday race at Harbin Park is my favorite 'cross race, so I won't miss that, but it's too soon to say if I will be attending the Friday and/or Saturday races.

October 25-26: USGP Louisville. The biggest race in the Midwest, but I have to remember to wear my Velo Bella Hallow-flair this year.

Undecided Interim 'cross race sometime in November.

November 30: Storm the Greens, Louisville, KY. I've never been to this one, but I hear it's good.

December 7: Brookside Park, Indianapolis, IN. The state championship and the only "real" 'cross race on Indiana soil. This course is also a favorite of mine.

The festivities may or may not conclude with the Lindsay Rodkey Big Fat Cycling Vacation in December. I've been contemplating this for a while, but it's still too soon to decide. On our third Christmas as married people, Adam finally agreed to come spend the holiday with my crazy family in Oklahoma last year. In return, I'm planning to spend the actual day of Christmas with his family this year, but I will be making a trip home some time in December. So I've been contemplating a) jumping into the women's 3-4 race at 'cross nationals in Kansas City b) stopping to visit the rocks in Arkansas c) all of the above.

Of course, while Kansas and Arkansas both border Oklahoma, neither is actually on the way to or from my parents' house. However, I figure if I'm driving west of the Mississippi it's worth it to detour for recreational purposes. It will just depend on weather, fitness, and finances when the time rolls around.

Upgrade

Well, after a couple of near-misses in the job world this summer, I was promoted to Senior Assistant Director in my current job. For comparison purposes, it's the equivalent of getting your expert license. Let just hope my first expert "season" goes better at work than it has in mountain biking.

So far it is. Now that the promotion stress is over, I took account today and we are doing way better than this time last year, so that's one less thing to worry about. At least that one less thing to get bogged down about. Or maybe I just learned my lesson about work stress last year.

Oh Man

Despite the fact we're still in the middle of the Tour, the fact is that road racing season's basically over anyway. The astute rider has already written it off and begun focussing his or her attention on cyclocross. The key to a successful racing season is to always live a minimum of four months in the future, mentally-speaking. That way you can dismiss your poor performances as simple preparation. Sure, you may not get anywhere near the front of the pack in a road race this summer, but you're just trying to get some intense mileage in so you'll be ready for cyclocross season. Poor mountain bike racing is even easier to rationalize--you're just doing that to improve your bike-handling. And of course once 'cross season does begin, you're still under no pressure to get results because, really, you're just doing it to maintain your form during the off-season. With the right attitude, you can surf an entire year of racing like a great big wave of mediocrity. Winning is for dopers and sandbaggers. - BikeSnob NYC

Dude, I think he's been reading my mind. I'm actually still living 2.5 weeks in the future for the day that my class is over, but I won't lie and say that the cyclocross isn't already worming its way into my mind. I just have to keep reminding myself I'm really, really, bad at it. :)

Decisions

The decision handed down to me: I didn't get the job. I'll refrain from comment there.

The decision I made: I'm not taking another class for the fall semester. The amount of misery that my current class has caused me this summer is not something I want to repeat and it's just not worth it at this point in my life. Lesson learned. So I have three and a half weeks of sucking it up and getting through the remainder of my current course.

You can expect a new-and-improved me on August 8th. Not that I won't post before then, but we'll see.

Small Breakthrough

The other day I got so busy talking about job drama (still waiting to hear) and the big breakthrough it will be if I make it through this week of training as planned that I forgot to mention the small breakthrough that I had last week. After nearly five years of riding road bikes in some capacity or another, I got my first "while I was riding" flat. I've had a few leaks that resulted in post-ride flats, but I've never actually had to change in tire myself on the road.

Well, I'd never actually successfully changed a tire period, since I'm a prissy butt and make Adam do it for me whenever possible. I'm satisfied that I KNOW how to, and don't want to muss my manicure unnecessarily. However, last Thursday I had to (luckily no fresh manicure was mussed) and was surprisingly successful. My previous attempts have all been on mountain bike tires and apparently they are a lot harder. I've never been able to roll them all the way back on the rim, but with the road tire I was able to do it fairly easily. Best of all, it actually held air for the rest of my ride. So I didn't do much to get faster last week, but at least I had one breakthrough.

Craziness Explained (or Not)

I expected to have some resolution to my last cryptic post by now or I would not have been so cryptic. Actually, I probably would not have brought it up at all, as it was just more job interview stuff. Believe me, I, more than anyone, know how crazy I sound with the whole, "So I'm interviewing for a really great new job this week" only to, once again, find out a few days later that I didn't get it. And of course there is the week of lost training, sanity, and general human functioning that accompany each missed opportunity. Yet I still fall into the trap over and over because I somehow become convinced it is The Last Time and when it's all over I will have a level financial and career satisfaction that will allow me to better focus on my cycling for the next few years. However, it just doesn't work out that way.

Anyway, I guess the thing that prompted me to even prematurely mention this to the blog world (which I swore I would never do again) was the crazy circumstances surrounding this particular interview. It took me a while to even apply for this job. Things are looking up at my current job and there's an extremely good chance I will be promoted soon, so I'm not really compelled to apply for anything outside my office unless it is a very big step up and I have a reasonably good chance of getting it. However, after a couple of weeks of contemplation and research, I decided that I should give this one a shot.

My application went in the week of the 4th of July, so I didn't hear anything for a week, but I didn't really expect to so near a holiday. Then Monday morning I got a call asking me to interview Monday afternoon. It was strange, but I took it as a complement that they wanted to see me so quickly. The interview went fine and by the time I went to send a thank you email that evening, I already had an invitation for a second interview in my inbox. The second interview went well and then we reach the part where I start to doubt my hearing/sanity. I believe that the person in charge told me that they would have a decision by the next day. That sounded like a really fast timeline, but we had already been working fast so it wasn't too surprising. However, when the next couple of days passed with no word I got a little panicked. Finally, I called them yesterday and it turns out that the director had been out of town most of the week following my interview. The person I talked to said he was fairly certain that a decision was not made yet.

So I really don't have a final resolution to this tale, but I thought I would give a little more detail about what was going on, in case anyone was wondering.

The good news is that after typing all that, I am feeling energized enough to go ride my bike. Due to the many and varied extenuating circumstances of late, I've reached a point where pulling on my bibs for a 1 hour easy ride feels like a herculean task. I'm really trying to get myself going again ASAP, regardless of this job thing pans out.

So here's the deal: I HAVE to maintain my planned workout schedule for next week whether I find out I got the job, didn't get the job, or still don't find out anything. If can do that it, it will be a huge breakthrough in the whole "emotional maturity" aspect of my training that I desperately need. So expect regular report of how that goes.

Craziness

I can't go into much detail about my weekend. Let's just say it was crap cycling-wise. I am not the Indiana state downhill champion, as I ended up not going to the Saturday races. It's just as well, as it was quite possibly the most scary, mud-drench mess ever and I would have killed myself. No hub-deep gunk like the Lumberjack, but tons of slick clay smeared over jagged rocks and roots. Fun. I was thinking of last year's perfectly tacky conditions when I said I could do the downhill without breaking anything.

Anyway, today has been unbelievably crazy with more craziness in store. Details will be provided when it's all over.

Worst 4th of July Ever!!!

Why? Because I've spent the entire day working on what I truly believe to be the hardest paper I've ever written, even counting the "mini-thesis" I did for my master's program. At least I had a whole semester to finish that. As it is, I'm already five days overdo (and still not finished) due to the good grace of my professor, but I absolutely have to finish it tonight. I really hope this certificate pays off in the long run, because right now it's just sucking the life out me.

I really hope that I can learn to balance things better soon. By taking classes, I've made something that was already hard (training and working full-time) a lot harder. The upside of it is that when it's all over I will still be under 30 (plenty of good cycling years left) and I will certainly have a new appreciation for how "easy" I have it. I would really just rather not have the next year (57 weeks to be exact) of cycling messed up by what may or may not turn out to be a profitable career investment.

~~

The good news is that I have two days of racing ahead of me. I don't expect much after all the life-sucking homework and viruses of the last couple of weeks, but it should be fun at least. It is the DINO AMBC weekend with shortrack and "downhill" tomorrow and XC on Sunday. I'm going to try the "downhill" for the first time in my career tomorrow and I'm sort of hoping to bring home a state championship. That's mostly because I expect to be the only woman who tries it. If that turns out to be the case, I just have to make it to the bottom without breaking anything and I get 10 bonus points for the series. That seems like it would be reasonable on a course that reasonably skilled men have completed on hardtails and where winning times are in the 20-second range. Of course, I'm not a reasonably skilled man, but maybe my 3.5 inches of travel will help me out a bit.

At Least It Wasn't a Spider

So I'd kind of been ignoring the fact that my throat was sore at least part of the day EVERY DAY since the Lumberjack. I felt below average, but not horrible. I just thought it was pollen or something. Then I had a really good ride at Wednesday Worlds.

Too bad I woke up the next day and found it was hard to swallow my breakfast. Worst of all, it was a weird scratchy pain concentrated in one side of my throat. It felt like a poisonous spider was living in my throat. Gross, I know. I finally got out the flashlight and took a peak. No spider, but a really nasty spot on the back of my throat. I went the doctor and found out I have a viral infection. No antibiotics for me, just rest and wait. Which is how I spent my weekend.

~~

I think the Shenandoah Mountain 100 is officially out of the question. I've decided to set my sights on the doing the 12 hour solo division at the 24 Hours of DINO instead. That gives me four more weeks to get ready and less financial risk involved. I guess it's not "risk" when you know you're not getting your money back either way, but I at least want to get a finish time for my investment.

Plus, if I make my goal of 100 miles (10 laps) I will break the course record set by Indiana mountain biking's favorite daughter and one my "heroes", Sally Marchand Collins, who was 3rd at the 24 Hours of Adrenaline world championships last year. Of course, her record is a few years old, as the last couple of years she has been part of the famous 24 Hours of DINO duo "Drunky the Clown and The Sundance Kid". There hasn't actually been a female 12 hour solo contender since 2005, but it still sounds cool.

It wouldn't kill me to hang up my "reverse sandbagger" mantle for just a little while and take an easy "W", right?

Either that or I just inadvertently smack-talked every fast female in the state into coming to beat me to it.

It should be a good time either way.

Brown County and Butt Kickin'

As seems to be the case lately, I've been a very busy girl the last few days. I've been getting my assigned training in, but not with time left to blog about it. At least my priorities are in the right place.

As my pictures indicate, I went to Brown County Tuesday night. My assignment was 2.5 hours of long and short hills with at least 10% of the time in Zone 4-5. It wasn't necessarily supposed to be on the dirt, but I added that part myself, as I still feel very behind on my off-road riding for the season. I also thought the loose structure would be a good chance to ride some of the newer out-and-back trails that I haven't be on much, since they don't work so well for the hills reps and TT intervals that seem to dominate my dirt time. I actually had several 4-5 hour mountain bike rides scheduled leading up to the Lumberjack, but like clockwork, it managed to rain for all of them. Anyway, I wanted to get some time in on the new trails, as they are a lot more technical and I need to bump up my rock skills if I want to improve on my last place finish at the OC next year.

I doodled around for the first half-hour or so, taking pictures and bathroom breaks. The new trails are a lot less hilly than I remembered, consisting of a few short, rocky inclines to muscle over. Basically, I felt like I was going mostly downhill for the first hour and which was actually kind of boring, as I'm not that great of a descender in general and wasn't feeling very daredevlish. I also forgot how much earlier it gets dark in the woods, so my ride time came up short. I did get 10% Zone 4 time, but just barely. I will be going back Saturday and to try to get in the whole trail system at a moderate pace.

Last night was my second Wednesday Night Worlds, and I had a 100% improvement, meaning I made it 20 minutes without getting dropped instead of 10. I also met my goal of chasing back on the first couple of times I was gapped by the field, but eventually they did pull away. Luckily, it was a multi-lap route and I was able to jump in with some stragglers on the way in after attacking some really hard climbs by myself. It was definitely the best workout I've had in some time and my legs are really sore and dead today.

Fortunately, today is much-needed rest day. I was actually responsible this week and got my homework done on Monday, so all I "had" to do after work today was come home, watch a movie, and catch up on my blog. It's a wonderful feeling, even it if won't last for long. Tomorrow is back to the grindstone.

Indiana Rocks!

That title is lame, lame, lame, lame, lame, lame, but here are couple of pics from Brown County last night.

I hadn't been on this trail in a while and this thing is new. Indiana's own little tribute to the pacific northwest.

And our tribute to Arkansas. Well, I'm sure that's not what the trailbuilders were thinking, but rocks and Arkansas are forever bonded in my mind now.

Draggin'

That would be the best way to describe the last week for me. It seems that the Lumberjack took its toll on me mentally and physically, even if I didn't finish. My training was actually decent, in that I did more or less everything that I was supposed to, but my efforts were less than spectacular. However, work, class, and everything else seemed to suffer as I tried to drag myself though training for the week. I spent the whole week mentally stressed about my homework and procrastinating, and I still did a fairly crappy job. The worst part was that I was never able to just get it done and have the load off my chest, which only made the stress worse. I finally just settled for a very half-assed job tonight and a vow that I would tackle the next week's work as soon as I get home tomorrow.

I had a fun and interesting weekend, despite being very worn out from it. Saturday was jam-packed as I had a two-hour ride with hill repeats at Brown County in the morning. Then I had to rush back to town to get cleaned up and take care of some stuff that needed to be done, because I was volunteering as a corner marshall at the Bloomington Crit in the late afternoon/evening. I got an easy corner, so mostly I just got to watch the race, and Adam got off work earlier than expected to join me. Then a couple of our friends from Muncie showed up unexpectedly to race and we all went out to eat afterwards. It made for a good time, but a much later night than we had planned.

This morning I tried to catch up on my sleep and then I headed out for a three-hour road ride. My legs were tired, and I was pretty bored, but I made it through. The rest of the afternoon was spent doing errands, resting, doing half-assed homework, and spending much-needed quality time with my husband.

So I finally got through the week and (mostly) did what I needed to do, even if I had to drag through it. Unfortunately, I am writing this at 10:20 p.m. and I'm a long way from being ready for bed. So I better get on that so that I don't go into another week worn out and draggin'.

Wednesday Night Worlds

Tonight was my first Wednesday Worlds training ride and I did surpass my goal of making it 10 minutes without getting dropped. In retrospect, it was kind of a weak goal, but I don't suppose it hurts to start small sometimes. I didn't make it much longer than 10 minutes and I won't waste space on excuses why. I just have a lot learn about road riding in groups, but that's precisely why I'm doing it. I've been so scared of group riding in the past that I will only try once or twice a year. Then I would get dropped and wouldn't try again for a long time. So for now, I'm just working on showing up and trying to get a little better each week. It's not even about the fitness really; its about adding skills to my arsenal that have been sorely lacking in my cycling career so far. The good news is that I have 14 more chances to get it right before the season's over.

Ride Fast, Take Chances

I wanted to post for two reasons: 1) because I need to prove I'm still alive post-Lumberjack, although nothing exciting has happened since 2) there are 15 hours left to vote in my poll, but I've pretty much come to my decision already. However, I see the new helmet option just got a tie-breaker vote sometime this afternoon. I guess I still haven't used my vote yet.

Anyway, I decided on mostly option four (JFR) with the possibility of a new helmet if a make it through some Wednesday Worlds training rides over the next few weeks. That has as much to do with not wanting to be the dork in the visored helmet on the roadie training ride as anything, but whatever. I need to show that I'm actually going to do the ride more than once before I invest, I guess.

I'm at a bit of an impasse regarding my schedule. I entered the Shenandoah 100 months ago, but as the hardest course in the NUE series, I'm having serious self-efficacy issues after this weekend. I'm not saying I will still do it and I'm not saying I won't.

I'm saying that I have three, three-week training blocks, each capped with a DINO race between now and then and I will decide later. The surprising thing is that I when I looked at my calendar and saw this I thought, "Cool, we're just about to hit the fun part of the season." The last two years I've been sort of burned out and jaded by the time the AMBC race rolled around mid-season. This year, I'm really looking forward to it, as well as the last half of the season.

My other realization is that for the first time in forever I'm not coming off bad race thinking I have to start training for the next race. I'm just thinking I need to start training. Period. Not for any specific race, but because I'm sick of being slow. I need to get fast.

I'm the first to encourage myself or anyone else to push their boundaries and attempt races, events, or categories that we're not 100% ready for yet because that's how evolution happens. But as my favorite Vanderkitten socks say: Ride Fast and Take Chances. I'm really good at taking chances (to the point of stupidity sometimes), but I need to work on the riding fast. Playing the martyr gets old after a while.

I've spent 2 1/2 years planning what I'll do when I outgrow local Indiana racing, but the fact of the matter is that I'm still very far from it. The competition is a lot stronger and deeper than it was when I first started racing. I need to take care of first things first.

So we'll see how the coming weeks shake out. I would really love still be able to to knock out my first hundred-miler in 2008 and I totally want to ring the gong at the Shenandoah, but I also want to be reasonable in my pursuit. I may have to get my hundred during 24 hours of DINO in late September, even if there's no gong or glory. I may even have to wait until next season.

For now, I've got one more easy day of riding and then I'm taking a crack at Wednesday Worlds. I'll worry about the rest of the week's workouts (and the rest of the summer) after that.

I Should Have Been Freaking Out

My problem is that I only listed three things to be nervous about. Apparently, I missed a few things. There's an episode of "This American Life" with a story about a mentally challenged man who writes down every single fear he can think of in hopes that he can control them. Maybe I should have tried that. At least I'd have a book to publish like he did.

So here's the deal on the Lumberjack 100 (25).

We left for Michigan yesterday, and about an hour into the drive, our hotel calls and says they have to cancel our reservations because the entire town is flooded and without power. However, we can't find any info stating that the race is cancelled, so we pressed on. When we got about 30 minutes from the venue, we found out that couldn't drive any further north because all the bridges were out. We finally made it there after a long detour and the race was on. So we had a to scramble to find a place to stay in the middle of nowhere, since most of the places close to the venue were booked months ago. It made for a really stressful afternoon.

We found a cabin not too far away and not too scary. However, I have a horrible fear of hotel bedspreads and was up most of the night with nerves and heeby-jeebies. I'm just going to have to bring a sleeping bag when I travel.

I also had to force myself to choke down dinner, as I had zero appetite the day before the race. On the one day of my life when I really needed to eat, I had no desire to. Even peach pie with ice cream wasn't going down too smoothly.

I hoped the lack of sleep wouldn't affect my race, and maybe it didn't, but something sure did. I stuck to my plan of going really easy at the start, but I sensed trouble as soon and we hit the Big-M parking lot and my HR jumped from 140 to 160 on a very slight incline. When I hit the dirt it was 180 and within minutes I was up in the mid-190's despite really trying to relax and granny gear on even the smallest hills. For reference, my LT is about 184 and max is around 196, from casual observation. I was in the 194-196 range a lot, which it usually all-out cross country pace.

It didn't take long for the field to break up and pretty soon I was pretty well alone, with one other girl. We rode together for about half a lap and I was hoping my body with get with the program, but it never did. Finally, she pulled away and I fell apart. I ended up taking nearly 4 hours just to complete the lap and felt terrible. Obviously, by the time I made it through the lap I was so horribly off pace to make the time cutoff that I decided to call it a day.

Of course, I'm really disappointed, but not with myself. I did what I could with what I had today, but for some weird reason, that wasn't much. I just have to keep working and have more in the gas tank for next time.

~~

After today, I'm having serious doubts about my relationship with Perpetuem. It's worked fine in training since the winter, but is not proving to have a very good track record in races. For the last three week or so, I've been using the Glacier Mist flavored Rapidaid on my hard training rides and at the Brown Country race with a lot of success. I normally hate sports drinks because of the aftertaste, but this tastes like Certs mints dissolved in water (weird but good) and is surprisingly refreshing.

I didn't use it today because I thought it didn't have enough calories, but late in the lap I was wishing for a happy shot of sugar to brain more than anything. That seems to be my biggest struggle; even when I stick to my Perpetuem schedule, I still end up feeling bonky because it doesn't digest quickly under the hard efforts that are inevitable in mountain biking.

Adam and I are fans of "A Prairie Home Companion" (more NPR) and they have a joke about "Powermilk Biscuits", a fake product that supposed to "give you the confidence to get up and do what needs to be done". That was how I was feeling about the Rapidaid today, but alas, I was not able to procure any in time to save my race. Not that I think it would have, but it might have helped.

Adam also told me that they had Powdermilk biscuits at the aid station, had I only got there in time.

The Lumberjack in Pictures

Adam showing off on Friday.

Our cabin. Not so scary.

All smiles on the way to the start.

Why is my heart rate 180, already?

Eight miles in.

Calling it a day.

This one still kinda makes me want to cry...

Just Pedal

Okay, okay, you may be wondering how I am two days away from my first 100-mile mountain and NOT freaking out. I should be freaking out, right? Well, maybe not if I'd trained perfectly all winter and spring like a good little girl, but I think if that were the case I would be freaking out due to delusions of grandeur right now (trying to get the hole shot on Chris Eatough or something). Luckily, right now my delusions of grandeur are limited to, "Maybe I'll pull off a coup and beat like two people."

So what AM I thinking regarding the Lumberjack? Just pedal. That's my race plan.

At the Ouachita Challenge I was so many months removed from my last contact with either other racers or singletrack, that I got way too concerned about actually racing and blew myself up early. That won't be a problem on Saturday. I will line up in the back and when the gun fires I will pedal. Just pedal, drink water, and take a slurp off my flask of Perpetuem-based goop every 20-30 minutes. I refuse to give a crap about who is in front of or behind me until the finish line is in sight.

So that is why I'm not freaking out. I'm pretty sure that despite my sub-par training, I still have what it takes to finish if I pace myself. At least I won't have to hike-a-bike over a bunch of rocks this time (at least that's what I've been told). I do get a sick feeling in my stomach when I think that maybe I don't have the fitness to finish or that I won't make the time cutoff or that my pedal will fall off mid-race again, but what can I do?

Just pedal.

Let's Make A Deal

While I was waiting for the outcome of my recent job interview, I couldn't help but think of what I would do with the significant raise that would accompany my impending success (insert bitter pause here). Anyway, it was right after my "One Green Square" post and I made a deal with myself that if I got the job and could put 100 green squares together, I'd let myself buy a power meter. It was very motivating at the time and very un-motivating when the key part of the deal fell through. So I'm been re-negotiating with myself ever since.

The deal seemed to work, but I don't have the guaranteed future income to back it up, so I'm going over my options:

1) Insert a less-expensive, but also less useful object (like a Giro Atmos)

2) Suck it up and find a way to pay for the power meter (suck what up where?)

3) Focus my attention and dollars on racing more, since a bad day of racing beats a good day of training

4) Accept that I can't buy talent (or motivation) and couldn't afford it, even it were possible

So I'm putting it out there for YOU to decide (see the poll at right).

A Different Kind of Road Ride

This road took a ride instead of being part of one. What you're seeing is a ~2x4 foot slab the opposite side of the road washed onto the edge of the other lane.

Today marked the 13th mountain bike workout that I've had scheduled this season (not counting races) and the 8th that has either been straight up rained out or the trails have been way too muddy. I was supposed to help teach the beginner group at the Midwest Women's Moutain Bike Clinic today, but it was cancelled due to heavy thunderstorms and flash floods. The weather was okay in the afternoon, but I was relegated to the road once again.

Like An Ice Pack For The Soul

This was my workout tonight. Yeah, yeah, last hard workout before Lumberjack, etc. However, I came to the conclusion that emotional injuries should be treated like physical injuries: if I try to train through them then it will just exacerbate the problem. So I'm going apply rest and a "cold compress" and I'm fully confident that I'll be a better woman for it tomorrow.

The Great Flood

This was the view from my office window yesterday afternoon. I couldn't get a picture of the Mustang mostly submerged in the middle of the street. Luckily, I parked in a garage two blocks away, but a lot of my co-worker's cars were flooded.

~~

The storms didn't interfere with my training too much last night, since I was assigned one hour "so easy a 5-year-old could stay on my wheel". So that was easy enough to do on the trainer. Tonight is my "last hard workout before the Lumberjack", but it's just short max effort intervals, so more annoying than hard. Tuesday was supposed to be my last kick my-butt-and-make-me-cry workout, but the rain killed that. Now it's just cross my fingers time.

~~

So I just officially found out I didn't get the job. Luckily, I got through the bulk of the devastation over on Tuesday, when I just had a bad feeling. So other than a little, "What's a girl gotta do to get a freakin' break?" whining to myself, I'm already mostly over it. Three years of rejection have taught me a thing or two.

I already went and bought my "rejection lottery ticket", which I do everytime something crappy happens. I figure karma's got to work out somehow. My father-in-law and I had a debate last weekend regarding Powerball versus Hoosier Lottery. He likes to play "better" odds while I just go for the big money.

Dark Mood

This what the sky looked like at 2:30 this afternoon. The picture is actually brighter than it looked in real life. We've been pounded by thunderstorms and heavy rain all day, which has put an end to any hopes of doing 3 hour mountain bike workout tonight. Of course, it just got sunny a little while ago now that Coach Dave has sent me a crazy hard workout for the trainer instead.

Unfortunately, my mood has not been getting sunnier. I few days ago I mentioned that I was feeling too good, which basically meant I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I guess crappy weather ruins everyone's mood, but I'm feeling especially down today. I was supposed to hear something about the job I interviewed for a couple of weeks ago during the first week of June. I realize that the first week of June isn't even half over, but the sick-to-my-stomach nervousness kicked at 6:00 a.m. yesterday. Waiting is the hardest part.

So I kinda knew a few days ago I would be feeling really down again soon enough, but I was hoping I would find some answers on how to handle it before it did. Right now, I got nothin'. At least nothing within my control. I'm just going to try really hard to work through it without pushing myself too hard.

DINO #2: Brown County

Yesterday, I found my mountain bike mojo on the descent of the beginner loop at Brown County State Park. Two minutes later, my pedal came off. What's a girl to do?

What's wrong with this picture?

I woke up with a complete lack of desire to race my bike, probably due to the severe beating I was subjected to at Warsaw and how terrible I felt last Monday. I got up, got dressed, and soldiered on, only considering downgrading to sport for a few minutes in the registration line. Then I decided to woman up and take my rightful place as expert class pack filler.

I warmed up like I was supposed to and got my heart rate well above lactic threshold several times before the start of the race. However, climbing the very steep half-male paved climb to the singletrack during my warm-up about killed me, so I got even more nervous about the race.

When I rolled up to the starting line I saw that there was a record women's field with nine sport and six expert. Only during the 2005 AMBC race, when the Slingshot team, including MyHeroDanielleMusto, showed up was there ever a larger expert women's field in a DINO race. Sad? Yes. Things looking up? Let's hope so.

There was a last-minute announcement that the sport women were only doing one lap which solidified my decision to ride conservatively and let whatever would happen happen. When the gun went off the pack went into hare mode and I went into tortoise mode. It actually worked out well for me. I picked off a couple of people on the singletrack and things were going fine. I suffered on the big singletrack climb during the first lap and I thought I was going slow, but apparently I wasn't. I even passed another expert girl who had a flat tire and a couple of guys.

On the second lap, and expert guy lapped me, but since we were on a gentle, twisty descent, I decided to push myself and try to stay within site of him as long as I could. It worked. I was cornering the best I ever have in my life and I actually freaked myself out a little because I leaned so far into one turn, but stayed completely stable. Then my pedal came off and I couldn't get it back on, so I had to do a pathetic walk up the hill, coast down it back to the finish.

It's kind of weird, but I really wasn't that upset about it. I consider DINO races a measuring stick more than anything and when the results were posted, I could still tell I measured up pretty well. Extrapolating from who was directly behind and in front of me when the pedal broke, I was on track to go about 10-15 minutes faster than last year and was much closer to the other experts than last time. The best part was that I was getting stronger as the race went on instead of my usually mid-race blow-up. Either I'm a smart girl for finally warming up right or I'm actually on to something with this endurance racing thing (once I put in the training for it). Maybe both.

Bacon Chocolate

Yeah, I said it. Bacon chocolate. It's the most exciting thing I have to tell right now.

A couple of days ago, a co-worker came back from a vacation to Scotland and brought an assortment of shortbread and other buttery treats back with her. This lead to a discussion of the superiority of real butter and other "natural" fats in cooking and baking, which lead to the joking proposal of bacon grease based cookies.

It's a horrible idea, but it reminded me of a recent trip to the local international/organic/ health food market, which keeps a ridiculously large selection of chocolate from all over the world near the checkout (sneaky). I did a double-take when I saw what appeared to be piece of back on a chocolate bar. Sure enough, it was a bacon bar. I was initially repulsed, but the work conversation inspired me to purchase one and bring it in to share with my office-mates yesterday. It wasn't bad. It was sort of good. I ate what was left after everyone else had a piece. I probably won't buy one again.

~~

On the training front, I'm feeling too darn good. Not really. My legs still kind of feel like lead, but despite homework, work-work, and a fairly heavy training load so far this week, my stress and recovery scores are solid and I am maintaining a very good sense of well-being. My muscles are tired, but I don't feel bad. All of this is good, of course, but I'm trying to figure out how this week is different from my pre-crash living dead experience a couple of weeks ago or the deep fatigue and depression I dealt with all winter. I need to know so I can keep whatever's going on now going.

The only difference I can think of is the bacon bar. Just kidding.

However, I've really have been eating a lot this week and I'm wondering if it's helping. It's mostly been good quality food with the exception of the bacon bar and shortbread. I'm sticking to my snack schedule, having chocolate milk within minutes of getting off the bike, and actually eating dinner after I shower. Well, if you count stuffing some hummus and broccoli sprouts into a pita pocket dinner. It's got protein, fiber, carbs, and vegetables and requires chewing, so close enough.

It's usually so late when I get done training, so I just want to suck down some recovery drink and go to bed, but this week I've been eating real food at least. I'm getting a little less sleep because of it, but I'm feeling so much better right now I'm thinking it's worth it.

Mountain Bike Mojo

As the "cheeseburger kitties" would say, I doez not haz it.

Monday was my first time back on a mountain bike since the Warsaw race three weeks ago. It was also only about my sixth time on singletrack this season. The frequent and heavy rains have really been keeping me off the trails, as well as several breaks in training. So I am really having trouble finding my "mountain bike mojo" this season.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has experienced the "Oh my gosh, this is hard" sensation the first time your tires touch dirt after a long winter on the road. It seems to occur no matter how good of shape I think I am in from road riding and this year it seems like it's happened on all but one MTB ride, due to the long dry (or wet) spells in between.

Monday I went to Brown County and was supposed to do 3 X 20 minutes TT efforts, but I felt like complete crapola from the get go. It may be true that you don't really lose any fitness in a week off, but it can certainly make you feel cruddy in the first few days on the bike afterward. So I just rode "easy" for two hours. However, I racked up a lot of zone 3-4 time just training to make it up the climbs without shifting to my little ring. I just hope this phase wears off before Sunday's race, as I can't imagine trying to suffer through 2 laps of that at "hard" pace feeling the way I was a couple of days ago.

The good news is that I actually cornered and descended pretty decently. I really focused on my new mantra of "the thighs tell the bike where to go, not the hands". I'm trying to develop my counter-steering abilities.

Yesterday was a two hour easy ride on the road, so it was actually easy, more or less. It still made me tired, but I think I'll be fine. This afternoon is 5 X 3 minutes of Zone 4 in a 1:45 total ride on the road. It's looking like I'll actually hit double-digit hours this week for the first time in forever.

Crossing fingers.

Easy Hard Day

Today marked the third green square in a row since my unplanned break from training. It was also my first "hard" day. Luckily, it was an easy one: 7 X 12 second sprints on a 3-5% hill. It was the kind of workout that's actually just plain fun at the time, but I will probably feel tomorrow. Actually, I feel it already. Tomorrow is a scheduled day off, and while I feel a little bad taking off a perfectly good Sunday, I know it's for the best. I can't load the legs up too much too soon, as they are kind of in shock from the return to training. Besides, I can get ahead on my homework so that I won't stress about it on the days when I do have scheduled workouts over the next couple of weeks. I still have Monday left to ride and play.

~~

So here's a philosophical question for everyone, although there seems to be a lot more dog people than cat people among my blog friends, so I may get my butt kicked on this one. Today I was watching Sixx chase her tail, but unlike most dogs, she was actually catching it. (The key is to go through the back legs not around the side.) So tell me, does the fact that she can catch her tail make her smarter than a dog or does the fact that she can catch her tail, but still continues to chase it some more make her less smart?

One Green Square

I finally got back on the bike today. I did a short "inertia breaker" ride on Sunday, but today was my first day back at anything resembling training. I did a two hour ride in zone 2 with a 12-second superspin every 10 minutes.

Now I need to just keep doing that. Whenever I download a workout like I'm supposed to, Training Peaks puts a green square on my training calendar for that day. If I cut the workout short by more than 10 minutes, it's yellow. If I skip it altogether, it's red. Now I have one green square on my calendar for the week. My new goal for the season is to accumulate as many green squares as I can and I think the rest will take care of its self.

Brain Fried

Well, the interview is over and the thank yous are sent. Now all I have to do is wait (hopefully less than two weeks). Thanks to everyone who wished me good (even if it was just mentally). I've just been a little too brain fried until now to post anything.

For the record, the interview went okay. I've been joking that I did my normal nervous stuttering, but the content of what I stuttered was impeccable. That's not completely true, but I put a lot hard work and thought into my presentation and I think I came up with a heck of a sales pitch. I just wish I would have delivered it a little more smoothly. However, after being the interviewer so many times over the last couple of months, I have a strong feeling that I sounded worse to myself that I did to the people listening.

Then I spent the entire workday today in Indianapolis doing training and I am overcome with a deep exhaustion right now. I've been a little short on sleep the last couple of nights, but I think the real problem is that all the stress is just screwing up my brain chemistry and telling me I need to crash. I'm more relaxed than I have been for the last week, but I'm not fully where I should be.

I've almost got my whole class strategy figured out. It helps that I have a three-day weekend coming up. It's turning out to be much more work that I expected, but hopefully I can learn to manage class and training. I may just need to wean myself off my movie addiction for a while and figure out some new ways to keep myself calm.

As for training, there's not much to it right now. I got my training plan from now until the Lumberjack yesterday and it's reasonably kind. Apparently, I'm still tapering for it after all (from what I don't know). I'm going to just take it as an opportunity to get back on my feet and rebuild some my consistency. Since the plan is a little easier I'll hopefully be able to stick with it through the race. The Lumberjack is going to be yet another "learning experience" or "even more expensive group ride", but I'm pretty sure if I made it through the Ouachita Challenge I can make it through the Lumberjack.

Then I'll have 11 weeks until the Shenandoah, then all of cross season, and then, oh, the rest of my life to try and get fast. On days like today, I'm honestly way too tired to be anxious and the rest of my life seems soon enough. I might change my mind about that once I'm feeling good again...

Another Non-training Blog Entry

Today's weather was nice, but the ratchet of a career related stress that I have unnecessarily heaped upon myself keeps on turning.

Besides the homework I've been dealing with all week, I now I have a very important job interview on Tuesday. I have to give a presentation, but luckily it's of the powerpoint-on-random-topic variety. Basically, I just have to stand up and talk about myself, no powerpoint necessary. I think it's might actually be a good thing since I get to cover a lot of material before we go into the great of unknown of question and answer format. Unfortunately, I'm pretty much worthless in the days going into a big interview and all I can really do is hope I get the job and that it will be the last one for a while.

The second is goes back to earlier in the week. I already decided on Tuesday that I am completely lacking in an "business formal" attire that I actually feel good in. I think part of the problem is that I always buy suit jackets the same size as the pants and then they look big and sloppy. I'm a cyclist; I have top/bottom discrepancy.

I actually ordered a new suit a few days ago, but it will probably not be here in time. Even if it is I always have to have pants hemmed, because I'm solidly in between regular and petite length legs. So I had to come up with a way to make what I have acceptable. I spent a good portion of my time at the mall this morning, but couldn't find any of the items I was looking for. I think I have settled on just wearing a jacket and pants that both fit, but are not a set. Hopefully, the committee won't judge me too harshly.

It just frustrates me how hard it for women to find nice suits compared to men. I was once complaining to a male coworker who joked, "business casual is a scam invented by men to keep women from advancing professionally." He jokes, but it's true. Here's what mean were for work: pants, jacket, shirt, tie. If they want to be business casual, they take off the jacket and tie. They have special stores with racks and racks of these items and salespeople to show them how to match.

For women, there is so much more to it: pants, skirts, jackets, blouses, camisoles, all kinds of things men don't have to worry about. Wearing opened-toed shoes for men isn't even an option except in the most casual circumstances. For women, finding closed-toed dress shoes (at least stylish ones) this time of year is hard, but I have some very high ideals beaten into my head from my undergraduate business studies. One of those is no open-toed shoes at work and certainly not at a interview.

Seriously, why is there not a S&K women's wear? I just want to like the way I look.

I keep telling myself that from my all my experience as both an interviewer and interviewee the last couple of years, that probably very few people care about this stuff as much as I do. I probably hurting myself more by caring at this point, since it's stressing me out.

So all of this probably seems pretty lame coming from someone who usually blogs about training for cycling. I know should care a lot less about my job, what I wear to my job, and anything regarding my job when I'm not there. I try to tell myself that it's really all about paying for my cycling toys anyway, and when the pursuit of money for toys interferes with the enjoyment of the toys, it's time to back off. Easier said that done.

I've always been a very high achiever academically. I was not one of those kids that got rewarded for a straight-A report card. Mostly my parents had me so scared of what would happen if I didn't get straight-A's I never actually got a B until college. At that point, it was somehow acceptable and I took full advantage my first semester.

I was always the kid that wanted to hang out with adults rather than other kids, and from junior high on, they always thoughtI was the best thing ever. Then my academic career ended and I was an "adult" in the real world scratching to survive. Everything I'd accomplished prior to that point apparently meant nothing to the people that mattered. For the first time in my life, success didn't come easily and three years later I'm still trying to prove that I'm really what my transcripts and diplomas say I am.

I grew up as a kid who was good at school and bad at sports, so I desperately wanted to become good at sports. I spent so much time and effort on that I suddenly was bad at the life the good grades were supposed to prepare me for. So these days I spend a lot of time vacillating my focus from one to the other and being good at neither. I definitely need to work on my balance if I ever want to be successful.

Hey, at least I'm not trying to have musical and artistic talent, too, right?

My Training Needs Antipsychotic Medication

Yep, train my butt off, get physically exhausted, get depressed, find excuses to miss several days of training.

This week was rain and homework. Going "back to school" is harder than I thought. At least I know what I'm doing after this week and will be better prepared for the rest of the semester.

I've been avoiding the blog all week out of guilt, but I guess the first step is admitting you have a problem.

Sooooo...I have a problem.

And Wussing Out...

Okay, so I'm not really beating myself up about it too much, but I needed a title and my efforts over the past few days have been less-than-heroic.

Friday I skipped my squats because my legs were junk and I didn't really see the point in causing the significant muscle fiber trauma that I knew it would when there was definitely not enough rest scheduled in the near future for it to heal. Breaking down muscle only works when you let it grow back.

Saturday was my one "heroic" day of the weekend. My scheduled workout was 8-12 X a 6-8% grade hill that took 60-90 seconds to climb. The first part of the climb was supposed to be zone 3-4, then stand and push to zone 5 for the last 20 seconds, and finish with 5 powerful pedal strokes at the crest of the hill. This is a Coach Dave staple and as many times as I've done it, I've never made it through more than six reps. However, once I saw it smack-dab in the middle of a power block, I finally got it. It's not about the hill; it's about the sprint at the top of the hill.

My legs once again felt terrible going into the workout, but I decided to do one rep and then if I still wanted to quit I would. This time I made it a point just to climb the hill, not try to push too early like I have in the past (a steep grade will get me to zone 3 without training) . Sure enough, I had a much better workout this time and got 8 reps in. I might have been able to do more, but I didn't want to be greedy. I had made my point and I wanted to live to train another day.

Unfortunately, the next day I woke up to rain, high winds, and a temperature that topped off at 51 degrees. Great weather in February, not so much in May. I had two workout options for the day: a four hour mountain bike ride if I felt good or a two hour road ride if I didn't. Well, I didn't feel good and couldn't have mountain biked even if I did and it didn't take long for me to decide that I didn't really feel up to a road ride in the rain either. Adam had some sort of nasty flu thing last week and I'm still not fully convinced that it won't get me yet. I've had a low-grade sore throat since Friday, but nothing else so far.

The only problem with this plan is that Monday is ALWAYS my day off. I have a serious mental block against riding on Monday, but I somehow convinced myself yesterday that I would. Yeah right. I came home and stressed about what to wear to our office "retreat" tomorrow as I wanted to look nice for all the important folks in other departments.

Then I stressed about my first week of homework, because I just began the first class of a "graduate certificate" program in Instructional Systems Technology. I don't officially need any more education, but I'm definitely wanting to make a bit of a career change. Well, I've been wanting to do that for two years, but I'm finally getting a clear picture of what my strengths are. They include being a student loan guru/superstar, but unfortunately there's not a lot of room for advancement in that field (at least without moving), so I have to figure out a way transfer my skills to something more profitable.

So the ride got bumped for homework. That's not going to happen again, I swear.

The good news is that my legs should be good going in the next week. I'm going to keep pushing the limits about what I can handle and see what happens. I really wish I had a power meter, because I feel like my legs and HR monitor are lying to me about what I'm really capable of as far training volume and intensity go. Too bad that probably won't happen for a while on the current salary.

From what I hear, power meters and Shakira's hips are the only training devices that register fully accurate information.

(For some odd reason, we like making Shakira jokes in the Rodkey household.)

Pushing Through

After Tuesday's basement torture, I pushed further into my sprinty, power-building block of training. Unfortunately, Wednesday had thunderstorms all day and I was stuck inside on the trainer, which wasn't really that bad for sprints. I just cut the ride time from 1.5 hours to and even 1. I justified the reduction in time by telling myself the extra 30 minutes would have been eaten up by the ride in and out of town anyway, had I ridden outdoors.

Yesterday was a two-hour zone 1-2 ride. My legs were pretty wobbly from two days of sprints, but I set out to see what would happen. Thirty minutes into the ride, I was still struggling to keep my HR up to zone 2, so I thought about cutting it short. I have a belief, which my coach has confirmed, that riding much more than an hour is a waste of time when you can't get out of zone and you would be better off going home to rest.

However, I was really set on making through a hard training block as planned for once. I was hitting zone 2, but it was hard. I decided that since it was Thursday night and I was almost done with a relatively low-stress week at work, I was going to experiment and push a little further through the boundaries of fatigue than I normally do. Rest and recovery are all well and good, but I have to step up to "big girl" training someday. So I forced my legs to keep spinning strong, smooth circles fast enough to keep my HR above 154, even though they didn't want to. Finally, after the first hour I hit my stride and actually felt decent. My HR actually went a little crazy and started jumping up too high the last 15 minutes, but I was okay.

I woke up pretty worn out today and my legs definitely feel heavy, but it will take a few days to really see the results of my experiment. My workout today is 30 minutes of different types of one-legged squats. Since it's short, I can go home and watch a movie and chill for a while when I get home from work, so it's going to be a mental rest day even if I won't be getting full-on physical rest.

We'll see how it goes, I've still got a tough couple of weeks ahead of me and I'm really going to have to be vigilant lest I "break" under the pressure, but if I can make it through it will totally be worth it.

Puke

I'm going to refrain from lengthy commentary today, but I just wanted to say how hard my workout was yesterday. It was three sets of the following: 20 box jumps followed by 5 X 30 sprints on the trainer in my biggest gear. Yep, sprints are fun at 15 seconds, hard at 20 seconds, and apparently torturous at 30 seconds. My legs were jello afterwards, but I guess it's good for me.

Today is more sprinting, but these just babies: 10 seconds out of the saddle, then 10 seconds in the saddle every 5 minutes over the course of a 1.5 hour zone 2 ride. These are the fun kind.

~~

Just in case anyone was planning on trying to eat a whole mango at their desk at work while wearing freshly dry-cleaned clothes, don't. Stick with apples and bananas.

Don't ask me how I know this either.

Finding the Right Words

Yesterday I spent a fair amount of time reading various responses to my weekend's race by blog comment and email. I also spent some time catching up on my blog-reading and reacting to other peoples' race reports from the weekend.

It's unfortunate that Hallmark doesn't make a "I'm sorry for your race" card, because it's really hard find the right thing to say in those situations. I don't want to you be a downer, but there's also the reality that, for the person involved, the only cure for a bad race is a good race (or good workout at least).

Of course, bad races aren't the only times I don't know what to say. There are also the cases where I want to say "Good job!", but a bunch of people have already said that and I can't think of anything new or cool. There's really of whole plethora of situations where I want to say something, but everything I can think of is trite and/or unoriginal.

So I have come up with the perfect blog comment, although I'm not sure if I'll ever use it: "So I read your blog and I care what's going on in your life. I hope that knowing this will make you feel good."

That's pretty much what I'm trying to say most of the time.

Day of Rest

Yesterday, I had a much needed "day of rest", which I learned is a lot different from a "rest day". Technically, I had three rest days last week (two planned, one unplanned), but I still went into the race Saturday feeling like the living dead. That's because it's the non-training stuff that's killing me. It seems that too often my "rest days" are just weekdays where I don't have to ride, so I just run around town like an insane woman doing errands after work. It's not very restful, even though I'm not training.

Yesterday, however, I did ride, but it was a lot closer to a real rest day than I've had in a long time. I slept 12 hours as planned. I then got up 11 and ate a leisurely breakfast while watching a movie. Then I ran a couple of errands with Adam and got ice cream. After I got home, I went on a 1:15 easy ride on the road, showered, and made a nice dinner. After all that I was still in bed before 10. I seriously need to do that more often.

Now today is a "rest day" per my schedule, but I'm still stuck running around after work. I really try to get everything I need to do done on the weekend, but it's hard when I'm racing or traveling as I was last weekend and this past Saturday. I did what I could yesterday, but a lot of businesses aren't open on Sunday. It makes me kind of glad I have four weeks until my next race.

DINO #1 Race Report (Race Rant?)

UGLY is the only way to describe my race today.

I headed to Warsaw, IN today to kick off the DINO series and start shaking out the answers to the questions and speculation that I mentioned yesterday. I can only hope that by June I am proven wrong because things aren't looking so hot right now.

It was the most painful start I've ever had as my throat and gums were burning so bad from lactic acid that I thought my lower jaw was going to fall off. I haven't traditionally warmed up well before XC races, but I did before the TT last week and I felt so much better than I did today. I think I need to make it part of the routine.

The leaders dropped me pretty quickly and I was left to suffer with a couple of sport riders lurking behind me. I kept myself completed redlined trying to hold them off, but during a series of power climbs near the end of the first lap, I blew up, crashed, and let them pass me. I completely couldn't get myself together after that and could barely keep my bike on the trail. I wanted to quit.

I decided to finish, but just ride the second lap "easy", which still hard after an hour with my HR sky high and expert men zooming by at that point. The sad thing is that I my "easy" second lap was less than 2 minutes slower than the first lap where I was killing myself.

I ended up with a time 17 minutes faster than last year, but my third place expert woman (I was fourth out of four) put a full 30 minutes on me. Additionally, I was beaten by several sport women including one that I consistantly beat by around 15 minutes every race last year. It was not good.

I'm sure part of the problem was how exhausted I've felt all week, which is bad because the fatigue is only about 30% from training. I'm definitely going to try to sleep at least 12 hours tonight and try not to do anything tomorrow except my 2 hour ride, which I will be doing VERY easy.

Power Trip

I got my training plan for the next three weeks from my coach a few days ago and it sort of makes me want to cry just looking at the workouts.

We decided that since the season is getting off to a late and funky start that it may be best to just start over and try to peak for the Shenandoah 100 at the end of August. The Lumberjack has been demoted from an "A" race to another "learning experience", which I suppose it's good to adopt that line of thinking ahead of time rather going in and blowing myself up over nothing.

As for the crying part, that because of the muscle-fiber shredding power workouts I'll be doing before then. The idea is that if you increase your maximum power that automatically makes you faster at all effort levels, as they are all percentages of your max. Doing this will involve doing a lot of sprints over the next few weeks.

Fifteen second sprints on the road bike are fun and I will be doing plenty of that, but I will also be doing sprints at the top of hill repeats, 30 second sprints on the trainer (it starts hurting at 20), and jumping onto boxes in between sprints on the trainer. Fun, eh?

Then endurance training gets mixed back in as I start to adapt. That's going to leave me short on long rides before the Lumberjack, but I think it's okay. My problem at the Ouachita Challenge was burning all my "matches" (power, fast twitch fibers, etc.) out early in the race. The new training plan should give me a few more matches to burn and hopefully I'll be smarter about how I use them for the Lumberjack. Then by the Shenandoah I will hopefully have lots more matches to burn, lots more efficiency at burning them, and the experience of knowing how to use them correctly. Oh, and hopefully I'll be better at riding over rocks.

So that's the long term for the season. In the short term, I feel very much like I did jostling around at the start of the Ouachita Challenge all over again, as the first DINO XC race is tomorrow. The season always starts with a wave of rumor and speculation and an inevitable post on the HMBA forum predicting the DINO Series top 10 expert men for the year. We women don't get that kind of publicity; for us it's more chatting amongst ourselves about who we will think will show up, what class they will be in, and how fast they'll be.

And then by June, we're always proven wrong. Kind of like worrying about getting "stuck behind the slow people on the singletrack", eh?

I'm still nervous nonetheless. It largely has to do with the thought of racing gut-wrenchingly hard for two hours and knowing I'll probably still get beaten by several people after all that suffering. But as my favorite line of this blog's namesake tune says, "You live for the fight when that's all that you've got."

The funny thing is that trying to focus on the long-term is what's making me nervous. Since I'm getting what feels like a really late start rolling into the season (I hit my lowest weight since Christmas this morning, but it's still around 7 pounds heavier than this time last year), I'm already worrying about stretching the season out as much as possible. I've already been looking for late-fall races, which is dumb because I have no idea how I'll feel in November. Yet I'm still formulately plans and backup plans for six months from now. It's a compulsion I can't seem to break.

You may have noticed that I have the Iceman Cometh as question mark on my sidebar schedule. Yes, I could have signed up for the lottery, but I wanted to a "win" a spot through the Midwest Mountain Bike Championships program. It was a good idea at the time, but after my crappy winter training I think I've just traded a lottery for a poker game. It's all gambling, and I'm letting myself get worried about too many things beyond my control.

I don't think I'll elaborate beyond that. If I'm in a poker game, I need to keep my cards close to my chest.

Long Time Gone

It's been three long weeks now,
Since Blowout Mountain blew me out,
But I'm gettin' it back on the dirt now,
But I'm takin' the long way 'round.

The last week and a half has been insanely busy with work craziness and getting back into training, so I'll try to be short 'n' sweet as I can on the catch-up.

Last week was essentially cycling rehab for me as I ditched my scheduled workouts and just tried to get back in the habit of getting on my bike ever day. Work was really stressful and just getting on the bike for an hour or so a day was about all I had in me.

Saturday I returned to formal training with 3 hours on singletrack at Brown County State Park with 4 X 3 minutes hill repeats thrown in the middle. It was hard and kind of clumsy at first, but it helped me get my dirt mojo back and allowed me to earn my first Big Ugly Black Bruise of the season:

I've been thinking that my blog needs more pictures, but as you can see, my camera phone quality isn't the best. You get the idea though.

Don't worry; it wasn't a bad crash. I just banged my leg on the handlebars after my bike came to an inadvertent stop trying to roll over a large root.

Sunday Chrysa and I went to the course for the coming weekend's XC race to pre-ride and there happened to be a dirt TT going on while we were there. They were paying well and there was only one other expert woman so I decided to enter. I was doing really well until about halfway through I blew a tire and managed to pinch a hole in my replacement tube trying to change it. Doh! I ended up walking the rest of the way back, but I got $40 for it, so I can't complain.

I'm getting pretty tired of going on long walks with my bike, but I supposed that when I finally make it to the La Ruta I will be the most experienced hike-a-biker there.

Finally, tonight was more hill reps on the mountain bike, but I opted to do them at our local mountain bike park which is within riding distance rather than go to Brown County. I already used way too much gas over the weekend and have a lot of driving to do on Saturday as well. The problem with having such a nice trail 30 minutes away (by car) is that the local trail is falling into sad disrepair. It's located next to some low-income housing and there seems to be a very high scary people to mountain biker ratio, so I don't really like going out there by myself anymore. Tonight was okay as it was a little cold; there were no hanger-outers to make me nervous.

So with that, I will leave you with one final low quality picture:

This is a very important purchase for mountain biking season: bandages that match my team kit! If you're going to beat the crap out of yourself, you might as well make it look cute, right?

Happy Cows and Tiger Eyes

Risin' up, back on the street,
Did my time, took my chances,
Went the distance now I'm back on my feet,
Just a girl and her will to survive...

I made it through my stomach pain, yet never got a diagnosis. Apparently my blood work indicated nothing more than minor inflammation (which could be anything) and any malady that would normally cause pain like that should have come with nausea and vomiting. Luckily, it went away on it's own, but really wish they would've found an explanation.

I did an easy hour ride today and should resume fully normal training by next week, but I will be missing the first cross country race of the season tomorrow. It's technically a "practice race" and doesn't count for points or prizes, but it's a fun course and it makes me sad to miss it. However, racing tomorrow sounds like a good way to relapse, which I absolutely don't want to do. So, just a couple of easy hours on the road for me.

During my couch confinement for the last week, I got pretty well caught up on my DVD watching, but more importantly I read an eye-opening article in Velonews. I generally don't pay much attention to the training articles, as I have a coach to tell me what to do, but the latest issue intrigued me. It had to do with Rick Crawford's CNS scoring, which I have been logging in for my coach for months, but didn't fully understand what I was doing.

CNS stands for Central Nervous System and the article was about measuring and balancing different types of stress and recovery in a more holistic way than just hard and easy days on the bike. More importantly, he used the analogy (and we're going to assume this is true and not just an annoying cheese ad campaign) that cows produce more/better milk when they are happy and cyclists produce more/better results when they are "happy".

So after two weeks of travel, work stress, and illness, the pursuit of happiness was heavily on my mind already. It turns out that Happy Zen Lindsay has the potential to be even faster than Angry Lindsay, and much more consistently, at that. Of course, I already knew that on an intuitive level or I wouldn't have been trying to focus on the mind/spirit aspect of my training for several weeks already. Unfortunately, it's a long confusing process and it's a little hard to come to a conclusion about what would make me truly "happy" now.

I actually visited our local "Zen community" last Sunday, which is convenient, since it's 1 1/2 blocks from my house. I'm still a little confused though. Basically, I think it comes down to that after some practice I should learn to neutralize my emotional state and learn to live in the moment. The practice should help me learn not to let my level of happiness hang on ever-changing circumstances that are beyond my control. We'll see.

More in tune with the article though, I started brainstorming on ways to make an immediate reduction in my stress scores, other than just lying to the computer program and myself as I apparently have been doing since I keep burning out before the numbers say I should. It also made me question if I'm really cut out for this if cycling doesn't intrinsically make me happy.

It's a weird question since I'll admit I'm not one of those girls who says, "I've just always liked riding my bike", because a lot of the time, I don't. However, I do LOVE racing bikes and training is just something you have to do in between. I hope that doesn't make me seem bitchy and overly competitive, because I really don't want to come off that way. I also don't want to come off like all my self-esteem is hanging on "who's ass I can kick" (although it never hurts the ego). Honestly, as cheesey as it is, my feelings can best be described as such:

It's the eye of the tiger,
It's the thrill of the fight,
Rising up to the challenge of a rival...

I really just like engaging with a competitor and really pushing myself. It's probably why I don't like just riding for training so much and why I like cycling so much better than I did triathlon. I probably would have felt the same way about running, but trying to go from a non-runner to Division I runner, I really never got good enough to race head-to-head with anyone much. I really wish I would have got to run at the high school or Division III level instead.

Anyway, I come to the conclusion that cycling does make me happy, more or less. I just need to find a way to keep the rest of my life from draining on me so much. Maybe that's where the meditation will come in. Until then I will leave you with another great quote not from the Rocky III soundtrack:

"....I realized that sometimes riding a bike is just plain not fun and too many people in the world are assholes (I've decided to stop being an asshole in order to decrease the numbers)."

-Tracy Nelson

Ummm, Barium...

First Mrs. Bigglesworth and now me. The mystery abdominal pain that slowed me down on my ride Saturday decided to stick around and get worse, so this morning I decided to see a doctor. So far, we don't have a clear diagnosis, but I do get to drink a couple of Barium "smoothies" and go back for a CT scan at 2:30. It's just goes to show that missing work isn't always fun.

Until then, I get to sit around and worry about what my diagnosis will be. I'm sort of worried it's my gall bladder and they're going to want to take it out and I won't be able to ride for another month or so. I guess it not a good idea to get too freaked out too early though. Hey, at least I should lose some weight from it, right?

Bike Race to Rat Race

I got back to Bloomington Wednesday night well-rested and ready to get back on my bike, as I had been bikeless since the end of the Ouachita Challenge. My bike rode home with my friend Chrysa on Monday and I flew home on Wednesday. Not really the best laid plans, but the brilliant travel plan that I had when I signed up back in December slowly fell apart as the race drew nearer. Oh well, you live, you learn. It was my first time "travel racing" as my husband would say.

Unfortunately, my anxiousness to start training again was completely killed my first day back at work. So much work had piled up while I was gone and I got stressed out to the point of feeling physically ill: headache, random body pains, dizziness, and nausea. That bled on into Friday and I ended up not riding until this morning.

Today's ride was my first official "mountain bike ride" of the season (last weekend was a beast all of it's own). I went to Brown County to try out my singletrack legs and found them quite lacking, even on less-techical terrain and with a non-exploding heart rate. I was riding very weak both fitness-wise and techincally. I've had stomach pains since breakfast this morning that didn't really subside for my ride, but I got the distinct feeling that I still wouldn't have exactly been a superstar otherwise.

I did get some good practice on the "fake rocks" today though. I pretty much rode out the most techical section and back to see if I'd gained any skills in last week's experience. Overall, I was actually pretty wussy, as I tend to be when I'm out of practice, but I did manage to clear the "S-shape rock garden" for the first time ever. It's considered to be one of the more difficult elements on that trail system, so that was an accomplishment.

I nine more weeks to get myself ready for the Lumberjack 100 and while podium places are probably out of reach, I would at least like to get through it with a little less pathetic suffering than Ouachita. Taking five-day breaks from riding are probably not the way to do that, but I'm going to try really hard to make sure that doesn't happen again, well, like ever... We'll see about that.

~~

In case anyone was wondering. I made the last-minute decision for Mrs. Biggleworth to have her surgery while I was out of town. I didn't want Adam to have to take care of her afterwards by himself, but the vet was leaving town the day I was getting back and I didn't want Mrs. B to have to wait two more weeks. I figured that given the choice, it was more important for the vet to be there for the surgery than me, so she had the operation while I was on my way to Arkansas.

It went really well and she's feeling much better. Now she just has a bald belly and a little strip of one front leg shaved (for the IV, I presume) that makes her look like she's wearing Uggs.