I have nothing to blog about today. I'm getting ready to leave for Tulsa tomorrow, so I'll have more to blog about later in the week. For now you're going to have to settle for pics of Mike's new frame.

Normally I would not blog about Mike's new frame, but it came in today and unfortunately Mike is somewhere in the middle of Missouri right now on his way to T-town.

He's so eager to see the new frame that he asked me to send him some photos, but I'm to lazy to email them, so I decided to just post them on the blog.

State Crit Race Report: Vitamin Cottage Wins!

As the final day of the omnium the state crit was held right in downtown Golden. It was a fun course and one of the few true good crit courses we've done all year.The competition was fierce as we lined up to battle for the state title. (well, this wasn't our real competition, but this girl was racing us during our warm up ride in the morning, it was real cute).

The race was great and Carmen took her second win in as many days and the state title to boot. In the omnium overall Beth ended up 2nd tied on points with first, and Carmen after having some real bad luck in the time trial pulled herself all the way up to 3rd overall.

We watched the men race after ours, they were going real fast as you can see. It looked like a super fast race as they dumped about half the field. In the end Jon ended up second in the omnium too, so husband and wife made a matching set on the weekend.

Carmen, doing her own version of the super-hero yesterday. Carmen pulled off a win the hard way at the Red Rocks CC crit yesterday by attacking about 2 laps in to the race and riding solo in the wind for the rest of the day. It was awesome! I love it when my team wins, I love it even more when one of my teammates is in a break and I get to sit in all day. :-)

X-Men 3 Movie Review

So we went to go see X-Men last night, the 3rd installment of the trilogy. It was pretty good. I mean if I compare to the greatest trilogy of all time, Star Wars of course (come on I was 12 when Jedi came out), then I'd give it only about 2.5 stars. That is enough interest to actually see all three movies, story lines and plots a little lacking, but bonus points for Hugh Jackman eye candy.

What happens when a gel explodes in your race bag and you don't find it right away?

Oh.

It's always a bad sign when you go to take another sip of coffee and there's nothing left in the cup, especially when you just realized that the pot is empty too and apparently you've downed the whole thing.

So I spend my morning at the DMV, fun! getting plates for the new car. I really wanted some vanity plates but since BAD*ASS was already taken I just got my old ones renewed.

The most humorous thing I saw today.

Here's the second.

Click on the above picture and you'll get an idea of how I'm feeling today. I do not have to ride my bike today, I do not have to ride my bike tomorrow, in fact, I do not have to ride my bike vigorously for the next several days. I finished the training block! Woohooo! now it is time to rest. I better get wicked fast after this!

p.s. if you don't remember ren and stimpy then you are too young and I have no time for you.

I wonder who is going to win the race today?

Unfortunately it wasn't us. Although Carmen and Beth finished well in 5th and 6th. I'm thinking Beth would have done even better if she hadn't been on the cruiser bike.

Actually, today's field was pretty loaded with pros, world champs, national champs, and soon to be up and coming pros. So we don't have a lot to complain about. You can't win them all I guess, well unless your name is Kori and you're just slummin' at a local race.

In other news, cool sunset in the parking lot of the King Soopers. I had to stop on the way home to get cat litter, fun! That marks the second time I've been to King Super's today. One in Boulder, one in the Springs, perhaps I will go to the one in Pueblo tomorrow.

Dang! I forgot my download cradle for my camera today. I'm up at Beth's for a little team bonding and quick access to the race tomorrow.

Today was fun, we rode, we stopped at yard sales, we went to dinner, and later we'll have ice cream. It's kind of lacking without the visuals, so you'll have to read Beth's blog for more details.

So I'm finally putting the old Merckx together so I can sell it. (yes it does look exactly like my new one)

So it's out with the old...

and in with the new. I got my new track frame this week. This is what it looks like in it's naked state, it has yet to be painted. But what color will I choose?

Oh and speaking of out with the old there will be a very small Eddy Merckx bike and a very, very small Dean track frame for sale very soon! Inquries welcome.

As it turns out, the storm didn't even last as long as it took me to write the last post, so I did my workout, but it wasn't pretty. It was a messy, weak effort at best. I thought I was going as hard as I could when I had what we coaches call a 'come to jesus' moment half way through my third interval. I asked myself if this was the final kilometer on that final climb of that certain race is this the way I'd choose to finish it? Hmmm, no it's not. Somehow I found about 50 more watts, finished the interval as well as the rest of the intervals with a more than respectable effort. Is it going to make a difference in the end, who the hell knows? All I know is that when it comes down to it in the race I'll remember the path I chose today.

We all have self imposed limits on what we think we are capable of (whether it is personal, professional, athletic...) Of course I would think I couldn't do today's workout. Why should I? My past results say I shouldn't be able to with how tired I felt today and how hard I've been training, and that's what I thought all day, all through my warm up, and all through the first couple intervals.

"Whether you think you can or think you can't - you're right." - Henry Ford

p.s. I promise to be much less philosophical and much more funny tomorrow; but be warned, I may still be grumpy because I'm pretty flippin tired.

tis the season for afternoon thunderstorms.

So I sit here and wait for this thunderstorm to pass. I had started out on my ride, after procrastinating it all day, and this storm rolls in. I thought it might just blow by, but nope. It started raining about a mile from the house, so I had to run back home for shelter. See, I'm not really looking forward to today's ride because 1) I'm really tired and b) it's a really hard workout. I think I'm pretty close to cracking, this has been a really hard block of training and I don't need much more than a nudge to go right over the edge. So when a tiny obstacle like a thunderstorm hits it's just about enough to make me want to lie down and take a nap. So the question is will I wait out the storm and finish my ride later? or will I just hop on the trainer and do my workout while I still have the tiniest bit of motivation left? or will I blow off my ride completely???

what a clifhanger!

I think I found out what happened to that snake we saw on Saturday....

Welcome to the Thunderdome!
(click on above link for wicked rock'n tunes)

So I go up to Meridian tonight and Jim rolls up behind me and says "Welcome to the Thunderdome". That was the funniest thing I've heard in a week. Meridian is Denver's local group ride/ training race run in an office park where the non-potable water runs freely from the sprinklers all over the road and the riders. Good times!

How to tackle a long ride when you're having a bad day.

Plan A: Go with a group. When you've got to tackle a long day in the saddle it's always a good idea to go with a group, especially if you're having a bad day and lacking for a little motivation. A group provides a bit of peer pressure and gives you some company to push though the long hours in the saddle.
That is a good idea unless you're having a real bad day and get dropped on the first climb 45 minutes in to the ride. Note getting dropped can be ok especially if it provides you the motivation keep working hard so that you ultimately get better. However, it can backfire too if you get demotivated by getting dropped by the 60+ riders in their wool shorts, hairy legs, and circa 1982 bikes with downtube shifters.

So if Plan A fails, it's on to plan B for surving a long ride when you're having a bad day.

Plan B
1. Go out on a big loop so that you get to a point of no return before you completely lose your will to go on, and then are forced to ride home to finish the day. Best to find a loop with no short cuts home.
2. Find roads out in the middle of nowhere with no houses, towns, or other signs of civilization to avoid the temptation of stopping and calling for a ride home.
3. Don't bring your cell phone for the same reason, you may be tempted to call for a ride home when you are still several hours away from your goal.
4. Have a mid-way destination or goal to help you push through the first half of the ride.
5. On that mid-way stop have a little caffeine and a tasty snack. The caffeine may provide a little pick-me-up (for about 30 minutes), but the tasty snack if laden with lots of fat and sugar will provide enough guilt for you to finish the last few hours of riding, especially if said snack is not part of your "training diet".

6. Time the end of the ride with the weather so that you are forced to keep riding hard in the last hour to beat the incoming storm.
7. If you are still short on your time goal despite how slow you rode, just do laps around the neighborhood just so you can say you finished.

Wheels of Thunder (thunder, thunder, thunder....) Race Report
Today was the Wheels of Thunder also known as the 'dash for the cash' because there are sprints every other lap for actual money, which is something that doesn't happen all that much in Colorado.

My race report isn't that exciting. The only real excitement occured at the beginning of the race when we were nuetralized for several minutes because there was a big snake in the middle of the course. It took a while to find someone brave enough to shoo it away with a big stick and a fire extinguisher.
Ok, this wasn't actually the snake, but this is what it could have looked like. The guy who got it off the course didn't look anything like this though.

In other news Katie Compton made a rare road race appearance, and I would like to go on the record as saying I am a good friend. Not only will I help my buds with little tasks like pinning on numbers, but I will put my life on the line for my friends if I need to. Well this wasn't so much as me putting my life on the line as me sticking my finger with one of the safety pins, but I could get tetanus. It could get real gross.

That's it, it's been a long day. I'm going to bed. Here's the sunset on Lookout Mountain, that was the only benefit of having to climb up it after the race.

Happy cat, staring at me while I am sitting at my desk.
Same cat 2 minutes later when Mike walks in to the room.

Budha really does not like Mike, not at all, not in the least.

Nice 'stache.

I know Euro mulllets are all the rage, but I really hope the mustache is not making a comeback. B.H., if you are reading this, seriously just say no to the 'stache.

So I have a two scales whenever I'm doing a hard intervals. First is the vomitometer which of course is how much I feel like vomiting after each interval. The other is the mommy meter which is how much I want to cry for my mommy at the end of the workout.


Today's workout was just about the hardest thing I've done voluntarily on a bike (meaning not in a race when some T-mobiler is kicking my ass). Although very hard today the workout was suprisingly low on the vomitometer, only about a 6 and really that's all related to the chocolate mint Clif bar I ate. (p.s. at some point in time I will realize that caffeinated Clif bars upset my stomach and I should cease eating them especially before a workout or during a race). Although low on the vomitometer, today's workout was quite high on the mommy meter, about an 8.75. After interval 4 I was really ready to cry, except I thoguht it'd be pretty pathetic to start crying then when I had so many more to do. I had a moment on interval 8 where I thought I might cry again, but then I realized I only had 2 more to do, so I sucked it up and finished.

Dear Summer,
Please come soon. Spring is being a complete pain in the ass. It snowed again last night. In fact this isn't the first time this has happend in the past few weeks. Spring has just been toying with us for the past month, so if you don't mind can you come a little early ths year and turn up the heat?
Besides I am getting sick of wearing knickers on my rides, it's really interfering with my awesome tan lines.

Thank you for your quick response,
Renee

Team Picture Day Race Report:
Well it wasn't really a race, but it was kind of a race to get through Denver traffic at 5pm to get to team picture day.

Here's a ground's eye view of the team. Notice Anne's perfect sorority girl pose. Missing was Sharon who was stuck in Las Cruses getting her car fixed. Blocked from this photo is Carmen with Beth's huge noggin'
Team badass, Alan McCormack. Only Alan can pull off the biker jacket and purple pants and still look cool.

Aero helmet: the cyclist's birth control.

Because no one is going to find you attractive with this on your lid.

Today was the Rabbitt Mountain TT. I did double duty with the individual TT in the morning and then an hour later the TTT. Carmen and I both did well with Carmen in 2nd and me in 3rd. I would have liked to go faster, but wouldn't you always want to go faster unless you win???

And we did win the TTT. ...Get some!

Ok, ok, there were only two teams so we had a 50/50 chance, but at this early stage of the season a win is a win and we'll take it. See us chomping on our gold medals.

Here Beth gets real aero on my TT bike.

OK, I get it! It's real funny, tall person on a little bike. Yah, I'm real short. I get it, seriously. Real funny, ha, ha.

LOOKOUT!

Today was the Lookout Hill Climb. As a theory and practice, I do not enjoy hill climbs. There's not much strategy or race tactics to it. It basically boils down to ride as hard as you can, may the strongest person win. They throw in the "mass start" I think just to make scoring easier, because there really is no mass to the pack after about 35 seconds in to the race.

In the end I was handily defeated and ended up first loser (that's second for those keeping score). Carmen was 4th, so we ended up scoring well for the team. Tomorrow is a time trial which I will enjoy much more because it's mostly flat, except a kick in the pants hill at the end. Why, oh why, can't they give us a dang flat TT for those gravitationally challenged riders like myself?

I got a new fun tool this week. Mike and I had fun with Dremeling today.
We dremeled adjustable stems to make them even more adjustable.
We dremeled helmets. (kids don't try this at home unless you have freakish odd sized lumps on your head)
Mike tried to dremel a log in to one of those lawn bears like they do with the chainsaws.

That was proving to be way too tedious so we just made a fire with it instead.

I wish I had something exciting to blog today, but I don't. Instead of complaining about the weather and the fact I had to ride the trainer today (well, I didn't "have to" but it was 39 degrees and raining, so really!) I'll just relive my ride from yesterday with Mike.

(picture of Mike's backside, stock photo)

This is all I see every time I ride with Mike. He just sits at the front and I'll get towed around for however long it has to be. It works out well for me because Mike is Mr. Tempo. He'll just sit at the front all day and go a steady 200-220 watts and I'll sit behind at the very top of my comfort level. He's always good for my tempo training, and yesterday was a good hard day. I can tell it was hard ride yesterday because I've been hungry all day today, which isn't too good for my gravitational problem, but it is good for kicking my ass.

The only other cool thing I saw today was this photo of me from Grandview Heights last year. I was looking up the race info for this year and found it. Reminds me of a time when I was a bit fitter and faster.

Grand Tour Time. It's only a few days away from the start of the Giro d' Italia, and I'm psyched I'll be getting to waste a good hour or two per morning watching the racing coverage all the while being able to call it "research" for work. I love being a coach.

I was trying to think of my favorite Giro moment, and I have to go with Paolo Savoldelli's screaming descent on stage 16 of the 2002 Giro when he takes off from the group, brings back Caucchiolli and sets himself up to take the lead on the following stage. I love Savoldelli because he doesn't climb that well, doesn't time trial that well, but still manages to win the Giro, twice!Other favorite moments are when Tyler crashes coming off a decent in the same tour that year. That was one of the best examples of rapid deceleration I've ever seen. Another close bet is Bettini taking Cooke to the barriers last year then being like "what?" when the relegated him.

So what's your favorite Giro moment?