I like riding my bike

I've moved my blog, so check it out here instead:

http://girlonamtbike.blogspot.com

Thanks.

Hopefully this will be a weekly thing.

Really enjoyed following Luke (easy ride in preparation for 8 hour solo this weekend at Hurkey Creek) and Justin (first time back on the Niner in quite some time) around.

First half of our loop was the same as we had been riding, with the new aptly named Rattlesnake ridge singletrack sooo fun.  Then we did a bunch of new trails, or redirections of stuff I'd only ridden once.  There is a lot of stuff out there, and luckily Luke knows the trails, cause I only know basically a few of the singletracks, but I had a blast!

We rode a new section after Rattlesnake, that I'm not sure I remember how to get to, and following that took the fire road back to the parking area to see if some girls from work had showed up.  There were quite a few cars in the area, but many are pre-riding for the 24 hours of Temecula happening this weekend.  So, Justin went up That Dam climb to see if they were there, and Luke and I went back to climb up the fire road past Tunnel of Love to finish out the loop. 

Some more new singletrack and trails, and riding Marine Corp in a different direction and then we were done!  Justin wound up meeting up with the girls and took quite awhile to get back to the cars. 

All in all, great time out there!  I think the racers will enjoy the course and everything was in great condition.



Way STIL



Made it over the first hump of rocks, but not the second...





Marlin goes up to the right (it's STEEP)





Air Luke



Today will mostly be off/recovery.  I didn't do PT exercises last night, so will be trying to hit those up tonight, in addition to errands, cleaning, and driving up to Riverside and back.

Good times!

Tomorrow, a route I haven't done in quite awhile.  I believe the last time we rode only this route was August 2006!  It's not a particularly fun route, but we'll be descending Trabuco and climbing Holy Jim.  Could hit up worse trails than those two!

Hoping to beat 3:50 of ride time.  If we keep moving at a good clip maybe it'll be like a 6 hour day?  Not sure.  Hope the legs are feeling good.  They have been the past few days, and last Saturday in my XC race.  Just hoping to continue the fitness for a bit longer and then it's all about longer rides on the weekends when we can, and lots of road miles for 12 hours of Temecula in June.

TGIF!

I've been noticing more and more that essentially while everyone else's bike racing season is just kicking into high gear mine is essentially coming to a close, at least for the time being.

So far this year I did 5 Winter Series XC races, 4 Winter Series DH races, an all mountain stage race, an NMBS XC and DH race, and Sea Otter XC and DH.  I think that covers it.  There is really nothing left on my calendar.  Pretty sure Justin decided to remove the NMBS at Santa Ynez from our calendar. 

I haven't registered for or at all planned for the 12 Hours of Temecula (I'd do it as a duo).  So, I think the next thing on the calendar would be the 24 Hours of Adrenalin at Hurkey #2 - 8 hour solo. 

Aside from maybe completing a road century this year, and hopefully receiving the SRC Sport Women 34 & Under XC jersey, I've got no other goals!

So, here is what is occupying my time:

Last night we watched the Survivor from last Thursday.  James said at one point, "...and I thought *I* was the stupidest Survivor ever" about Jason thinking the stick was the real hidden immunity idol.  Unfortunately neither James, nor Jason, takes the cake for being the absolute stupidest Survivor... no, that award goes to Ozzie, who should've won 2 season's ago against Yul, and should've won this season.  He was too cocky, I think, and sure of his position.  But, despite James being voted off when he had TWO idols, I think that Ozzie should've at least suspected something.  Amanda should've suspected. 

Now the four of them - James, Amanda, and even Erik - are all going to be picked off by women who have done nothing but kept themselves far enough under the radar.  Hopefully Parvati wins.  At least she was clever enough to have two alliances and lie to her initial friends.  The other ones?  They are just clingons that think they are powerful.  None of them have worked hard to do anything.

Let's see, what else... Ah, yes, the "bolts" part of this blog.  The NFL draft is coming up this weekend.  I'm not super excited.  The Chargers barely have a pick in the first round, and the 1st draft pick has already been signed, sealed and delivered essentially.  Chris Long (son of Howie Long) is the most prominent player from what I can tell.  But, I haven't been keeping up with my football news at all.

I was *shocked* to read that the Seahawks let go of Shaun Alexander.  Two short years after his MVP season... Granted, he didn't do anything last year at all.  I hope he does well somewhere this year since I always liked him.

The Chargers schedule itself?  Honestly.  Playing in London is dumb.  I doubt any team really wants to fly halfway across the world to play a game a week after another game.  Sure, they get their bye following the London game, but still.  It sucks. 

Honestly, that's about it.  Work, exercise, sit, sleep, work.  I'll let you know if anything more interesting comes up, though.

Happy Thursday.  I can see the weekend from here.

It appears from the video that I wasn't in a hurry to get to the line.  I think it may be misleading, but either way the winner had already crossed the line, and I wound up having around 62 seconds or so on third place.  I know I pedaled pretty hard up to that point.

Just to be clear...I am happy with my finish(es) at Sea Otter.  But, keep in mind that I was in the middle of a group of about 10-15 on the pavement drafting along with everyone else.  I was 4th onto the water rutted dirt traverse over to the fire road, and 1st up the early fire road rolling hills, 1st onto the singletrack.

I then led for a long time, until I passed the feed zone and was passed by the eventual winner.  I knew I had to stay on her wheel or the race would be over.  I followed her and we got stuck behind quite a bit of people.  So, she led there for probably 1-2 miles at the most.  I then took back the lead and held it virtually until less than a mile from the finish line.

To lead a race of that caliber for approximately 16.5-17 miles and know for the last 2 that I was essentially going to get 2nd and there was nothing I could do about it.  Imagine how that would feel?

Then for DH I was basically ready to go at 12:15 or so when we got to the top of the mountain, and then due to the medical hold I sat around for at least an hour.  I got more and more hungry (wasn't planning on waiting around for more than 25 minutes, much less an hour and 25!) and didn't have anything for hydration.  My legs were tired.  So, it wasn't a prime situation for a DH race.

At any rate, I think for my first real big race I did very well.  I prepared well and am in good fitness for my level.  Do I think I belong in expert in either category?  No.  I have no delusions that I'm at that level, or even coming close to it.

I was nowhere near the top 10 times in Expert DH.  It is hard to look at the XC times since the Expert's did a longer lap, I believe.  I don't think the expert women did 38 miles (if they did 38 miles in 1:30 that is far more impressive than I imagined!).

Anyway, I come away from Sea Otter knowing that I'm a good sport rider that did the right things on Saturday, but not good enough to bump up a level, at least not mid-season.  Can't blame me for being slow at DH (in addition to tired legs we had wicked wind during our run that didn't exist on Sunday afternoon) because I don't train for it.  I've yet to do one shuttle or downhill run since my birthday last year.  That's quite a gap.  Perhaps once again when the mountains open we'll hit up Mammoth, local runs, and maybe even Tahoe and I'll get the technical descending speed/skills back, but for now it isn't my focus. 

So, that's about it.  I'm glad I raced, happy with 2nd, but I still wish it had been otherwise.  That's racing.

...my favorite part of the day: yogurt and granola midmorning snack time!

Yum.  I had a bowl of it both Saturday and yesterday:

Sooo good.  I did the math on Saturday, though, and two dark chocolate squares have slightly more fat, but otherwise are not any less healthy, and the bag of not so dark chocolate from Costco makes them much cheaper.

I refrained from dessert at all last night since I had a grip of pre-made garlic bread.  Yum.

So, today I am recovering.  Thursday morning I got up around 5 am and did an hour on the trainer.  Thursday evening I did legs/back at the gym.

Friday night I did an hour road ride (easy pace).  Saturday morning we woke up, had a small breakfast and set  out on a 3.5 hour tour.  I planned on doing about 50 miles, Justin wanted to do more than 60.  Seeing as how I could barely hold any pace up the slightest incline I knew that more than 50 miles definitely wasn’t in the cards for me.

While I didn’t sabotage my tire, it did explode at 23 miles in.  Luckily I was going pretty slow.  The tire split open entirely too long of a gash to patch.  The tire itself had a few threads hanging on, but it was wide open.  Justin patched it with a fruit leather wrapper and Clif bar wrapper reinforcement and there we turned around.

I had to take it easy the entire rest of the way back, not going over 20MPH, so my avg. speed for the day was super low for a road ride.  Descending Clinton Keith that slowly was actually a challenge.

It was extremely windy, and due to the bump bump bump of the bulging tire I was looking forward to getting home and off the bike.

It was a nice ride otherwise, though.

POW!



15%



Bulging bump


 

I got home, showered, did a cycling-specific 10-minute yoga video, then cleaned out the top of our closet.  It was full of a ton of unused old tees and jeans.  I filled two trash bags to take to donation somewhere and the rest of the “I still don’t feel like throwing these out/giving them away” clothes went in the other closet (I’ll attempt to clean that out maybe next decade). 

Following that I did an hour long flexibility yoga DVD, and then basically sat around.  We had chicken and pasta for dinner.  Yum.

Sunday we decided to go out and ride again.  I didn’t figure there would be much there for me with my legs just being utterly destroyed.  They were pretty sore, but I was remarkably comfortable sitting on the saddle. 

The group took off, and I fell behind in part due to photo-taking, and in part due to really just not feeling like racing at all.  Didn’t matter to me that I spent the vast majority of the day far off the back of the small pack.

Met a nice girl from Texas that is out for a class and going to Sea Otter next weekend.  She’s an expert level racer, so it’d probably be good if I got the chance to ride with her in the future, but we’ll see.  She thoroughly was loving Daley Ranch.  A lot of locals kind of poo-poo it since it’s mostly fire roads.  But, the grass/flowers were out in force, the ponds and streams were full, and it was truly great out there. 

I began easily enjoying the morning.  My legs were still toast, but I attempted the steep climbs and had fun anyway.  It wasn’t until the final climb up Boulder Loop to Rock Ridge.  It was getting really warm and the exposed climb just did me in.  I did enjoy descending Rock Ridge, and still felt fine when we got back to the truck.  So, all in all a great ride.  Post-ride Chipotle didn’t hurt, either!

 

I went as healthy as I could and had a bowl with no cheese (chicken, rice, black beans, medium salsa) and mostly had water to drink.

After that we went on an Oceanside/Vista bike shop extravaganza!  Went over to Performance so I could exchange some shorts I’d ordered that were too big (the mediums are too big by a lot, and it turns out the small’s barely fit.  What is a girl to do?).  I returned those, Justin got some new PI bibs, and we picked up the seat post mounted bottle cages for long road rides.  Justin wanted to put his Niner back together, so went spent quite some time searching for a SRAM Hollowpoint 9-speed chain.  Performance had 10 speed (we have a flight leaving Chicago ).  Bicycle Warehouse had the shorts I wanted (in small no less!) but no chain.  I also checked out the Camelbak Podium bottles and I think I want to get me some.

After that we stopped in at the Trek Warehouse.  They had a ton of Sidi women’s shoes like $100 off, but all too small for me.  Mostly 39, 40, and a few 41’s. 

I think I ruined my favorite Nike cycling women’s sleeveless jersey at the Marshall Canyon ride with the name tag.  It left a gigantic sticky mess on my jersey that washing apparently didn’t solve.  I didn’t notice it til yesterday, so I’ll try some Goo-gone tonight and hope it doesn’t ruin the material.  I was looking for a replacement by the PI sleeveless women’s jerseys are just odd fitting.  They are too bulky for me in the mid section and too short.

At any rate, of all places the Trek Warehouse had the chain.  Even the guy that rang us up commented he would’ve expected them to be the last shop to have the part, and yet they were the only place that did!  We looked at the high-end Trek road bikes, and the Cervello’s, and homeward bound we went.

Hit up the grocery store so we didn’t have to do it tonight and then just hung around the house.  I went through some uber old bike photos of us from the fall of 2005.  Hilarious how much we have changed!  I basically look the same, but boy I’ve had a skills makeover.  Justin was nearly as talented then on a bike as he is now, but he’s about 60lbs lighter now.  I barely recognize him in the photos!

All in all, good weekend.  Taking today to recover entirely.  I am going to attempt to clean house tonight and do some laundry.  I’d like to pack our cycling clothes, but we’ll see if I get that far. 

Happy Monday!  It’s almost Sea Otter Classic time and I’m already getting nervous!

My favorite daily snack of late is Yoplait fruit flavored yogurt and Bear Naked Peak Protein granola mixed in.  It’s an art, though, mixing in chunks of granola to a small yogurt container. 

At any rate, it is probably my favorite thing to eat all day.  Well, aside from dark chocolate and red wine.

I need to look at the nutritional info to compare if it is healthier to eat the yogurt and granola or the chocolate.  Overall I would assume the yogurt and granola, but it may actually be higher in calories.  Hmmm.

So, we have yet to decide what we are riding this weekend.  We are both kind of struggling with training.  Do we "train" at all?  Justin said he just wants miles and doesn't care about training.  So, should I come up with a training plan and just have him tag along?  There is no reason IMO to commute to work, ride at lunch, and struggle to ride after work every day just "for fun".  You don't need to train for 15 hours a week to ride with your buddies on Sunday. 

If we are just commuting for the sake of commuting that is one thing.  Then there's no pressure to ride every day at lunch, climb big hills, or struggle to find the energy to ride after work.  Some days, sure, but not 3-4 days a week.

Unfortunately to commute 5 day's a week is tough.  Especially at the moment.  I don't want to commute on Wed and kill my legs right before Sea Otter.  DH practice and XC course pre-ride are going to be draining enough without 50 miles in my legs already (if we commute and ride 2 days at lunch, etc.). 

So, I'm sort of at a loss, I guess. 

I don't want to give up the gym time.  We need to go to the grocery store on Monday's (or Sunday, but that doesn't work out if we don't get home from rides until 7pm).  And, we also need a day off if we have races, etc.  I know a 4.5 mile commute with neglible climbing doesn't sound difficult, but you try to keep up with Justin who feels like every morning and afternoon he is racing Cancellera in an ITT.  Seriously.

Either way, it's gonna be hot this weekend.  Wherever we ride we will probably get low on water and be totally drenched in sweat.  Yay.

I could start by talking about this morning, but let's back up.

Justin months ago bought cedar grilling planks at Costco.  Apparently you are supposed to grill fish on them.  Well, I don't eat fish, so therein lied the rub.

For some reason, last night at Costco (our first trip in about 3-4 weeks, actually) I went over and looked at the salmon.  I wound up with one of the smallest pieces of fish, but still rather large, and we took it home to grill up.  Fish usually makes me gag.  Smelling it, tasting it, etc.  I have tried numerous kinds of fish.  Shark, lobster, shrimp, salmon, tuna, etc.  I don't like it. 

Well, mom hooked me up with a maple syrup/soy sauce marinade.  Justin took care of everything for dinner last night except the salads (yay!).  I may eat fish again just to not have to cook. 

Anyway, he put the giant slab of salmon in a pan to marinade while he was soaking the cedar plank and cutting up sweet potatoes for fries.  He grilled it up and unfortunately it looked the same grilled as it had raw: like fish.

He gave me a small slice of it, some sweet potato fries, and off I went.  I managed to eat all of it, with very little gagging.  A few times it even tasted pretty good.  The fries were better this time around IMO.  They still aren't french fries, but with garlic, sea salt, white pepper, etc. they were pretty good.

Since I hadn't gotten any biking in at all this week I decided to set my alarm for this morning to get up around 5, do my first stint of AM Yoga (I *love* the PM version, but getting up early??) to wake me up, and then hop on the trainer.

My dinner, since it consisted of a small piece of fish and a handful of sweet potato fries, was basically much smaller than anything else I'd eaten for dinner all week.  So, I was pretty hungry about 15 minutes into the trainer session.

Tried to stay hydrated.  My HR didn't get very high, but I'll be damned if I wasn't sweating like crazy.  I wound up being a bit closer to the weight I should be at (the weekend of camping and two days of not really caring had driven it up a little) so that is good.

Will I get up tomorrow and do it all again?  I am undecided.  I may just get up and do my own intervals for 30 mins.  I was pretty tired for the first hour of a 3 hour training session this morning, and I will be just as tired tomorrow (if not more so). 

But, it is nice to be up and ready to go by the time I get to work. 

Tonight: back and biceps.  I may throw in a fairly easy leg workout starting out at 20lbs + sled and maybe moving up to 50lbs, maybe not.  I haven't done legs in weeks.  I don't want to kill myself before this weekend, but getting them in will help keep my legs stronger.

We'll grill up a steak and share it (not sure of the side yet, maybe asparagus if it is still good, cauliflower, or salad), or if it winds up not being good (it was frozen for a LONG time) then something quick.  We just had red meat on Tuesday, so I'm not overly excited about the prospect of having more again tonight, but it was defrosted, so we gotta cook it, and leftover meat is not real high on my list of leftovers.

Also, The Office returns tonight!  Yay!  But we can only watch that or watch CSI.  I guess we will probably watch The Office.  I can do PM yoga, Justin can shower, and maybe we can be in bed before 11!  That'd be nice for a change.

I've already decided to take next week off from the gym.  Will probably be a small grocery trip with food we can eat at Sea Otter, and then just packing to be ready to go Wed night/Thursday morning.  We'll see what happens. 

I took quite a few photos at Sea Otter in 06.  Maybe I will try to find those (and some other random pics from 06 that I wish I had uploaded) and post 'em up.  For now, this is the only stoke I have:







Definitely not trying to jinx it, but so far the weather forecast looks decent.  I can handle that. 

Happy THURSDAY!  I can see the weekend from here.

Delayed reaction, I know.  It’s been busy, what can I say?

This past weekend took us up to Idyllwild for a weekend of camping (our first of 2008) and hanging with about 60 of our closest friends.

Actually, I didn’t hang out with 60 people; I didn’t even see that many, but they were all there none-the-less.

We scooted out of work a tad early (after not leaving for lunch) and got to our campsite before 5pm.  We set up the tent and got out the gear, bike clothed up and headed out for half of a 24 hour loop with Nancy and Roger, Andy, and Gene.

I’d like to say my first ride on the medium Canzo was flawless, but it wasn’t.  For some reason the Candy C pedals were acting up (I couldn’t stay clipped in with my right foot) and it was ghost shifting.

I’d done a parking lot sans bike shoes before we left and it was fine.  Odd.  Anyway, Justin fixed the shifting Friday evening and then also Saturday morning.  The pedal thing never really resolved itself.

I may get 2Ti Candy’s.  I wish!

Anyway, the camping trip was somewhat of a success.  I was surly all weekend, but otherwise it was fine.  It was cold Friday night and I didn’t sleep well.  Saturday we got fairly early-ish, but moved slowly before taking off for our long ride. 

Saturday morning we took off around 9:25 or so from camp.  There were 8 of us.  We did not head up the beginning of the course, but instead just went up Keen Camp Climb.  I was feeling fairly slow, but otherwise okay.  We then went through the meadow, up May Valley , onto some winding singletrack, and eventually down Mirkwood.  Woohoo!  I still felt kinda slow, but it was all good.  Sure enough we soon got to the extended hike a bike, and then did some route finding.  I basically remembered the course for the most part. 

I had wrongly assumed the next singletrack climb would be easier due to my fitness and technical skills being far greater than they were nearly 2 years ago.  I was wrong.  The directions from Idyllwild Cycling’s site don’t refer to the climb as the “cyclocross” of mountain biking for no reason.  I was on and off my bike more than I would’ve liked to be.  It is a slog. 

Basically you hike a bike off an on up a steep loose climb.  Then there is a steep wide climb that is really steep.  Then a short fire road descent, then this hike a bike climb over rocks rocks and more rocks.  Following that we climbed another fire road for a bit, had a short fun descent, some road riding (which will apparently be cut out when the course goes through the Astro camp for race day only?), then we detoured from the directions.  We continued on the dirt road up to Ernie Maxwell where we ran into a group from camp.  They had climbed May Valley the entire way.  Nearly the same mileage, believe it or not, but no side singletrack.

At any rate, we had actually lost 1 of our crew right after the meadow, and then 2 of our crew after the cyclocross climb.  And then there were 5. 

We all (except for Luke and Eric) slowly made our way up Ernie Maxwell, coming across hikers every now and then.  I fully expected to run into the Steppie crew coming down, but they were still chilling at the top when we arrived.  We rode down with them.  Gene came out and had crashed pretty hard on his ribs, but said he was okay to continue.  I hooked him up with my only mustard packet (I need another 1-2!) and we waited for a bit.

Lynn was nowhere in site.  Slim and RoadieMistress took off up the trail to go in search.  Eventually they came back down.  Lynn ’s derailleur hangar had broken, so she singlehandedly replaced it herself!  Props to her for that. 

On and up the Southridge fire road we climbed.  It is, quite possibly, the most heinous climb mountain bikers will ever encounter.  It is steep.  It is so steep they had to pave it in sections so that cars could drive up it.  Literally.

I stopped twice, but rode the entirety of it.  I felt pretty good about that.  It was over much quicker than I remembered.  Finally we were up at Cherry on Top.  Time to celebrate with a bite of food and then some nice descending.

We broke off a few times from Steppie’s crew and met back up a few times.  Eric and Luke took off and finished ahead of the group(s) and Justin and I wound up finishing the ride with Liz and Ray, who we hadn’t started with.  Ahh… as the single track turns!

Back to camp and I hopped quickly into the shower.  It felt like it was going to be a cold night.  I actually had to wear a sweatshirt over my Woolies and thermal l/s tee’s.  I snacked a LOT, we had chili and chicken, I had a bunch of smores. 

I took a Tylenol PM, got out my wax ear plugs and then Justin and I wound up sitting around our campfire with Michael for quite a bit.  It was fun.  We hit the hay both nights before 10:30.

I remember laying down and Justin asking if there were fire works.  I said, “I have no idea” (I couldn’t hear much) and fell promptly to sleep.  When I next woke up it was silence, so I took my ear plugs out and went back to sleep.  Justin woke up around 6, but I didn’t get out of my bag until closer to 7.  It was cloudy Sunday morning, and packing up camp was slow going.

We got ready and headed out toward Thomas Mountain for Sunday’s ride up Little Thomas Mtn and down Ramona Trail .

We started with around 13, lost two, then gained about 5 more.  Great ride, cool people.  Only one injured.

We left and headed down to Hemet for some grub at Applebee’s.  Not the best celebratory food, but it beats being hungry and eating sandwiches at home.

Can’t wait to do this again, whether this year or next April.  It’s a great staple trip that is for sure.

 

 

Otherwise… I did an actual ab work out yesterday and boy am I SORE.  It hurts.  The core exercises really don’t hit up the same muscles as leg lifts and decline bench crunches.  It’s all good, though.  My weight didn’t go up as much as I had assumed it would, but then again we are going to Outback tonight.  No bloomin’ onion I hope.  Definitely gonna get the mashed potatoes and maybe veggies.  I guess I don’t even need meat, right?

Happy Tuesday.