Seven Days, Super Fast.
Here’s the quick recap of my racing in Wisconsin. Note, my memories have faded and I can’t recount every one on the team’s experience. Just my mundane experiences and what I took from them.
Host family: SUPER great. Flickr is down right now, but I want to show you the olive oil/dishsoap cunnundrum. THey were in the exact same container. Same color. Same consistency. They looked exactly the same. Oooopsie. Pam and Jim were insanely nice. They fed us Super well and even though we wrecked the plumbing in their house, they grinned the whole week.
Road Race #1: Alpine “ski resort“. I am from Montana so when I saw this mound of dirt with some lifts on it, I was puzzled, to say the very least. We checked out the run map during our two hour race delay and saw some black diamond runs, even, on the ‘face’ facing us. The run in the middle was termed “midway” and I figured it would take maybe .00045 seconds to get to that run. It was like a bulldozer moved some earth into a pile. Sorry. I shouldn’t be that way. Maybe it looks more majestic in the winter? The race was shortened due to some citizen upheaval. I was away solo for just under a lap and a little Kenda rider came up to help me. Unfortunately, she was about the size of my calf. My lead out was about 300 meters too short for my fitness level on that one but we faired ok.
Road Race #2: Rainy day, the Kiwis came, including my favorite teammate from last year, Michie Highland. She’s prepping for Mountain Bike Worlds, her second ever Mountain Bike Race. I was aggressive and mad most of the race because the yellow line rule was apparently being enforced. Two problems, there was no yellow line and half the peloton was advancing on the left shoulder of the road with complete abandon. Call me a prude but I decided I didn’t want to die that day from oncoming traffic so when I saw my teammates over there on the last lap, I screamed to them that “I don’t want to see any of you over there!!” right after my teammate told them to go for it cuz no one cared. I went for glory at about 2 km to go. Solo, caught the lone Kiwi that was away and got gobbled up with about 150 meters to go.
Road Race #3: Roller Coaster. This course is my favorite right next to the Sea Otter Circuit Race. So much fun. Little climb. I gulped down my first ever COKE BLACK and went agro. For only the first half. The move that sticks out most in my mind was my counter attack to myself where I remember thinking, “HOLY @#$@ing GOD”. It hurt. I asked my teammates, “Who likes crack?!?! I DO!” COke Black should be illegal.
Crit #1: I sat out at the last minute and chilled with Corey, my favorite King of the FIxies. We watched a woman run out of gas on the crit course and the cops rallied and pushed the car out of the way in the nic of time. I videoed it. I later had a chat with the cop about his Tazer Gun. He told me he volunteered to be Tazored and Pepper Sprayed cuz he wanted to know the pain he was inflicting on others. Pepper Spray is WAY worse. I asked him if he would Tazor me if I kept lipping off (he was Super serious) and he said, straightfaced, his only joke ( i think), “I am thinking about it”.
Crit #2: Downpour averted. Severe humidity and heat comes. I started a bit slowly. Had developed a heat sensitivity from the medication I was on in high doses (Cipro). It is now clear to me that the warning on those pharmacuticals should be taken more seriously than with a “huh. weird.”. I had the itchyest skin, mostly hands and feet and thought I would have rather been skinless altogether. I rode off the course and to the Walgreens, asking the security guard there if he wouldn’t mind watching my horse. I loaded up on Benadryl and Hydrocortazone cream and had a nice chat with the security guard (who took me over to see his beat up townie). Once the allergy settled down, I was able to speak more than grunts and sighs.
Crit #3: Pissed off at myself and determined. It was so unbelievably hot for us. We raced at 2 pm, with no cover. I was totally lame, but there. With about 4 laps to go some big primes were offered up. I was rushing the left side so I figured I’d gas it. Lo and behold, my first sprint of the year perhaps and my 4th maybe ever, and against Kelly Benjamin. I won the most pathetic looking sprint award. She is so fast. I was sprinting and admiring her acceleration as she got smaller and smaller. The day before, we had joked with the massage people about putting up a TIARA prime, saying that may actually inspired me to sprint. THEN, I heard it announced. It was early, but I was yelling at Jeannette: “THE TIARA!!! GET THE G__DAMN TIARA!!”
Crit #4: See previous Post…..I wish we had more days. Everyone do us a favor and lobby for more days for the women, less humidity, and less cheese.
I am excited to announce that some persuasion from a certain Lipton Chick inspired me to cash in some miles for a quick trip to Boise for Twilight and The Morning After Crit. I really wanna make some money. I was also inspired to GO TO BERMUDA. ah. Bermuda. Everytime I tell myself I’m sitting it out for this or that reason, I start to shake and have to quit lying to myself to stop the tremors. No matter what my mother says…Oh, and I forgot to mention awhile ago: CONGRATS to KStrong for the DOUBLE National Championship! Speaking of inspiring, Kristin has been an inspiration to me for years. I truly admire that personality trait that causes people to look adversity straight in the face and give it the finger.
aight. keep it tight.
BB