Coming Back

Valley of the Sun was not the best experience. When I got back the Monday after traveling, I found out I had bronchitis, which I had expected given my lack of lung capacity & incessant cough. Anyway, I was stubborn enough to go down there & met some great teammates in the Phoenix area. We stayed with Jacqui & Jeff Lockwood who have the best bike spread ever! 29 bikes in their garage, massage tables & foam rollers inside, great food all the time - it was awesome.

While we were there, the weather was not great & Jacqui kept apologizing for the weather & calling the race Valley of the Cloud. On Saturday, it was drizzling & chilly for the 20K TT (perfect for bronchitis). I managed to have a decent first 20 min of my TT, but then my lungs caught up with me. The next day I did not fare so well in 60 mile RR. It was pretty miserable. I was coughing on the bike & loosing my mind from fatigue since I was not sleeping at night due to incessant coughing. I finished the race, but they missed me in the results. I really did not care & did not start the stage the next day. I did get an earlier flight back to Seattle. Southwest airlines decided they did not like my new bike, so they broke the fork while in transit. I've been waiting for my new fork to come in to replace it & fix so I can ride the BLUE sponsor bike again.

Back in Seattle, I got some antibiotics from a Dr. & started on the healing process. I was able to ride both days last week & get away with doing some 12 min sub-threshold intervals yesterday. I have to remind myself to take it easy, but I really want to follow my plan to get back on track for Redlands. I am planning on doing the Ice Breaker TT this weekend. Hopefully, that will be a good test.

Last weekend, Erica visited from SF. It was so nice to spend time with her! She brought some sample paper for ideas of invitations she is going to make for Josh & I for the wedding. We went dress shopping on Saturday with Liz & Josh's mom, Sue. They were a terrific crowd to take dress shopping. I was a little uncomfortable at first, but we got the ball rolling & ripped through so many dresses in 1 hour narrowing it down as we went. By the end, I had my dress.

Soggy Soggy

Today is the Gastown crit up in BC. I took the day off from work to travel up there & compete. Last weekend, was the Tour De White Rock which Michele & I went up and raced. It was a bugger of a race with a super steep hill climb, crit (with a hill), & hilly RR (not rolling hills like I thought they would be - meters can be deceiving in a profile). The road race was a 10K circuit with two super steep 2K climbs. The TDW is part of the BC Superweek, so there were a lot of Canadian pro's there & all of the races were fast. With the steep hilly stuff, I was not really in contention. I thought I might do well in the crit, but my legs & stomach had a different thought. I had a great start though & was doing well railing it in the corners, but I had the wrong strategy with trying to just spin up the hill rather than going all out & dangled off the back & was finally dropped. During the RR on the last lap, a girl riding next to me in a group of 6 riders tapped the wheel in front of her & then lost control of her bike & crashed into me. With the steamroller maneuver, I kept my bike upright by keeping the legs turning over while she slammed into my elbow & hip. I have a pretty nasty bruise on my elbow where her helmet met the bone, but I can't complain too much since I did not go down. After that, I broke away from my little group on the last climb & TT'd it into the finish.

I have to mention Michele's hill climb bike that her husband built up for her to ride when we thought the average grade of the hill climb was going to be 16% (it was 16% towards the top, but the overall average was closer to 9%). The hill climb machine was a single speed with a 24 chain ring & 25 cog in the rear built on Michele's old TT frame with bull horn bars. It was sweet! But M did not ride it since it was a little too small of a gear.

So it has been warm & sunny for many days in a row, but for the past couple of days there have been rain showers at night & yesterday there were some sprinkles in the morning. Today, there is definite rain coming down. I have never done the Gastown crit, but I hear it has cobbles, a 165 degree corner, a fast downhill section & a hill to the finish. Not exactly the type of race you want to do in the rain. I am going to try & find some good rain race tires before heading up to BC & hopefully I'll be able to hang in the race.

This weekend is the Boise Wells Fargo Twilight crit & I am so excited for it! That is one of my most favorite races. Wide open, 4 corners with thousands of crazy fans screaming all the way around the course. It is like racing in a stadium with all of the downtown buildings around & the people going nuts. Last year, Kristen Armstrong rode away from the field. I'm not sure if she'll be there again this year, but no matter what it should be a great race. It is guaranteed to be dry there.

What a Week

Bike Haiku

Racing bikes is fun.
I have done it for so long.
Love the rush each time.

Ok - so Saturday was Oly crit which was also the State championship crit. I usually love this course & rock it, but it felt way frigging fast at the start & I had a poor position from the get go (hmmm, I detect a theme - it's called Carrie gets an ass whupping for not learning her lesson). I ended up OTB with Allison (AB - what are we doing here???). To her credit, Allison had just shown up from having to take her dog to the vet. Me, I had no excuse. Well, we caught a small group who was also OTB with Liz, then we were lapped by 3 people off the front . Then things really got confusing. We tagged onto the back of the leaders (legal maneuver) & they towed us up to what was left of the main field. I forgot that we were only 1 lap down from the 3 leaders, but then there were people in our group who were 2 laps down, but I was on the same lap as the main field & eligible to sprint for 4th. At 2 laps to go, they were trying to have the people who were 2 laps down sprint for their finish, but that was nuts. Then with 1 lap to go, I thought I was going to give a big ol' leadout, but I guess I came by too fast & Annette could not get on my wheel. Karen A was able to come by though & she managed to sprint & take 4th. I didn't think it mattered too much for some reason & did not really go for it & ended up 12th. Yikes! Josh raced this day too. He was dropped. With both of our poor showings we were all fired up to do better at Sunday's race in Des Moines.

Well, we both ended up better at the Des Moines crit. It was 4 corners with 2 long straight aways & 2 short. The finish was on a long hill, the back side was down hill. All of the corners were safe & pretty fun to rail. Josh hung in really well in his race & was riding towards the front the whole time. He had a really good start, but at the end his teammate ended up pinching him in a corner & he finished pretty far down in his group. He was stoked with his race though!

Before my race Josh forcefully told me to Get a Good Start. This was good. I focused on getting a good start & did so. Through out the race I was chasing things down & being active. It was a hard race, but I focused on expending energy smartly, like trying to sit & spin up the hill rather than getting out of the saddle to crank up it. I had good position at the finish. I was totally in a zone to get up there & go with the flow of wheels. I ended up 4th. A pretty good result in a crit with a lot of good riders there.

THEN on Wednesday, the 4th of July, there was a race down in Burien near Sea Tac airport. Josh almost could not race because his cleat broke just before his race. Someone overheard him telling his teammates that he wouldn't be able to race & let him borrow his super nice bike & shoes just so he could race. What a nice thing to do! Josh spent a good part of the race getting used to the SRAM shifting, but at least he got to race. He finished with the pack.

I felt like I had a pretty good start here, but it was really hard to move up at the start. I was sitting around 10th for the first few laps of the race, then started moving up & was able to chase some things down. In the first few laps there was a pretty bad crash in corner 1, which was not good. It was a combined 1-4 field, so I think some of the inexperienced riders had a little trouble with that corner. I had 1 attack & I also took a prime by sitting 3rd wheel & then taking a flyer before the last corner & then sitting & cranking on the tailwind down hill to the finish. I got a huge gap - it was cool. Now I need to work on being consistent at the finish of crits or in all sprints in general. I let my position go in the last 2 laps when people were coming up the sides. I had poor position on the last lap & finished 10th. Annette was 3rd, Liz was 7th & Heidi was 9th. We were all in the top 10 at least.

After the women's race we had a team pow-wow & then I rolled around a bit before starting the men's cat 3 race. I had a great start there, too. At least I am learning. It was fun to ride in the men's field on that course & rail the corners at speed 3 & 4 wide. I stayed in 30 minutes & then pulled out, because I didn't want to dig too hard since I'd been doing a bunch of racing lately & just wanted the speed workout. Josh said a ton of guys were getting shelled before I popped out. Sweet.

Oh yeah - I did my first track race on Monday too! Wicked fun. The races were so condensed & the sprints were so short you have only instants to maneuver & act. This should be good practice for crit sprints.

Here are some pics from Des Moines crit. My mom says I always "smile" when I race, just like my dad used to "smile" when he raced stock cars. Really, I am not smiling - this is my suffer face.

Hailee did the 4th of July kids race in Burien again this year. This picture is from last year when we weren't sure she would make it all the way around, so I ran with her. Not the easiest thing to do around a 1K crit course in sandals, but she had a blast. She rocked it again this year.