Well, what can I say. I didn’t get on my bike for nearly a week due to a work trip (although I did go to the gym for some “cardio”), and then I came out and crushed the women’s B field at Kruger’s on Sunday. Although there were only 8 people in my field, it has me thinking I will likely cat up to the As for Cross Crusade after all (and be last again, yay).

So I have decided NOT to do Eugene Celebration and instead go mountain biking and camping all weekend. Just want to have fun and relax and enjoy the last remnants of summer. Sigh.

Me and Alex went out and rode both Surveyor’s Ridge and 8-mile Creek yesterday; so awesome. I rode really well, felt great the whole time, and I wish I were still there!

In other news, I’m going to San Francisco tomorrow for a Flash conference. Which means I won’t be on a bike (outside) for 6 days! I haven’t been away from a bike for more then 24 hours in like… well I don’t remember. I suppose its good for me, but I’m still sad. It also means I have to be in prime small talk mode. Ugh. I can talk to anyone about biking, but when I actually have to network at a professional conference that doesn’t involve biking in some manor, I’m at a loss for words. I will have to come up with a few default sentences to start off every conversation. “Hello.  I like bikes Flash. Yep, iPhones don’t have flash, that sucks, no I don’t own one….So, have you been sitting on the couch glued to the Olympics like me? Yeah, I sure did love watching the women’s road race Michael Phelps. Boy, I wish they would have more coverage of the velodrome track racing.” Hm, this isn’t looking too good…

So, any suggestions for places to eat/things to do in SF? I will pretty much be in the conference 90% of the time, so I won’t have much time to sight see (I have been to SF before, but its been a while).

After stuffing ourselves on Mexican food, we bought some all-fruit freezer pops and a couple of really expensive bike mags (Decline and Road), and settled in to watch the Olympics. Oh joy.

So that hard day. This morning we road out for the Swan Island Crit. I was hoping I would do well, and get some points for the women’s cat 4 series. I had some tough competition, and the course did not favor me–very much like PIR. Ironclad brought 6 or 7 riders, Veloce two, and no one else really had any team mates. Ironclad went out as the aggressor; they kept sending out riders in sprints, who would maybe sprint 1/2 a lap then sit up. It made it a very frustrating race for everyone. I guessed that they were trying to tire out the Veloce riders who usually win sprints, and they were the ones chasing the bait. In the end, Ironclad didn’t send out any more riders in the last couple of laps (why, I’m not really sure), but they did manage to tire out Veloce; the race ended up getting won by someone else. I was in a good position the entire race, but I ended up getting trapped on the inside of the last corner and had to brake going into it. by the time I was ready to sprint, it was lost. Oh well, I ended up with 11th place, and no points.

After that, me and Alex decided to take the “long way” home. We rode up Willamette and crossed the St Johns Bridge, climbed Germantown, and then Skyline to home. Ouch…it really hurt! And was REALLY hot, blah. Pretty much tired us out completely–hence the huge amount of Mexican food.

Well, it’s sad. I love running in Tryon Creek State Park, it’s really the best place to run, ever. Lots of trails to get lost on, its really close to me, there’s a bike lane all the way there, its quiet, not a lot of people there, really technical trails, lots of up and down without long climbs/descents, lots of short, steep ascents which are perfect for CX, it’s always a few degrees cooler then every where else….really, I love going there. So, the sad part: I was there for an hour on Wednesday, running all the ups, walking all the downs, but after about 40 minutes (really, mostly walking), my knee started to hurt. Ugh. Just…frustrated. I really miss the days when trail running was fun.

Anywho, it’s now Friday, and I’m still sore from that run. Really did a number on me, which is why I will be going back there every week between now and cross crusade.

Eugene Celebration? Still in the cards, looks like a team mate’s parents live a few short miles from most of the races and have offered their basement to us. Darnit!

SAVE THE DATE!!!! Can’t tell you the details yet, but Saturday, September 13th: Have your cross bike, cross skills, and drinking skills at the ready. Never mind…

I’ve been a bit down lately about myself and my lack of training since Elkhorn (even though that was the plan…remember?). Anyway, so I decided TODAY would start my new regimen of cross-specific workouts; I figure starting now gives me almost 2 months of workouts before Crusade begins, which sounds like a lot, but trust me, it’s not, especially given that it takes your body 2-3 weeks to reap the full benefits of a workout.

Anyway, today it consisted of a warm up (ride home from work), a sprint ladder 1 min on, 1 min off, 2, 3, 4, 4, 3, 2, 1. I haven’t done any hard intervals for a while…OW! I thought I was going to die…in a weirdly pleasurable way. What can I say, I’m a total masochist. Anyway, after that, I went over to Alpenrose where a teamie was out in a field practicing cross with some PVC piping barriers. That was really good…I need a lot of barrier/running work. I realized I really need to perfect my technique, as I often get tripped up and slow down. After a bit of that, we watched a couple PVers race some Australian pursuits on the track, which looked REALLY tough!

So I feel really great about this work, and I look forward being 100% ready for cross. Tomorrow I will be going to Tryon for some ass-kicking hill sprints on the trails (far and away the BEST place to run for cross training), and then doing some more core work/running drills. Thursday is an easy spin day, Friday is track racing, and Saturday is the Swan Island Crit. YOW!

I was taking my usual stroll by the river at lunch today. Apparently a couple of people I knew, one of them vaguely through work, were walking behind me. I though I recognized their voices, so I turned around. “Oh hey,” I said. She said, “Oh hi, I didn’t even recognize you. I was thinking to myself ‘wow, she’s huge.’”

. . . ?

What? What was that? Did you just say huge? She’s the same height as me, so she didn’t mean tall.

She meant HUGE. Like linebacker huge. Like I’m-so-huge-could-crush-you-with-my-hand-for-saying-that-bitch huge.

Hrmph. In other news I’m down another 2 lbs. So you can kiss my huge ass.

Well, what can I say? I haven’t been doing any real training the last few months, certainly nothing that’s like a time trial. So I can’t say I had high hopes going into this one.

I ended up 5th out of 8–1:08:17 for a 40k. A full 3 1/2 minutes behind the person in 4th…ouch. My heart rate was really low too, was around 162 the whole time. I felt much, much better about the Jack Frost way back in February or whenever that was. I’m really starting to rethink Eugene Celebration at this point…I think it would just end in frustration and I don’t think it would help me with cross at all. I think I need to settle in and really, really train for cross. Otherwise I think I’m not going to get in enough solid interval work in a vain attempt to do well at a race that I haven’t trained for enough (at all). And then I will screw up my entire cross season…probably not a good idea, eh?

It’s hard though, because I really do love stage races. I think my plan will basically be to settle into cross, do some more mountain biking and see where the chips lie with Eugene. If some sort of housing situation falls into place, I may go. But I don’t want to spend much money and I don’t feel like having to plan it all out.

In other news, I signed up for Starcrossed in Seattle–the first race in the USA CX cup. The 3/4 women race first, so we get to sit back and drink and watch the pros. Should be a blast!

MONDAY: I tried a new yoga studio, that has athlete-specific classes in fall and spring, and it also happens to be ~1/2 mile from my work. The class I took was not geared towards athletes, but was interesting none the less. It was an intermediate-level class, and I realized I could probably stand to take their intermediate/advanced class. I would love to teach yoga, I think that could be pretty cool, but I definitely have a LOT to learn. There are so many tiny, tiny things about body placement that I don’t know; for instance I haven’t pushing my chest out enough during my vinyasas–we’re talking about maybe a few centimeters, but it makes a big difference.

TUESDAY: I went running out in the heat, and then did some ass-kicking/high knees drills. I’m up to 3 minute long run intervals; I could probably go longer, but again, I’m trying to ease myself back into this. I’m trying to focus on having really short strides, which I have to say is making running extremely not fun. I have to really, really concentrate hips foward, arms straight, short stride, no you’re kicking your feet forward dammit I can’t even tell, land in the center of your feet, dammit stop swinging your arms, shorter stride! That’s pretty much my thoughts as I go through my intervals. It really blows. I was hoping after 5 or 6 sessions I would start to naturally fix my stride, but I guess 5+ years of overstriding is not so easily overcome.

WEDNESDAY: Went for an interval ride on Tabor. Didn’t bring enough water and didn’t eat anything, apparently not good for a 2 1/2 hour ride in the heat doing sprints (duh!). I did 5 30second hill sprints, then 1 long 177bpm climb on the trails (on my cross bike), then I attempted another long interval but totally exploded. Next time I’m not bringing my Timbuk2 bag from work, it makes doing intervals really hard, and makes my shoulder ache.

TODAY? Will be doing recovery tool-about-town Thursday team ride. And tomorrow is the Twilight Crit, always a good time to get some drinking and socializing in.

This morning I saw a 3 on the scale. Just barely–139.8–but it was there! I don’t know if that’s here to stay, but I’m starting to get somewhere.

In other news, I got a shorter stem for my cross rig (yay) and attempted to install different brake pads (boo). Apparently the squeeling is NOT caused by the brake pads. After many hours of sorrow, I ended up just putting the old ones back on. So now I’m thinking its the rim. I will have to test this theory by putting a different wheel on and seeing if the squeel is still there…if it IS the rim, then I will have to get a new front wheel, because dammit I can’t take it anymore. If it still squeels, then its either the brakes themselves or maybe the fork(?).

I also picked up a 4-bike hitch rack so that me and Alex can take both road and mountain bikes to Eugene this weekend. I am borrowing it from a race team member, and apparently not all hitch racks are created equal. There is a little bolt on the inside of most hitch receivers that are designed to keep your hitch from slipping out the back (I guess). Unforunatly, the rack hitch thing was too long, so that the hole for the pin didn’t match up before hitting this bolt. When they originally bought the rack, they had to take it somewhere for a shop to drill a huge hole in the rack to avoid hitting this bolt; unfortunatly it was on the wrong side. So Matt ended up using a grinder on his drimmel tool to grind a groove in the rack to make it fit. Sparks were flying everywhere, it was funny. (thanks again, btw!)