Week #43: It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

A friend of mine often reminds me that "mistakes are life's tuition", which is very helpful in light of the last year of my life. Whenever I want to go back and punch 20-something me for getting 30-something me into my current position (which most days feels like being 24, but, you know, with the added bonus of being old), it's helpful to remind myself that my ability to make good decisions now pretty much comes from all of those crappy ones I made before. So perhaps I'm not a screw-up for taking longer to settle into successful adulthood. Maybe while I'm doing my best to be a supportive girlfriend during the home stretch of Frank's academic career, maybe I'm also completing my own dissertation on life. I mention this because the past week does seem a bit defined by bad decisions, if ones of the more minor variety. 

The first was actually made a few weeks ago when my mom offered to buy me a half hog from Schacht Farm for my birthday. So the bad decision was made when I put down the deposit and filled out the order form. The choice was basically to ham or not to ham. Despite the fact that I'm not a huge fan of ham, the novelty sounded good at the time. It was only a day or two before I went to pick up my meat when I realized that there would be *14 pounds* of ham that I could have just had them add to the ground pork portion instead. I then started having "ham regrets" regarding the proportion of processed versus unprocessed meat in my order. 

I'm not a hater of processed meats by any means, as the typical arguments against them don't resonate with me. Saturated fat? Whatever. Salt? Whatever. Nitrates? Whatever. Sugar? Meh, I'm not crazy about the idea of sugar in meat, but it's a very tiny amount. I do, however, just sort of feel better when I eat meat that hasn't been preserved in any way, regardless of how natural the ingredient list is, so I've been trying to steer myself back toward plainer, if less tasty, breakfast meats. So the ham decision definitely worked against this, although it wouldn't really have been that big of deal had I not already been dealing with a very "on" anxiety switch this week.

My other bad decision had to do with my costume for Eva Bandman Halloween 'Cross. Back in the spring I saw a Facebook ad for some ridiculous leopard-print leggings with weird cutout garter things. They were hilarious enough that I was actually willing to shell out the $20 to buy them. So for the Halloween 'cross race, I incorporated them into an "80's Hair Band Groupie" costume along with a homemade ripped and bedazzled T-shirt halter top. 

I thought I could live without a chamois for a 40-minute race, and I probably could have with normal pants.  However, the various moving parts of the leggings conspired against me to form the most uncomfortable saddle contact ever and also gave me paranoia regarding exactly what the people behind me were seeing when I got out of the saddle for the three dismount/remounts and three steep descents per lap. I basically spent the entire race thinking about my pants. Add that to shock of what felt like my third "first race" this season after too many weeks without a hard effort. I basically had one good lap where I was sticking with the competition, and then slowly faded to next-to-last place. At that point I'd heard enough heckles about my "stripper" costume that I figured I'd just go with it, pull off the partially unhooked right legging, and tossed it in the Shamrock tent as I went by. It was good for some laughs, at least.

So, in the grand scheme of things, $84 of "wasted" meat (that I didn't pay for), a poor cyclocross performance, and a little self-induced embarrassment aren't the worst mistakes I could have made. I will, however, be avoiding bulk ham purchases in the future and only racing in costumes that allow for bibs underneath. And Frank is the only one allowed to see me "scandalously clad" from now on. Such is life, and I guess this just means I'm a little closer to earning my degree.

Week #42: Fall Things

I don't have any exciting news to tell or deep thoughts to share from the past week. Monday-Thursday was just normally scheduled work and training, and then I spent the weekend in State College with Frank. We had a great time soaking in the brief period of peak fall color before winter sets in by spending plenty of time in Rothrock State Forest. Saturday we slept kind of late, and rain was threatening, so we took a drizzly hike up some of the rockier of mountain bike trails that I'm not quite up to tackling yet. The views were a little obscured by the rain and fog, but any time you get to look out from a mountain top at fall foliage is a good day, especially when you're standing with your favorite person.

Sunday we tackled the gravel again, but with a little more distance and little less steep of climbs than last time. It was better this time knowing what I was getting into, although ~10 miles of shallow but steady climbing on the way back in had both of us desperately searching for the green port-a-potty that marked the peak of the climb before the final five-mile descent to the parking lot. When it finally came into sight, I called it the most beautiful port-a-potty in the world. I guess that's what shorter days and cyclocross season will do to you; after too many weeks of only short rides, one's butt gets unaccustomed to the feeling of just sitting and pedaling. Hopefully this will serve as a reminder to our bodies that will make our upcoming assault on the Sub-9 Gravel Grovel a little easier.

Week #41: Mom Times and Three Pounds

There's nothing too exciting to tell about the last week, except that my mom came to visit over the weekend. We kept up our touristy tradition, which seems to have switched from caverns to waterfalls now that we have covered all the major cavern tours in southern Indiana. Unfortunately, waterfalls seem to be more disappointing, because when we went to see Cataract Falls in the spring they were flooded, and when we went to Clifty Falls this weekend the water was barely flowing. Also all of the lookouts were from weird angles, so we never really got a good look.

The best waterfall picture I could come up with this weekend.

Otherwise, I guess things are going okay training-wise. I'm not getting a lot of bike miles in right now due to travel and CX season, but at least I've reestablished consistency in my riding and gym attendance. I even snuck out for a a little ride while my mom when to evening church yesterday. I'm a little frustrated because I feel like I'm stuck in a place where I'm just keeping myself from falling into worse shape, but not making any forward progress. Making progress is just a really hard thing to do during 'cross season. 

I'm also feeling weird because I'm carrying around 2-4 pounds above where I was in the spring and early summer. As much as I hate when people talk about cycling to "burn calories", I suspect it does have something to do with the lack of endurance riding on my schedule lately. I'm trying to just accept it and know that it will go away again once CX is over and Death March training starts again. Until then, I just having to try not to annoy everyone by sounding like Regina from Mean Girls with my repeated, "I really want to lose three pounds."

Everything Has Changed

I just couldn't let the day pass without acknowledging that one year ago today, I accepted the offer for my current job. That change combined with a few other factors bubbling up in my life at the time to provide the impetus for the major life overhaul that has taken place since. It feels much more like five years than one.

The thing that stands out most about this day is that I had my last binge immediately following the final interview the day before they offered me the job. It started as a backlash to my taking the demand of 12% body fat from my college track coach way too seriously, but for 13 years food was how dealt with shit. Almost every time I binged I swore to myself that it was the last time, and then it wasn't. Then, on October 8, 2012, it really was, and I didn't even know it at the time. My life and my mindset changed in a way that made me want to fight for something real instead of fake comfort and my desire to binge significantly faded. I started facing my problems instead of running away from them, and as a result, have set the foundation for a much happier future (and I've lost a few pounds, too).

So I guess happy first birthday to the new me.

I chose this from my "one year" Google image search due
to the irony that cupcakes are, in my opinion, the least
worthwhile sweets that exist.

Week# 40: Gun Club

Hmm, what to say about Gun Club? The traditional best race of the year was a complete rainy slop fest, and made for the new hardest conditions in which I'd ever ridden. There really isn't a lot to say otherwise. I got a not-so-great start, and did an okay job at working my way through traffic considering that I was completely unwilling to run the amount that one was required to run the first lap of the race to do well. Homegirl don't play that. Homegirl also admittedly had a "warm-up beer" before the race, if that is any indication of my motivation level. As it were, I did relatively well after I got going and finished the best of the anti-runners at the back of the pack. 23 out of 29 finishers is still one of my better elite wave finishes.

So with a couple of muddy weeks in a row, it is already time for a little break in my 'cross season while I entertain my mom next weekend and visit Frank the next. Then my next race will be wearing a costume. Yeah, so I'm not doing so great on setting myself up for success thing, but you never know what will happen.

So here's a few pictures from the weekend:

On Saturday, Frank and I built this awesome cat tree instead of doing openers.
I think it was time well spent.

Riding in the mud.

A regular parking lot shower wouldn't cut it in this situation. Luckily, it got to 80
degrees or so by the end of my race, so jumping in the creek afterward wasn't so bad.

My favorite part of this picture is the "I'm just checking the bike now"
look on Frank's face. My teammate asked what I did
with my dollar handup at the finish.

Week #39: St. Mary's CX

In the days leading up to the St. Mary's CX race, I began to grow excited about the rainy forecast and the rumors of mud. We went all last season without a proper driving-rain, sloppy mudfest. Arriving at the course, I could see that all the expectations of the previous days had been met, and a practice lap left me with the impression that this could actually be the most difficult conditions in which I had ever ridden. The Kings CX course in 2011 could be considered harder because of the long forced run up to the finish line, but as hard as that was, you knew you *had* to run it. Yesterday's course didn't contain anything obviously unrideable, but there were many features that proved deceptively hard.

The difference between yesterday's race and my previous mudfest experiences was that instead of the front and center call-up that allowed me to sprint out of harm's way before the carnage ensued, I was stuck in the fourth row for the start. Since I knew I wouldn't be able to stay in front of the carnage, I decided to not waste my energy on an aggressive start and give myself space to navigate around the carnage and try to pick off as many people as possible as they made mistakes. However, there were much fewer mistakes happening in front of me during the first few minutes of the race than I expected, and I wasn't seeming to gain that much time from the ones that did happen. I also made a couple of mistakes myself while trying to predict the moves of those in front of me. 

By the middle of the first lap things were already spread out so far that I really only had one girl within sight that I might still be able to pick off. I was riding better than her technically, but I just wasn't really able to shut down the gap, and I started to realize that I just didn't feel that great physically. There wasn't anything specific that felt bad, or even an especially strong feeling of pain or heaviness in my legs. I was just missing whatever it is that normally makes me fast in mud. There was no plowing through the slop and holding it steady when my bike bounced and shuttered beneath me. Just pathetic slogging and weaving. I really only did well on the super low-speed technical parts where I could "make it", but at the cost of going 2 mph. My talent for letting it slide *just enough* through the corners and saving it at the last second barely came into play, because I was never going fast enough for cornering speed to be in an issue.

So it was kind of a bummer to not race well on such a muddy day, but I didn't get too upset about it. I'm really trying to come to terms with the fact that this season I am truly just racing for fun. It's just hard to remember that sometimes when the "fun" hurts that bad. If there is anything to be learned from the women who are 10+ years older than me and 10 minutes ahead of me, it is that I still have many years left to race cyclocross. So if this season, and maybe even next season, don't go so well while I'm making big life transitions, that's okay. For now I just need to not let my fear of being slow interfere with an otherwise fun experience.

A rare tongue-free, and even flattering, race picture

Yeah, this is more what the real me looks like.

Week #38: Petulant

Last week was my first successful week on my "in season" training plan that I hope to keep up through the end of cyclocross. While it might not be ideal, I really don't have a lot of faith in my ability to improve a lot once the season has already started, unless the "race into shape" phenomenon takes place. The sparse early season OVCX schedule, my visitation schedule with Frank, and my mother's annual fall visit are all conspiring to make September and October very light on racing for me, and will likely provide very little chance fore "racing into shape". Therefore my bigger goal is just to maintain and possibly improve general fitness (as opposed to race fitness) throughout the season, so that I have a better base when I start my Death March training in January. Yeah, those plans are being made already.

So the plan is as such:
Monday - easy weight session
Tuesday - recovery ride
Wednesday - intervals
Thursday - slightly harder weight session
Friday - off
Saturday - openers
Sunday - race

Of course, this includes several non-race weekends, so in those cases I'll just do what I can in the context of whatever's preventing me from racing. If I'm in PA, then it might be an underground race or less tortuously climby gravel ride. If my mom's in town, I'll probably just lose those days, and just have to deal with it. This past week, however, I did all the weekday stuff as planned, but the main thing that kept me from racing was the lack of a race within a four hour radius.

I debated between using the off weekend for interval time or social time, and decided social time was more important. I went to Indy for a ride with the Wheel(wo)men, but unfortunately it turned out much longer and harder than I hoped. That broke me a little bit, because I have to be in the right head space, with the right people, and usually on gravel for hard endurance efforts of get dropped, catch up, get dropped again to be enjoyable. September, in Indy, on pavement, with no immediate need for that kind of riding is not conducive to achieving this mindset, either. In the end, it did turn out to be Type II Fun, I got to see my teammates, and maybe it put a little deposit in my Death March savings account for spring.

The other part that made enjoying the longer and harder than planned effort more difficult was that I had only made it to that point in my successful training week at the cost of developing a very petulant attitude towards, well, everything. I did everything I was supposed to do training, eating, and financial-wise, and was left feeling utterly deprived of pleasure by the end of the week. I struggle a lot with the grown-up me focusing on doing what was necessary for my long-term well-being, while my more impulse-driven self got kind of depressed about not having much to look forward to at the end of the day. I'm still struggling with this quite a bit now, although the weekend did offer some relief.

Once again I'm turning to the lessons I learned last winter while preparing for the Death March. I look back on those days with rose-tinted glasses now, because I feel like I was my best self for those few weeks, but when I really think about it, most days during that time period sucked. At best I could look forward to my weekend rides after drudging through a lonely and boring Monday-Friday, and at worse even the weekend would only bring cold, solo rides where the only reward was fine-tuning the route or seeing an improvement in my speed. That was why I made the commitment to blog every week, because it forced me to be accountable when sometimes writing down that I'd had a successful training week was my only reward.

Now, after the upheaval of the past few months, it is time to settle in and start working towards a new goal that's bigger and better, but also further away and less defined than some silly bike race. (And also towards some silly bike race, 'cause I'll be damned if I get knocked out of that precious top-three spot now that I've established my place there.) I've always made up for missing what I really want and need in life by substituting shallow, impulsive pleasure, because I didn't think I could ever have the real thing. Now I know I can, but it will require sacrificing some of that impulsive pleasure, which will undoubtedly make me a little pouty for a while. But for the first time in my life, the "HTFU" isn't just suffering for the sake of suffering or to look tough, nor is it directed toward a goal that deep-down I don't really believe in my ability to achieve (think the Pisgah stage race or any of my previous 100-mile mountain bike attempts).

At the age of 32, I finally saw what it was like to set an achievable goal, put in the work even when it meant days of pouting, or crying, or a million cray cray texts to Kristen, and in the end achieving the goal. So to my impulsive, petulant self I say: It will be okay. You've proven you can win at Death, now it's time to win at life.

Week #37: BloomingCross

True cyclocross season has arrived at last, complete with the Monday morning picture-tagging scramble. It seems that 37 weeks was not enough time for everything to fall magically into place for a season of CX dominance. Really, I didn't feel ready at all, but I was also tired of waiting. 

In the end, the weekend was double-awesome for me, because it was not only the start of OVCX, but it was also Frank's first visit to Bloomington since July. So honestly, I wasn't so much excited about my own race as I was about this:

My 'cross protege did quite well in his OVCX debut, and I think he did an effective job at charming the crowd around the Shamrock tent, even if the case of Yuengling that he brought was deemed a nice gesture but generally unimpressive. I can't say how great it was to be among my 'cross family again and to also have him by my side. I had an odd moment where I went back to my tiny lime green car, saw a large white Cannondale leaned against it, and realized that this is all real. It's not just some game of pretend that I've been playing all summer. New life, new season. 

Of course, there was the converse moment where I chose not to hang my bike next to a different large white bike on the rack because I didn't want to offend anyone with my bike cooties. The first race of the season was not without its moments of awkwardness, but overall I felt many of the fears that I've had all summer were relieved by the experience. 

Yeah, the 'cross tongue is back.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Life, stuff, things. "How was the race?" you ask.

It went pretty okay for the first 3.5 laps. Of course, it felt awful like the first one always does. The fact that I raced three weeks ago did very little to relieve that, as any progress toward the pain ignoring ability that develops through the season had already worn off. The only advantage is that I feel much less trashed in the aftermath than I did after Relay Cross, so perhaps it helped my recovery, if not my pain tolerance. 

Anyway, I mixed it up pretty well in solidly not-last place, and was performing at "exceeds expectations" levels (given my expectations were super low). Unfortunately, since barriers are obviously not my friends this season, I tripped over the very last one of the race, smashed my face on my stem, and lost three places. However, since there is really very little difference between 25th and 28th place, I just counted it as a good effort, was thankful to still have all my teeth, and resumed my training on Monday with the hopes of building upon that effort.

Week #36: Bedazzled

I almost didn't post this week because it was such a wash training-wise, but I've come so far, so why break the streak? In just one week I'll have all sorts of cyclocross content, right? 

Anyway, I was pretty lazy this weekend except for witnessing the lovely wedding of two cyclocross friends (and blathering on and on after about how good their vows were). Otherwise, my biggest cycling accomplishments were cleaning my bike up from Relay Cross and completing the bedazzlement of my "new" short sleeve skinsuit for the season. So with the OVCX opener days away, I'm not sure if I'm set to perform any better than last season, but at least I'll be in more flattering apparel.

Week #35.5: Excuses, Excuses

I'm really late with this week's check-in, and even now, I have very little to say. Last week was spent mostly recovering from Relay Cross, which took an incredible toll on my body. I didn't really do much of consequence until Saturday when Janelle wanted to try out her new singlespeed, and I broke out in the Karate Monkey for the first time in weeks. It was stupidly hot, and we elected not to do the main climb of Aynes, but I still had to take a rest break just getting up the short part to Green Valley. That was embarrassing, and I definitely hope that it was just the heat or lingering fatigue from the race bringing me down, and not that I've become *that* out of shape in the past couple of months.

Sunday was my first ride plus gym double workout day since pre-Death March. Both were short and easy, but since I'd had so little of each in the past days and would spend Monday driving to State College, I had a hard time choosing which was more important.

As I just said, I was driving to State College on Monday, so I had very little time for blogging, and was hoping my visit would produce more blog material. However, this visit was just a quick trip to spend a little time with Frank to break up the long five-week stretch between my last long visit and his visit for the OVCX opener, which will take place in Bloomington this season. So I basically spent 18 hours of driving to have dinner and spend the day with him. Totally worth it.

Mushu is either protesting my leaving or the suitcase is a really comfortable bed.
Clemmie is protesting Mushu getting to enjoy anything for more than four seconds.

We did get in a short road ride of Bloomington-like difficulty level. I had great intentions of doing hill repeats, but the nine-hour drive in my legs made one pass up the main climb of the route plenty. The scenery mostly included the "port-a-potty farms" (empty tailgate fields), and the lovely State College airport, so there were no scenic vista selfies to be had this time.

So the only pictures I have this week are my cats protesting my departure and the duck that we cooked for dinner Tuesday night. After setting the tone with first-date baked liver pate', culinary adventures have been our thing just as much as cycling adventures. So when we went to the farmer's market and Frank's favorite meat supplier had one duck left, we decided to give it a shot. The guy said to cook the legs and breast separately, but I was stubborn and just rigged up some foil legwarmers (leg coolers, really) to promote even cooking. It totally worked out, and the duck was delicious. It was also good thing that we cooked the whole thing at once, since a 3.5 pound duck surprisingly has barely enough meat to feed two carnivorous people for one meal.

So that was my week (and a half): Training, meh. Other stuff, pretty cool. Sometimes that's how it goes.

Roasted duck, Flashdance style.

Week #34: Relay Cross

This weekend I got my 2013 cyclocross season started a little earlier than usual while most of the Indiana racers were capping off their mountain bike season at the DINO series finale. This year marks the first summer since I've owned a mountain bike that I didn't do a single DINO race. It was pretty liberating, really.

I'd been wanting to do Relay Cross in Chicago the past couple of years, but was never really able to get friends on board. This year I really wanted to make it a priority, and since I knew a lot more Chicago people after the Gravel Metric, I figured I could find partner(s) up there if no Indiana friends wanted to come along. As it turned out, Isabel, with whom I rode back after getting lost on the grass part of GM, asked me if I wanted to be her partner back in June and also said that I could do the coed race with her brother David. So my plans were set early on, and then it was just a matter of waiting for late August to arrive. And it did, more quickly than I could have imagined.

I was nervous, because I hadn't ridden tubulars on grass or put out an effort even remotely resembling 'cross intensity since last December. In fact, I only removed the gravel accouterments from my bike the day before the race.

It was a very hot and dusty day, even more so than normal early-season 'cross, and the women's race was unbelievably rough on me. I took the first lap, didn't make too impressive of a Le Mans start, and spent most of the lap trying to move up through traffic. I still managed to feel like I might throw up, or worse, poo my pants after the set of barriers near the end of the lap. And so it went: ride super hard, gasp in the pit, ride myself into oblivion trying to pick girls off on my next lap. There was a very conscious battle between the part of me that was screaming "just slow down" and the part of me that was screaming "you're faster than these girls; you have to pass them". In the end, my competitive instincts won out, and I finished the first race having ridden myself into cold chills in August and looking "a little blue". I have no idea how I did, really, but at least I reminded myself, in the harshest way possible, what 'cross feels like.

After the women's race, I had a few hours to eat and try to rest while I reflected on how badly the first race hurt and come to terms with the fact that I had to do it again. I was feeling a lot of pressure because my partner had been on the winning coed team the last couple of years, and I didn't want to let him down. I felt so icky getting redressed in the heat that I wondered if I would end the second race with a trip to the hospital, but I was determined to give it a shot at least.

Once it started and David come around in the top five or six after working his way through from the back of the pack, I realized that he really was fast enough to get us on the podium if I could just not screw anything up. I did sorta okay at that for most of a lap. I couldn't hang with the women from the other top-five teams, but I only had one pass me and she really wasn't getting much of a gap after coming around. Then we got to the barriers and this happened:

I think I hit my leg with my bike and started to lose my balance or something, but I'm not sure. Regardless, I dropped my bike on the front end hard, and knocked my right brake hood way out of whack. I also lost my chain and it took a really long time to get back on. Bye bye, podium. The rest of the race was just about trying to do my best and still ride hard with my messed up hood and having had my rhythm messed up. I think I did pretty well, except for that my chain bounced off going into the transition on two of the three remaining laps. Once I noticed before it was my turn again and once I didn't, which forced me to fixed my chain quickly before going out for my last lap. WORST ARRANGED COED PARTNER EVER! Luckily David was very nice about it and even fixed my messed up hood after the race.

Despite the heat, the pain, and the mechanicals, it great to back into 'cross season again. I'd heard some disparaging "hipster grass crit" rumors about Chicago cyclocross prior to experiencing it for myself, but I thought it was a great race and a great scene. The coed race was the last one of the day, and thus the most spectated. It was awesome because I feel like I had nearly as many people yelling my name around the course at that race as I would at an OVCX race, and plenty of strangers heckling me and offering me beer. So even though I still think OVCX is the best series in the county (whatever, coasts), Chicago 'cross gets a thumbs up from me!

Week #33: Transition

I didn't take a single bike-related picture this week.
You're going to have settle for Clemmie Badcat stealing a Brussels sprout.

Last Monday, I returned from Pennsylvania, hugged my kitties, slept, and went right in to work the next morning. I made it through the rest of the week fine, if a little tired, and hit all of my planned workouts. My weekend wasn't too exciting, but I got to do a short mountain bike ride with Dustin and Corinna, at least.

For the first time in weeks, I seem to have managed the transition back into real life pretty gracefully. Settling back into the business of making money and conditioning myself to be good at riding bikes so that I'm able to do awesome stuff later on is hard, especially when I'm tired. The last few months have been such a whirlwind for me that I sometimes forget how to settle into regular daily life. Then I remember that my life used to be like that pretty much all of the time, and at least now the boring home-times are an investment in something better to come. 

Aside from real-life transition business, watching Frank prep his new tubies reminded me of how close 'cross season really is and caused me to question my own preparedness. Physically, I'm not in spectacular shape due all of my recent travel and requisite recovery afterwards. With four weeks to go, I think I've settled into a good place, but I wonder how much fitness I can build in four weeks. Regardless, I am still pretty strong and lean, if lacking in bike-specific power, so I'm still better off than I was this time last year. 

I've also been inspecting my equipment and sort of praying that it will all last one more season. The bike itself is starting to show the fact that it has already been through two very full CX seasons and two Death Marches, not to mention all of the additional training and gravel riding that I did on it this year. At least it got and overhaul, new shifter, and new chain before the Death March, so hopefully the wear-and-tear is mostly cosmetic. I'm also just sort of crossing my fingers that all of my wheels and tires are fine, and that nothing will need to be reglued. The title of this blog comes from play on how "Living on a Prayer" was the theme song for my 2007 'cross season, and I'm definitely feeling like this might be the case again. 

Only now am I beginning to realize how different this year will be. I grew pretty accustomed to leaving my dirty bike in the garage after races to have it washed, inspected, and any necessary parts replaced before the following weekend. All I had to do was write checks and sometimes wash and lube it myself between Saturday and Sunday races. Now all of the washing and lubing is up to me, and I'm worried that I'll have no idea when things need to be replaced until they are really bad. Then I will have to scramble to get it done at a bike shop before the next weekend. I also have to drive myself to and from races and not hit the schapps flask too hard during the elite men's race, what with the having to drive myself home.

Not that any of this is an expression of regret. It is simply an acknowledgement of another way in which I'll have to learn to take care of myself that I've never had to do before, and in the end, will be better off for it. It might slightly lessen my chances of cyclocross glory this season, but I think it's well-established at this point that it's not the most important thing in my life anymore. I've traded physical support for emotional support (and superior crafting ability and a bunch of other awesome stuff that I won't list to avoid cat puking noises amongst my dear readers). I try not to get too ahead of myself fantasizing about maybe having both someday, which in itself could very well mean my departure from the awesome 'cross scene of the Ohio Valley to somewhere less 'cross-worthy. Everything in life has a price. For now, I just need to make the most of what I have, enjoy it, and not live my life expecting things to break.

Week #32: Show Me Your Gnar

After a rough couple of weeks of trying to get my emotional exhaustion and anxiety under control, I finally pulled it together in time to make my long-awaited first trip to Pennsylvania to visit Frank in his home territory. I was aware of the State College area's mountain biking reputation long before he came into my life, and very early on he told me about all of the grindy gravel climbing he'd been up to. Of course, I had to defend the Southern Indiana's cycling honor and prove it to be much different than the "Midwestern" box that he put it into. I got to do this over the 4th of July weekend, and he seemed reasonably impressed, so it was now time for me to see if State College riding lived up to the legend.

Um, it did. With my general level of exhaustion and loss of fitness in recent weeks, I expected that he would take it easy on me. A 20 mile gravel ride in Rothrock State Forest at which "you shouldn't hate me too much by the end" seemed reasonable. I did somehow interpret "you shouldn't hate me too much by the end" as easy, but it wasn't. At the beginning I locked my heavy legs into the slow rhythm of climbing the gentle but consistent 6-ish mile ascent that started almost immediately out of the parking lot. It wasn't fun, but it was okay. Then we were rewarded with a nice descent, followed by a long stretch of downhill-to-flat riding where I kept myself near threshold just because it was fun to go that fast.

Then I was given the choice to go back the way we came or do a loop where the climb back the other way was "a little steeper". I didn't feel awesome, but I figured not completing the loop was too wussy, so I opted for the loop. It was more than a little steeper. It was five miles of constant steep-ish chunky gravel that hit 17% in a few places. (Strava file here.) In the beginning I tried to tell myself that it was still easier than our Tennessee training camp, but instead of switchbacks, it was straight and relentless. Every hump I muscled over just revealed a new long, straight stretch of up. And then there was that gravel thing. I eventually gave up any hope of looking tough and stopped to rest three times on the way up. I didn't cry or complain, but I did stop, which is embarrassing in itself. We did eventually make it to the top, enjoyed the view, and still seemed to like each other when we got there.

The next day I got to see more of Rothrock via singletrack. Since I was already trashed from the day before, I mostly opted to "see" the famous rock gardens, but was hoping for easy-ish actual riding. The thing is, for this now admittedly Midwestern mountain biker, it was kind of all rock gardens. Some were more rideable than others, but I was pretty much bouncing the whole time and really wishing I had a full-suspension bike. Someone has a lot to learn and a lot fitness to gain back. The ride was pretty short with my struggling and whatnot, but it was still nice to have gotten some PA gnar experience. I hope to be back and better in the future.

Aside from introducing me to his world, he got a little closer to mine. He's all excited about doing to some OVCX races when he comes to visit me in the fall; so much so that he did, in fact, buy a tubular wheelset. So I guess he is officially dateable now, for those that were worried about that. Whoosh.

Week #31: Recovery

After digging into the roots of my emotional overtraining in last week's post, I've pretty much spent the week since doing what I can to recover. It hasn't been easy, as taking complete rest from life isn't really a viable option and sometimes the decision about what's best for me in a given situation isn't always clear.

One of my biggest problems this week has been the frustration of a setback more than the actual stress itself. Expanding on my overtrained athlete metaphor, I am dealing with the familiar feeling of sustaining an injury just when I've reached the best shape of my life. It's unnerving to go from being the most emotionally resilient that I've ever been to "Going to the grocery store is scary!" fully knowing how irrational that is but still unable to tamp down the feeling of fear rising in my gut.

However, the plus side to this is that I know what healthy and happy feel like, and that my current state isn't just my weak or flawed personality like I would have thought a couple of years ago. Just like an IT band will tear after pounding out too many miles, after overcoming too many scary, hard, or exhausting things, the brain will start to go a bit haywire, too. I've definitely done a lot of overcoming in the past few months, and my brain is sort of stuck in fight or flight mode at the moment.

Logically, I know this, but it doesn't make it any more fun. All I can do is tell myself that it won't last forever and do what I can to help it heal as quickly as possible. I feel like I did a pretty good job of it in the past week, trying to minimize stress and making smart choices about the level of physical activity that would help me without adding further stress. I also forced myself to have a few conversations that I didn't want to have, but that ultimately sped the healing process. (The mental equivalent of a really painful deep tissue massage?)

So I've made it to Monday morning feeling pretty okay and with a fairly manageable "to do" list for the week. Additionally, I'm only three workdays and a nine-hour drive away from seeing my sweetie. And we all know that oxytocin is the mental equivalent of EPO, so that should put me in pretty good shape.

Week #30: Emotional Overtraining

The blessing and the curse of a weekly blogging commitment is figuring out how to put a positive spin on an otherwise crappy week. In past years, I would have just skipped over the crappy parts, but this year I'm putting them out there, as honestly as possible, but still trying do something useful with them. So when trying to figure out how to best say, "I spent last week utterly exhausted and suffering from full-on cray cray anxiety levels", I have to think of the how, why, and what I learned from it. Hopefully, when that's over, I will be be more at peace, someone else might feel better about their own cray cray anxiety levels, and/or the judgy faces of the world can feel all superior looking down at my moment of trainwreckiness.

So this is my conclusion. It is particularly hard to admit that I broke down physically and emotionally after just celebrating a period of overcoming fun-but-stressful challenges that in years past I would have been too neurotic to handle. I then realized that, yes, this is still a training blog that is still about bikes, but the focus of my training this year has been emotional training rather than physical. Although I never consciously laid out a season training plan with phases and micro cycles and whatnot, that is essentially what I have been doing throughout the year. Laying a good base in the winter, choosing target "A race" life events that aren't necessarily races, and working through cycles of intentional stress and recovery have all played into my "training plan" this year much more than performing specific workouts on a given day or time of year.

Um, I washed some bikes at least.

The last month just turned out to be a tougher "training cycle" than was on the season plan. There was tons of good stress in the form of a new relationship, but also unplanned bad stress in the form of my grandma's death and subsequent trip to Oklahoma. Unfortunately, stress is still stress and my refusal to give up doing things that I wanted to do even though I was tired from doing things I didn't want to do got me to into trouble. I came into this "recovery week" having accomplished so much, but also pushed beyond my capacity and ended up tired, sick and anxious, just like someone trying to mash out a 20-hour training week at the end of a hard training cycle.

To be honest, I was really quite scared of how I was feeling, because I hadn't been so irritable or withdrawn in months. I knew this was a bad sign, and like an overtrained athlete, knew that, while rest was important, simply sitting on my ass literally and figuratively would not necessarily pull me out of the hole. I did rest a lot, taking Monday-Friday off of training completely. By the end of the week I knew that there was no way that I could sanely make it through the weekend's 6 hour race, so I pulled the plug on that, as well as any other activity or obligation that wasn't absolutely essential. With some of that stress relieved, I knew that spending the weekend in my pajamas would be putting myself at risk for depression, so I started working on my recovery strategy for doing things that would help me feel better with minimal stress.

The things that I determined to be most important were to get enough sleep, reestablish contact with friends who I hadn't seen in a while, and reestablish a minimal level of physical activity as I was past the point where full-time rest would continue to help. The sleep was pretty easy, since I had survived the workweek and made sure I didn't have to get up too early for anything on the weekend. 

Seeing friends was important because I'll admit that the last few weeks I've started to feel like "that girl" who ditches her friends when she meets a new guy. Establishing a relationship with someone who lives nine hours away is tricky, and I'll admit to making it my top priority lately. However, I now feel that we have made it through the "holeshot" phase of the relationship and can now confidently settle into a sustained pace, holding on through the straights and making the most of the corners. Of course, Frank doesn't have tubular wheels so he can't take full advantage of the corners, but perhaps it's better to have someone whose abilities compliment mine instead of matching them. Anyway, I devoted Saturday to time with my Wheel(wo)men Sarah and Janelle, as well as honorary Wheel(wo)man Liz. A leisurely lunch followed by a leisurely mountain bike ride really hit the spot.

Sunday I did mostly rest, but I made getting back in the gym a priority, as I think that is where I get the most advantage physically. Hopefully, this week I can keep that up and get back to doing intervals in preparation for 'cross season.

All in all, I'm still not fully recovered from my emotional overtraining, but I definitely feel a lot better. I also feel proud of myself for recognizing the problem and using more effective coping strategies than the pajamas and ice cream that I would have used in the past. So, even though a few days ago I might have been internally freaking out that "I'm going to be tired FOREVER", I now understand that is not the case. I just need to keep focusing on my recovery, and I will eventually be stronger and up for more challenges again as the year progresses.

Week #29: It's (Another) Adventure!

After struggling with all things that were outside of my control on my unplanned trip to Oklahoma, I was faced with a couple more challenges before returning home. When trying to board my return flight in Oklahoma City, I was informed that my originally-scheduled flight from Dallas to Indianapolis had been cancelled, and that I had been moved to a flight that was leaving at 8:10 p.m. This already screwed up my plan to be in Indy by 4:30 and hit gym on the way home. Things got worse when my flight was delayed an additional two hours due to storms. In the end, I got home around 3:00 a.m. on Wednesday, and was in bed around 4:45. 

So given the fact that I was getting to bed less than an hour from when I would normally have to go to work, I called in and did my best to sleep through the morning. In the afternoon, I made up for the stress and the missed weight workout by putting in a couple of hours on the singlespeed at Brown County. That definitely made me feel better about life.

After a couple more days at home in which I managed to get both a weight and intervals session in (see, doing my to keep training up when at all possible), I headed to Chicago for a weekend with my favorite Instagram follower. Much like my last venture into Illinois, it was an adventure, and I got to test my limits in a few different ways. 

Instead of a tiny "one-star" hotel room, this weekend's accommodations provided me with my first Airbnb.com experience. We had a bit of a rough first night on the plasticy mattress of the unairconditioned third floor apartment bedroom that we had rented, not to mentioned the awkwardness of knowing that a total stranger was sleeping on a couch a couple of feet from the bedroom door. Despite the sticky insomnia, it was still fun and the next morning we were rewarded for our perseverance with the discovery of BBQ for brunch. Heck yeah! 

Yeah, this is a thing. Smoked brisket breakfast skillet for me and
pulled pork Eggs Benedict for him.

I also got to have my first music festival experience at Pitchfork. It was pretty fun, even when the temperature went from hot to cool to raining during the last show, and I got sopping wet in a strapless sundress and started getting chilled. I toughed it out and stayed until the end, though, because that was what I came to do. It helped having someone there to warm me up.

So apparently I walked into the frame of this picture partially clothed and decided that I would somehow make it better by trying to act gangster.

Finally, when it was time to head home on Sunday, I swung out to the suburbs to get in a quick ride with some folks that I had met at the Gravel Metric. We rode CX bikes on some pretty flat, not-that-technical singletrack. It was still rooty enough for me to make a dumb mistake and bite it in the first two minutes of the ride. I scraped up my arm and leg pretty badly and somehow managed to bruise my right sit bone and, ahem, other adjacent soft tissues in the fall. I'm not exactly sure how that happened, but it made getting up and getting back on my bike pretty painful. I still did it though, and ended up having a good time.

So once again venturing into Illinois turned out to be a bigger adventure than I had planned, but even looking back at all that I gained from the last time around, I can't help but think that this time was even better.

Week #28: Doing My Best

It's a Saturday and I'm blogging from Oklahoma. There's really not much point in waiting until Monday to make an update because nothing will have changed training-wise, and I'll be busy with the events surrounding my grandma's funeral. Today I am sitting in my parents' house, not really knowing what to do and thinking that if I'd driven here like I wanted to, I could of at least have brought a bike and ridden today. Of course, when I found out that my grandma had died and that I would be making an unplanned trip home in the middle of summer and the middle of, well, everything else that I've been working through the past few months, missed training was the least of my worries.

It still is, I guess, but I am feeling really unsettled by yet another interruption in my attempt to establish normalcy. I'm also missing the second round of the Tri-State 6 Hour Series, but I guess that's what drop races are for. The homemade plaque will still be mine.

My mind is a little clouded by the silly kind of, "OMG, I missed five days of training and now my season is ruined," thinking that I secretly scoff at when it falls from the lips of others. I'm also a little disturbed by the roughly four pounds that I have gained since I moved in April, because in the past when I gained weight it was because I was depressed, missing training, and binge eating. In this case, it is more that I was ridiculously lean from my obsessive Death March preparation, so just dropping my food neuroses enough to have a normal social life, drink some beer sometimes, missing training for more "strategically important" stuff, and not sleeping too well the past few months were enough to make me gain weight. It just feels like I've lost control. My worries are not so much about the potential outcome of bike races as they are the feeling that I've lost my anchor.

I trained obsessively for a few months as a way to get myself mentally and physically fit for the rough period I knew was coming. It worked. I got to win some Hopslam and make some good memories to cheer me up in the dark period that was to come. Then I took on my real demons, and I made it through that. I'm just really struggling with "normal" taking way longer to achieve than I ever imagined it would.

I just have to keep telling myself that I'm doing my best, and that most of the things happening in this period of upheaval will make for a much nicer "normal" when it does happen. A death in the family was not something that I was really expecting or planning for at this time, so it's especially hard on me because I didn't really have any emotional reserves built up to handle it right now. I'm just trying to struggle through this weekend and tell myself that I'm tough enough to handle it, because I already handled everything else. After this, I will still have some more upheaval of the good kind as I'll be missing training for a good reason. I'll be spending next weekend in Chicago with my "romantic-type male riding partner", but there will be no bikes involved. I'm a little worried about back-to-back weekends away after the stress of this one, but I want to seize the opportunity to see him while he's west of the state of Ohio for the weekend. So family and new relationships can be detrimental to bike racing, but ultimately, they are more important.

In an attempt to do the best I can under the circumstances, I did my first intervals of 2013 earlier in the week, and I'm really committing to getting in every weight workout that I can when I am in town. The last two 6 hour races are just going to be suffer fests, as my longest ride between races #1 and #3 will have been about two hours. I'll survive, though. Then on to cyclocross with maybe a chance to go shred to rock gardens in Pennsylvania in between.

Eventually, I will settle into my new life, nurture my new relationships, manage my single-income household, and figure out how to still rest and train in a way that feels balanced. I'm just not there yet, and the most important thing is to remember to keep trying. I'm building good things here; they just might not be complete in time for me to also to be CX-podium ready in September. And that's okay. I spend too much time worrying about the next couple of weeks, that I keep forgetting how much time I have left to do the all the things that I want to do.

We stopped at a lavender farm on the way back from the airport,
so this is my only interesting picture for the week.

Week #27: I Just Want to Ride Bikes with You

One morning in late May, I was indulging in my daily distraction of perusing the new arrivals on modcloth.com and clicking "Love it!" on way more things than I will ever be able to afford. When I came to the men's t-shirt that said, "I just want to ride bikes with you", it stirred up definite feelings of...something. As I am apt to do with interesting items of clothing, I shared it on Facebook to see what, if any, discussion it would provoke.

It didn't get a lot except for Kristen's classic reference to our ill-fated Death March recon from January and my snide attempt to put my feelings of...something into words.

Only later that afternoon did I start to regret that comment, when I had finally worked up the nerve to make the leap and send a friend request to a preferred Instagram follower who shared my interest in bikes, cats, tattoos, and asparagus (asparagati?). A few days earlier he had shown the initiative to write a good luck comment on my pre-race picture of my bike at the Gravel Metric, and since I'd already had a GM-related influx of new Facebook and Insta-friends based on liked pictures and some brief meetings at the event, I figured I might as well gain one more who had been following #gmrv from his residence in Pennsylvania. Then there was the realization that my snide comment might be the first post he saw from me and leave the impression that I was bitter or something.

Trying to explain the "something" that I was feeling was hard. My comment might be interpreted as my complaining about being single when I hadn't been single nearly long enough to start complaining. For the most part, I considered being a single a good thing, since you know, it was my choice and everything. However, it was more about finally figuring out the things that I'd been missing for years, taking the steps necessary so that I could pursue those things, and being ready to start pursuing them, calendars be damned. 

Meeting a guy who would willingly (and with enthusiasm) ride bikes with me was certainly not the whole of this list of things I wished to pursue, but it did stick out as something that I'd been missing all along and had only recently begun to realize it. As a side effect of starting to ride with other people more, I got to experience how much fun it can be to ride with male friends who can enjoy my company and still respect what I do on a bike even though I'm not as fast as them. I may be betraying my gender, but I have no problem with being told I'm fast "for a girl", and I have no desire to trade blows with the boys on a group ride just to prove myself. That attitude may never make me elite, but I respond better to a carrot than a stick. I'm much more apt to ride my best in a situation of, "You're faster than me. I'm okay with you being faster than me and I'm not going to try and race you, but we're having fun, so I'll ride hard to keep up the best that I can." I had also noticed this kind of attitude among most of my happier couple friends on which many of my aspirations were based.

So what's the point of the story? Well, my Insta-friend must not have taken too much offense to my comment, because many long Facebook messages, a viewing of The Blues Brothers, some baked liver pate', and the Chicago Blackhawks Stanley Cup win later, he came for a weekend visit of bike riding and Bloomington tourism. I showed him around BCSP on Friday and some of the local gravel Saturday, and did my best to challenge the Illinois native's concept of what Midwestern riding looks like. I may have tried to drop him on some mud and downhills, too. All in all, it was an exceptionally good time, and I'm happy to say that right now my aspiration and my reality are looking pretty darn similar!

Week #26: Run Down

I was feeling bad for having so little to tell this week, but still wanted to keep my check-in commitment, especially after delaying my race report until Thursday last week. Then I noticed something interesting when I wrote the title. Week #26. We have officially reach the halfway point of the year, even though this was initially supposed to be a 10-week project. After my crash a couple of weeks and my body-punishing but not-so-great 6 hour race at Versailles, I spent most of last week being kind of catatonic and useless. I've just been so tired all the time with headaches, body aches, and a sore throat. No actual sickness occurred, but "run down" has definitely been my state. The only training I managed this week was a very short, easy road ride on Sunday. 

Then I realized that I just reached the halfway point of the most intense, life-changing year of my life. I guess it's not surprising that I'm worn out. I just hope it doesn't last long, though, because I still have a lot I want to accomplish in the second half of this year, starting with showing a very special out-of-town guest the "flat, smooth Midwestern trails of Brown County" this weekend.

Week #25: Tri-State 6 Hour Versailles

Okay, so it's Thursday, and for all of my Monday morning blogging commitment, I just couldn't find the right words when I actually had race report to write. After so long without a real race, I felt like I needed to say something really profound about my experience at the Tri-State 6 Hour Series opener at Versailles State Park. Joe managed to. I, however, have been busy and distracted since the race. Perhaps one day I will regale you with a singular tale of adventure and romance and how it played out over Instagram, but at this point it's almost the weekend again, so you're just going to have to be satisfied with a quickie.

So what did I learn? That racing a rigid singlespeed on a trail with several significant rocky sections is really, really slow and hard. I'm not sure how I tricked myself into thinking it wouldn't be. I also fell victim to thoughts of how much longer I had to go, which probably drove me to fatigue sooner than it should have fitness-wise. It was a hard, hard day. Now I know. I only got three laps because I was feeling so beat up and was going so slow that I probably wouldn't have finished a fourth before the time cutoff. So my performance was not nearly what I wanted it to be, but at least now I have a standard for what my 6-hour singlespeed racing looks like. I just need to raise that standard as soon as possible.

Less intense than 'cross tongue, I'm trying out
"6 Hour Crazy Face".

Monkey's first race number

Sarah brought me a tiny bottle of champagne for my women's singlespeed "win".