Mid-season musings

   Last weekend's race at Northstar went well--for once, I didn't really have an excuse to do horribly, so I won instead. The course was super easy with lots of pedaling; almost a relaxing experience aside from cranking till your legs explode! I probably could have pedaled more and gone faster, but with the way my season has been so far, I'll take what I can get.

A good shot from last weekend by Chris Demere

   At this point, it's getting dangerously close to the end of another bike season, and I'm already thinking ahead to next year and what to do differently. Case in point: Northstar. While I credit the place for getting me a good start in riding DH, it's feeling smaller and smaller every time I ride there. And with 8 races in the series, being there almost every weekend is starting to get old. I love to ride my bike and don't usually mind where, but growing up racing in Washington spoiled me in getting to travel around the state for races, experiencing a wide variety of venues. So with that in mind, I'm tentatively thinking about a pass to Mammoth next year instead of the 'star again, and definitely focusing on fewer races with more importance, like the Pro GRT series and/or Grand Prix, whichever I can make it to most easily. That would give me more time to train, ride for fun in other cool places, kick back on the beach, and even do some overnight backcountry rock climbs like I used to in the good old days...
   Despite its drawbacks, it has still been a good season to stay local and save money; I've been so far unsuccessful at ridding myself of the same tenacious sinus infection that's persisted for months through several courses of antibiotics, a candida cleanse, and lots of sleep. Next stop is the dentist, who may perhaps find a tooth infection (apparently a common cause of mysterious sickness). Yuck. I HATE going to the dentist, and haven't been to one in several years, go figure. If that clears things up, great, but i'll sure feel like an idiot for not going in sooner!
   More racing this weekend: Live Wire and Dogbone back to back, we'll see if I can defend my victory from last year on Live Wire, and redeem myself from a terrible race at Dogbone when my fork quit working so well.

Playing catch-up

   I guess it's been a few weeks since I wrote anything, so here we go.  2 weekends ago was the Northstar series race on Karpiel, a trail I hadn't actually ridden top to bottom yet, ever.  Practice with my friend Tasa on Friday night had all sorts of fun in store, winding up at one point doing splits over a rock with my bike on top of me, bringing at least a couple minutes of hilarity at being violated by Fabio (that rock section's name was Fabio Falls, it's a long story).  No injuries, just a lot of laughing and some puzzling at how to get out of such an awkward position.  Sunday morning pre-race practice packed a harder punch when I decided to try jumping over some roots in a more familiar part of the trail and found myself forcefully digging in the dirt with my full face helmet.  Helmet totaled, but my brain was ok; sometimes things that seem like a good idea at the time should be considered a little more carefully, luckily the rental shop had a decent lid for me to borrow the rest of the day!
  Race run went well aside from a pretty major bobble at the top of Fabio Falls, not a crash so much as another one of those awkward positions that required some thought to undo. I cleaned Vietnam (the second rock section) without any trouble and wound up in third place, not too bad for the few practice runs I as able to get.  Notice a pattern here yet? Being too darn out of shape to ride all day still, it appears as though adequate practice time is my biggest weakness, but at least it's something I can fix for next season by staying healthy enough to train all winter and into spring.
   I topped my record for practice runs this season on Boondocks, the Pro GRT course for this past weekend, coming in at around 8 or 9 total (hahaha).  My boss was cool enough to let me take time off both Thursday and Friday afternoon to get those much-needed runs before qualifying on Friday evening.  After a few moments of panic at the lift suddenly being stuck at 2 mph for half an hour, we arrived at the top of the course to find that qualifying had been pushed back by 20 minutes to accommodate this.  Phew! I qualified in 4th with a clean but safe and slow run, knowing there was plenty of room for more speed.  My goal for the race was originally not to finish dead last like at Sea Otter--yep, gotta aim high!  Going up against some pretty fast girls, all but one having gone to World Cup races this season, and one the current national champ, this seemed like a tall order with an enormous field of 5.  Even Tasa can pull off a lightning quick run seemingly out of nowhere, whereas I feel like I'm still horribly inconsistent (uhh, practice?).
   I came off the start feeling great, up until only the third corner, a loose and sandy flat turn wherein a stump jumped in front of me and caused an emergency dismount.  Crap! Untangle bike from stump, remount and attempt to clip in (darn pedals, it's never been that hard before!).  The rest of the run was an attempt to not get my butt kicked by too much, sprinting anywhere possible and actually even nailing all of my lines, not to mention successfully staying clipped in around all those duffy loose corners! Coming in at 5:13, 3 seconds slower than my clean qualifying run, I'm a little disappointed in making a mistake like that--but on the other hand, without the crash I would have been right up there with 2nd/3rd place, who were both just under 5 minutes.  So the speed is definitely there, even without that much time on the bike this summer.  It was a bittersweet day for sure, but also a great learning experience on the amount and speed of practice I need.  Yeah, I need to start going faster in practice too, because the reason I blew up in the corner was probably coming in a lot faster than usual!
   So Tasa saved me from coming in last by taking a nice Sunday stroll down the course, haha, thanks lady!  And I wound up with a little $$ for 4th place, took care of my entry fee and still some left over for food and bike parts.  Cool beans.  Got some things to work on before next season but I'm feeling positive that it's nothing too big.  Maybe if I can scrape myself together before the Tara Llanes Classic this year, I can pull off another good result in that race, but in the meantime it's time to finish out the series at Northstar, hoping one of these times I can pull it together (and not break bike parts) for a win.

Sticks & Stones...

didn't break any of MY bones, or my bike for that matter.  But it was a huge bummer to hear after the race that one of the ladies I met checking out lines in the rock waterfall section got injured in that same part of the course.  Hope she recovers soon and gets back on the bike before the season ends!

  I had a clean run, hit all of my lines well, but just ran out of gas at pretty regular intervals while trying to pedal through flat sections.  Being stuck with practicing on Saturday this week, my out-of-shape-ness  became evident while trying to pedal my bike up the short climb to the gondola...only 5 runs the day before, but the rough course took its toll on my body and made it hard to stay on the bike at full speed.  Hence, I probably slowed down more than necessary for some sections.  I came in second place, which was not too bad out of 7 girls, but felt like my fitness was the biggest limiting factor which has definitely not been the case in previous seasons!  

   Struggling to rid myself of a stubborn sinus infection for  over 2 months, and multiple doses of antibiotics do not help a training program at all--even if I had one, that is.  Worried that any physically intense activity might suppress my immune system more, I haven't ridden my XC or road bike much in the last couple of months after coming home from work feeling like crud just about every other day.  But it seems to be finally moving on out, maybe the last round of antibiotics actually did the trick, or perhaps religiously using a neti pot multiple times a day has helped.  Either way I can't wait to get back to pedaling hard (after taking today off to recover)!! There's no race this weekend, but might be a good time to get some runs in on Karpiel and be able to conserve energy a bit more for the weekend after. Then, the Pro GRT, where I'll be pretty happy to be somewhere other than dead last at this point!

Rad photo!

Here's a good shot from last weekend's race, before my caliper came loose and mangled the rotor:

http://www.wmsmithphoto.com/Professional-Photography/Bicycle-Races/2012-Northstar-Race-1-Gypsy/24071548_jF6cQk#!i=1955085529&k=JSKjSxZ&lb=1&s=A

Thanks to Wil Smith at WMSmithphoto.com!

Northstar says...

...Welcome back, sucker!

Needless to say, I didn't win the race yesterday.

Robyn visits Wisconsin!

A neighboring town...Poulsbohemians might find this amusing

   Kit's sister decided to get married back at the family farm in Waupaca, WI, which sounded like an event I shouldn't miss if at all possible. So I managed to get the time off from work and book the same flights as Kit there and back. Excellent. Upon arrival in Milwaukee, we were greeted by Kit's brother (and an authentic Chicago deep dish pizza) for the 2 hour drive to their folks house. This pizza was quite possibly the most amazing thing to go into my stomach all week, gluten be damned--perhaps having something to do with being ravenous and ready to chow any sort of edible object, but it was still quite delicious the day after (and day after that).

This barn was built in 1901, according to the year on the stone silo

   Although we had to help prepare for the festivities just a little bit, most of our time was occupied with being in/on the water to escape the heat, canoeing, swimming, and fishing in a nearby spring-fed lake. Kit managed to land a good number of fish, but I only succeeded in hooking vegetation off the bottom of the lake...and then all was well after a refreshing dip in the water. At one point the boys managed to nearly sink the kayak I had been paddling around in while they fished from the canoe, making for quite the swimming workout to get it back to shore filled with water. Buttheads! Kit's parents also had a couple of halfway decent road bikes in the garage, just waiting for somebody to get on and pedal. So we did, all over the country roads around his hometown of Waupaca, enjoying the absence of traffic and trying our best not to get too horribly lost. I took it upon myself to take photos of all the neat old barns and other cool things on the bike rides; there's not much else out there besides cows and cornfields, so a 100+ year-old barn is something exciting to see (relatively). 

Yep, it's pretty flat. There were a few short hills but not many.

   The wedding was a real hoot, with a live band that played multiple polkas complete with accordion and tuba, and brought back long forgotten memories of Norwegian folk dancing. Only in Wisconsin I guess--and maybe Poulsbo too! The whole week was about the most fun I could have imagined having somewhere as flat as I was. My only complaint? Eating hot dogs and pizza for nearly every meal, because it's hard to find anything else to chow on out there! 
   Now back in Tahoe, it's time to get pedaling on the mountain bike and dive into downhilling again. WahoooooOO!!!!!

Ashland...better late than never!

   Some might have checked out my link to Shine's story on last weekend's racing action, but if not, here's a full report.  The weather couldn't have been nicer, with cool enough temps not to roast on either day, but warm enough to hang out in shorts and enjoy the sunshine. We got up there on Friday in time to shuttle one run from the top of the downhill course all the way down to the bottom of the cross country course, which was nice to see the trail we'd be racing on the next day.

   At the last minute Kit decided to enter the cross country on Saturday, so he and my dad would start together 15 minutes after me in the Cat 2 race and be chasing me the entire way. As my first real XC race in probably 6 years, this was a real doozy: 9 miles of climbing, followed by another 8 of flat fire road pedaling (both of which I really stink at right now), and finally a fast, switchback filled singletrack descent. The whole way up the climb I was questioning my sanity as the rest of my category disappeared up the road, and though the girl ahead of me had a 2 minute gap at the top of the climb, I'm pretty sure that increased by a lot over the 45 minutes of flat road. I finally got to make up some time on the descent, passing quite a lot of riders who blew by me on the flat, but not nearly enough to catch the closest woman at about 1 minute back. A time of 2:15 for the 24.5 mile course, 6th place out of 6, about 20 minutes back from the winner of the women's race...I've got some work to do to get back into cross country racing shape here! Kit came in at 2:07 on his single speed, but didn't quite manage to make up for my head start and catch me in the race.

   Being pretty worn out after the XC I still questioned my sanity, wondering whether I'd have enough left in the tank for the downhill race on Sunday. A few practice runs before the race felt good; finding a smooth line through the only rock section on the course, and my legs were actually doing fine for pedaling. Excellent! Though my big V-10 was really not the bike of choice on this smooth, flowy trail, it still was a blast to ride and definitely crushed the rocks and one small jump at the top of the course. Fun!!!  My race run went great except for one small bobble when I just randomly rode off the trail toward a tree, but I got back on track in a couple of seconds and soon was sprinting up the hill toward the finish. Crossing the line at 4:50 with the fastest girls' time of the day was pretty rad, 9 seconds ahead of second place, and Shine teammate Kirstie Douglass took third fastest time for the ladies! 

  It was a super fun weekend of bikes and racing, hanging out with the family at a nice bed & breakfast, and I can't wait to ride in Ashland again. My ability to race 2 events in a row without too much trouble amazed me, as I had half expected to not be able to get out of bed on Sunday morning. Maybe with more training of the uphill sort things should get even better. Since it just rained/snowed up here in the mountains today the trail conditions will be epic, just perfect for bike time on my 3-day weekend and training for the Fears, Tears and Beers enduro in 2 weeks!