TAI Women are at it again!

Well, it’s official.  My teammates are awesome!  Today was the OBRA Time Trial Championships and we kicked some butt!!!!  It was apretty warmish day – and really nice out.  Not too windy.  Jill, Lisa, and I headed out to the course right outside of Corvallis and where we were met by Pam.  We discussed a few race tactics (which I will have to keep confidential as to not allow any other teams any advantage for next year).  My legs are still not up to par, but nothing a little ibuprofin won’t help.

We started the race and settled into a good pace.  Some of the corners were a bit tricky, but overall it went really smoothly.  All the rotations went awesome, there were no surges and everyone communicated very well!  We finished with all of us together which was also awesome!

So, that’s that.  TAI Women are OBRA Team Time Trial Champions!  (for the Senior women anyway).

Now it is time to relax and try to recover and eat a lot before Mt Hood Classic which we start on Wednesday.  By the way…if anyone knows where I can buy some fresh climbing legs…please let me know asap!  I am willing to spend quite a sum if anyone can provide!

Tired little legs

Well, it officially has hit me. My legs are mush.  This is what my legs feel like:

My Legs

I tried doing the Coburg TT last night…and as you might imagine…if my legs felt like that…it did not go very well. I was almost 2 minutes slower than my time last week.  This equals about 40 watts slower on average with a HR of 15 beats lower than last week.  220 watts felt like 300…and I could not get my HR up above 162.  (which is pretty low for me).  Talk about pain and a little frustration…but hey, it’s alright.  Time for a rest day (or couple of days).

As I was searching for the image above, I found this.

Banana Holder!

So, I’m thinking, next time I should get one of these and maybe some how My legs won’t feel like squashed banana.  Okay, maybe that’s not how it works…but I still think the banana holder is awesome. I wish they made them in the bunches so you could encase a whole bunch of bananas for a race weekend. I always end up with smooshed or baked (black) bananas.

Anyway, today is a rest day.  And I am getting my hair cut.  I’m thinking maybe something like this?

Or this…

Anyway, today is definately a rest day…I’m not doing anything but drinking my coffee and eating oatmeal…oh crap…the oatmeal is still cooking on the stove, I’ll be right back…

Speaking of which, Irish cut steel oats are the best.  They are so much better than regular oats.  At Trader Joes, (and maybe else where), they make some quick cooking Irish cut steel oats and they are definately the best because then you don’t have to wait so long for them to cook.

Anyway, that’s about it.  Rest day today, some riding tomorrow.  This weekend is the TTT so I gotta be plenty rested for that!

Movin’ right along

Well, there hasn’t been too many exciting things going on in the past couple weeks.  Once again, I fail to write in the good ‘ol blog…I know, I know…I’m letting my readers down.  BARE WITH ME! Is it Bear?  Bare?  Anyway, here goes…

Chris and I were planning on going down to Treasure Valley SR in Idaho, but due to the large amount of time and $$$ it would take to get there, we decided to stay here and race in Oregon.  It ended up being an exciting weekend and some fun racing.

OBRA Rehearsal Road Race which also acts as the OBRA Road Championships for the senior women was on Saturday.  We had 3 TAI women there, Lisa, Pam and myself.  The race was sort of rubber-badndy the entire time.  People would go hard up the hills and then let up.  It was sort of frustrating because even on the hills people would slow clear down and then surge causing quite a bit of sketch near the back and middle of the pack.  I tried to stick near the front, which I usually need to do anyway to not get popped off the back if someone attacks on the hills.

1/2 way through the second lap I attacked over the crest of the long hill and 1 woman (Amy from River City Bicycles) came with me.  We busted it down the hill and actually got away for quite a while.  We worked well together and tried our best to go as fast as we could up the hills.  Unfortunately my speed and ability to decend and motor on the flats does not carry over to the hills, especially when I’ve been all out for the last 20 minutes or so.  We eventually heard some one’s carbon brakes coming up behind us, and had just enough time to recover a bit before the pack overtook us 1/2 way through the 3rd lap. +

It was fun being off the front like that, and it’s my first time in a road race that I’ve been able to do that in the “big girls’ field.”  I also felt lucky to have some teammates back in the pack that were doing an excellent job of blocking for me!  Thanks gals!!!!   I was able to stay in the pack after that as everyone seemed a little tired and not wanting to attack. I think a lot of people were trying to conserve their energy for the uphill finish.

We started down the descent and Lisa was forced out front.  Well, we were going for her win, so I motored up to the front from the middle of the pack and sat on the front and drilled.  I stayed up front and kept a pretty steady and fast tempo through the entire descent and up to the 1K.  At this point I’m feeling pretty tired and try to keep going hard, at which point some one attacked.  Lisa was able to hop out from behind my wheel, grab on to someone else and sprinted to the win, also thanks to Pam boxing a few people in on the right side of the road.  I just sat up at the 200 feeling like I had done a good days work and rode easy to the finish.  It was a fun and very successful race for all of us!  It was great to be able to finally pull off some team tactics for a successful win!

Yesterday I raced PIR…it was…interesting, and I’m still trying to figure out exactly what happened.  The race started and I was a few people back from the front…and around the back side in the headwind one of the Sorella Forte women was on the front and started to pick up the pace, then pulled off a little, so I got up to the front and started to pull.  I wanted a work out and so I decided to pick up the pace a little.  Now, at this point, I wasn’t attacking… I just got up front and SLOWLY rode a little faster…23mph???  Then a little harder 25mph as the wind changed…feeling good I kept up the speed, figuring I’d just string it out a little and then pull back in to recover.  I looked back after the first corner and….NO ONE WAS BEHIND ME!  They were clear back…I was like…what the heck???  This is the first lap?  They just let me roll off??!!!???!!!

So, then I had a decision to make.  Do I sit up and just roll with the pack (I really wanted a sprint workout) or do I continue to drill it and see how far ahead I can get.  Well, I went for the second option.

My first PIR ever turned into almost a 40K TT by myself.  I ended up gaining at least 3 minutes on the pack by the end of the race….I was told afterwards that some of the women didn’t even know I was off the front??!!!  I don’t know how that happens, but I guess it happened so early that if anyone near the back didn’t notice, then you wouldn’t even realize I had gone. I also heard that some of the women saw me roll off, but were saying, “We dont’ need to worry about it…we’ll get her back.”  Well…I love to TT and if I get in that situation, I’m probably not going to stop…it’s just what I do.   Either way, it was a good work out, but no sprinting for me.   TT’d all the way to the end.  Good practice for a long TT, I guess!

Anyway, we went and had some good Mexican food after the race to celebrate Jim’s birthday and headed home.  A pretty good weekend and holiday of racing!  Tonight is the last week for the coburg TT.  I’m ready to nail it!  We’ll see how my legs are doing from last night.

Slacker!

Yes, I’m a big huge slacker.  I just realized that I have not written on my blog for ages…and I really have no excuse.

So,  I have decided that I won’t talk your ear off with all my fabulous (word of the day) stories about all my cycling adventures, because it would just take too long to get all the juicy details in.  Instead, I will feature a bullet point rendition of the past few weeks.  I’m sure it won’t be near as exciting, but it will take less time for you and me.

- Table Rock: did I write about table rock? I think I did…cause that was Llama land.

- Deschutes River Valley TT: I’m not sure if I previously wrote about this, but it was awesome.  I kicked butt…it was hard, not hard…BRUTAL!  Got 1st place out of the W3’s and got the fastest overall women’s time.  It was awesome.  I also came away witha  major hurting underside because of lack of a comfortable TT saddle.  It is time to do some saddle research.

- Icebreaker Crit: fun, somewhat easy, got 3rd.  Got boxed in a little at the sprint and when I started my sprint I was at about 120rpms and had to shift multiple times to actually get into a gear that would propel me forward.  Needless to say, I had it at the end, but didn’t plan correctly.  Such is life.  Better next time.

- Prior to Icebreaker Crit: Got my 2 upgrade.  I’m officially a Cat II!!!!

- Prior to Icebreaker Crit: Chris proposed!  I’m engaged!!!!  The wedding date is not decided but will probably take place next summer.  Exciting times!

- Training: been good.  I’ve been going through heat acclamation as a part of a human phys study at the UO.  I’m in post testing phase and it is getting me great results, so that is awesome!  Other than that, it’s just back to base for me.  I’m not planning on peaking until late July, so I have plenty of time to get some more miles in.  It’s been nice, and actually got around 20 hours last week and I feel great.  It’s sort of worrysome because I’m not getting a huge amount of hard efforts except for races, and I feel like I’m loosing some of my mo-jo, but I start building again next week, so it should all come back soon!

- Other stuff:  Nada.  Still no job.  Still riding my bike.

- New favorite desert at Sweet Life: Blackbottom Cup cake!  AMAZING!  If you get it, have them warm it up.  It’s absolutely fabulous!

Edamame

So, I’ve recently discovered edamame. They are a great snack. And, yeah,  I think I heard a rumor that soy beans cause cancer?  Well, I still like them anyway.  I like to eat them by themselves – they are fun to pop out of their little shells.  I also tried them on my salad the other day and it was quite tasty.  So, yeah, edamame is good.

In other news, time trialing is good also.  Last weekend Chris and I went down to the Deschuttes River Valley Time Trial Festival.  For those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s basically a 3 stage TT stage race.  Yes, you guessed it!  3 Time trials in a row!!!!  What more could you ask for???  (maybe some edamame???)

So, we decided to go down last minute because the Willamette Valley Stage Race was cancelled.  We had some awesome people, Chad and Ana, offer up their house and we got to stay for an affordable (free) price.  We even got to watch The Shining with them, which neither Chris, Ana, nor I had ever seen.  So that was exciting.

The TT went well for both Chris and I.  The courses were amazing and I felt like I rode really well.  The first day (Saturday) was extremely windy.  Along the top of the hill you had to pretty much ride leaning over ALOT even to stay up because of the cross-winds.  It was crazy!!!!  Then there was a screaming descent which was awesome!!!  And a lot of rollers and a crazy strong headwind in the last 5 miles.  One of the most brutal TT’s I’ve ever done and it was amazing.

The second stage was later that afternoon, still blowing hard.  8 mile hill climb.  We all know how much I love to climb…but it was actually not too bad because of the winds and I just barrelled my way up the hill and did surprisingly well.

The last stage is epic.  48 mile TT, out and back.  The first 24 miles is all uphill (except for a few rollers that give you maybe 15 seconds of downhill at a time) and all down hill on the way back.  Only the grade is only about 3% on most parts so you have to continuously pedal to keep up a good speed.  PAINFUL!!!  It went well as well!  My legs were absolutely dead when I arrived at the finish line.

Chris and I both took 1st place in our categories!

Speaking of Categories:  Say good bye to Cat 3 land and say hello to Cat 2 land from me!  Yep, that’s right.  I got my upgrade this last week and I’m really excited!!!  Time to get my butt kicked a little more!  I’m all for it.

That’s about it for now. My edamame is done cooking.