Stress Relief

A very good and wise friend reminded me a few days ago how very essential it is to have some way to relieve stress. You wouldn't think anyone would actually need to be told this, but amazingly when in an incredibly stressful situation, it is entirely possible to lose sight of that!

I have cycled for almost my entire life. Fear Rothar has done the same. We use bikes for transportation as well as recreation and sport. For as long as I can remember, I have used a bike to commute from work. In the past, one of the great advantages of my bike-commute home from work is how well it would help me to de-stress from my day at work. I might still get home and vent about some stupid policy or decision at work, while Fear Rothar and I prepared dinner. At least the carrots and cutting board would feel no pain as I chopped with an intensity fueled by work frustration. And Fear Rothar is probably even more alarmed to read that my rants came after a supposedly calming bike ride home. Imagine if I had not had the outlet of a bike ride! Our poor partners, who suffer through listening to us voice all our exasperation that we cannot openly do in a polite society, and still stay employed! Many of us are lucky to have a special person in our lives who act as sounding board for both our brilliant ideas and our great frustrations. We don't intend for them to feel our anger is directed at them, but sometimes, it's hard not to feel a little hurt when your partner unleashes on you for folding the towels the wrong way when you really know it's about something else and someone else.

Baby Steps

Warning: if you read this blog for the lighthearted humorous stories of frivolous adventures on a bike, don't read any further. This is a different type of prose.   

The secret to happiness is low expectations.

For someone who just a few months ago, wouldn't have to think twice about doing a 200 mile bike ride with 20,000 feet of climbing and 70% dirt roads, it's been a real adjustment to find myself seriously challenged by a walk around the block. But this is my current reality. On September 8, I was out for a short bike ride, when I was hit from behind by a truck. The resulting spine fracture was stabilized with surgery. My latest x-rays now feature lots of rods, plates and screws in various parts of my body. I am quite thankful to the deputies and paramedics who were first on the scene, as well as the surgeon that I am still able to wiggle my toes and attempt that walk around the block. Every time my pain level spikes to 10, I do remind myself that I'm lucky that I can even feel the pain.

2013 has not been a good year

Fear Rothar often teases me about my totally irrational superstitions, most notably my rule that no one can discuss the weather during a bike ride, since merely by mentioning that things could get worse, things do get worse. 

I really am a logical scientific person, and I know that when a cycling companion says something foolhardy like, "At least it's not raining," that he or she doesn't really cause the heavens to open up on cue. But it's fun to have someone to blame when weather conditions get worse, right after said rule violation!

Now despite having this no-weather-talk-while-on-a-bike rule, I really don't subscribe to superstitions. I don't have lucky or unlucky socks. I don't have a lucky ritual to do before races. And I don't panic when I draw the number 13 as my race number.

But I've got to admit that 2013 is really shaping up to be my unlucky year, and while I'm not one to wish my life away, I will be happy when 2014 arrives. 

Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean that no one is really following me.

Belting Up Mt Washington

Yes, this post is about an event that happened a couple of weeks ago. Yes, I'm behind on the blog. What's new? At least I'm not as far behind as my friend Rob!

The 6 weeks between July's Newton's Revenge race up Mt Washington and the traditional August Mt Washington Hillclimb race was a very busy time for me. But with the motivation to do proper justice to my new Seven belt-drive fixie with extra special Mt Washington gearing, I decided to kick it up a notch and do some actual hill training.

I made a nuisance of myself on the various roads leading up to the Arlington Water Tower. I am either now considered part of the neighborhood watch program, or I've been reported by the neighborhood watch program. However, not being one for repeatedly going up the same road, I've found over a dozen different routes  up and a few different ways down, some of which had no Strava QOMs prior to my taking them! Of course, I don't expect them to last. Seems some of my fast female friends take great pleasure in finding and annihilating all my QOM times.

Mars Hill, NC 200km brevet

Apologies again for getting so far behind again. Between riding, weekends away and going to lots of physical therapy and doctor appointments, there's just no time left to blog!

Also after my accident, it seemed I had various collarbone related appointments every other day, so I put off going down to NC for a visit my dad until things settled down a bit. But I'll also admit that my hesitation to go to NC in the middle of summer was also partly due to the heat. If it was miserable in Massachusetts, I couldn't imagine what it was like there.

After a few weeks, I finished up PT, and my dad was starting to ask me more often about coming down, so I booked a flight for the end of July. I then checked to see if there were any rides of interest in the area while I'd be down and noticed a full set of brevets on for the weekend. To make it more enticing the rides were in the mountains of Western NC and this was the route profile of the 200km...

Grand Fundo - Seeking Jelly Beans!

My wakeup call at the wonderful Starlight Llama B&B came from this fellow

My favorite ride in 2012 had to be The JAM Fund Grand Fundo, in large part due to my obsession with jelly beans. So when planning out our must-do rides for this year, this one was at the top of the list. I loved the quiet dirt roads. I loved the quiet paved roads. I loved the climbs. I loved the scenery. I loved the ice cream truck and the post ride BBQ. But more than anything I loved riding from rest stop to rest stop and filling my pockets with jelly beans.

This year, I came better prepared than mere jersey pockets. See, I have this cool new handlebar bag from Dill Pickle. According to her blog, Emily has measured the capacity of her bags macaroni, but I figured it would be fun to measure my new bar bag capacity in Jelly Beans! So I planned to start the ride with a completely empty bar bag, and then fill it throughout the day with as many of those little bags of jelly beans as I could scavenge at the rest stops. Last year, they had boxes and boxes at every stop. I filled my pockets at each stop, but then ate them all in between! Maybe with the bar bag, I could get enough to power me around the course and also have some for the drive home!

Rapha Rising - more like Mercury Rising

According to our local meteorologists, a heatwave is defined as more than three days in a row where the temperature exceeds 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Growing up in the south, a heatwave would typically start in April and end in October! But thankfully I left that weather behind long ago when I moved to Boston. The reward for putting up with long cold winters here is supposed to be a nice pleasant summer. But life isn't fair, and this year, we had a cold miserable winter, followed by a chilly wet spring, and you guessed it a hot humid summer. So careful what you wish for... it's not cold now! We have had many days of 90+F temps along with some brutal humidity this summer. Once every 7 to 10 days, we'll get a lovely 75F day with low humidity, but then the oppressive stuff comes right back... thus multiple heatwaves...

Mt Washington Demands Respect!

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. " -George Santayana

Research suggests that for women who experience mild to moderate pain during childbirth, the euphoria and relief of having a happy healthy child seems to overwhelm the memories of pain such they later report their pain as less severe than those present for all the screaming might otherwise expect!

So maybe it's like that with me and Mt Washington. I just remember the relief and euphoria of being on the top and done, and forget all the dread leading up to the start, and all the suffering during the actual ascent. Or maybe I'm really just a masochist.

However, the article I read about mothers seemingly forgetting the intense pain of childbirth did go on to say that those women who initially reported their pain as unbearable - worse pain ever, did not have diminished memories of the severity of their pain later.

HighPoint Ride - presented by Ride Studio Cafe

A bit over a year ago, Rob Vandermark starting talking about doing a hilly ride. And by hilly, he meant he wanted to find the biggest climb in Massachusetts, and ride there from Ride Studio Cafe. Exploring on Strava, he found that Mt Greylock was the only Hors catégorie climb in the state, so he decided that would make a good destination. I pointed out that it would be more than 300 miles round trip, so we started planning a two day ride. Even with two days, it would still be quite the challenge, so he made the concession of allowing remote starts for folks who might be a bit less ambitious than to want to do 160 miles and 16,000 feet of climbing out to Greylock and 160 miles and 12,000 feet back!

At Long Last the Winner of the Tikit is...

Apologies for the delay in announcing the winner of the Bike Friday Tikit. If you've been reading the blog in the last month, you are aware of my little set-back. Between surgery and PT and a little riding, I have had lots of time to read through all the blog comments, and really appreciate all the kind words. It has been cool to hear from some long time readers as well as pick up some new ones.

I am curious now that Google Reader is gone what folks are doing for their blog reading. I've switched over to Feedly. I'm really looking forward to their Android Widget coming soon, but so far the basic functionality I seek seems to be working well both on my phone and laptop.

Soft Like Kitten, Stubborn Like Mule

In 1987, as a young naive randonneuse, I headed off to France to attempt PBP. For various reasons, I ended up starting the event on a brand new bike, with somewhat untested equipment. It didn't go well, and I was initiated into Team Randonneé Abondonneé. You may have heard the AAA advertisement, "Someday you'll break down and join AAA." Well, I'd might suggest that folks may be playing it too safe and aren't really pushing their own boundaries enough, if someday they don't eventually break down and join Randonneé Abondonneé (RA)!

And I'd even go so far as to say that becoming a member of Randonneé Abondonneé can be a great opportunity, as lessons learned from the experience really stick with you more than anything you read in a blog! And in the years since my initiation into RA, I have applied lessons learned on that ride to many parts of my life, not just cycling.

Dirty Kanza 200 :: 2013 edition

I've often observed that the most difficult ride and race reports to write are those about rides and races that went perfectly smoothly. It seems that every story worth telling  features a protagonist or two overcoming a great challenge or three on their way to a conclusion that is in doubt until the last breath.

While I can't promise a story with an ending of that magnitude, the 2013 edition of the Dirty Kanza 200 certainly didn't lack in challenges. Starting and finishing in the town of Emporia, Kansas, the race traverses 200 miles of gravel roads through the nearby Flint Hills. While your mental image of Kansas may conjour up visions of vast plains or, dare I mention it, a Yellow Brick Road, it doesn't apply to the Dirty Kanza route. Instead of endless flats, there are countless hills to admire and continuous gorgeous scenery to be endured. However, speaking of "endless flats," the Flint Hills are renowned at providing those too. The original inhabitants of the area, The Great Kanza Nation, made arrowheads from the flint that abounds in these hills, so tyres need to be chosen with care.

Do Not Make Important Decisions

198 km into a 202 km permanent, my ride came to a sudden unexpected end. I had slowed and signaled to my two riding companions for the left turn ahead. The corner is tight, and I was taking the (left) turn wide and aiming for the far right side of the road. Sadly, the cyclist coming from the other direction was not taking such precaution. He came around his right-hand corner at high speed on aero-bars and was on his far left-hand side of the road, taking an arc directly through me. I was going slow already and braking hard, but his line was on a direct collision course. The impact was from my right and I fell hard on my left. Instantly I was on the ground and clutching my collarbone, with the realization that Green Mountain Double would go on without me the following weekend.

Dirty Kanza 200 - the crew perspective

Fear Rothar announced back in the winter that one of his big targets for the year was to be Dirty Kanza, a 200 mile gravel road race, based in the Flint Hills of Kansas. This was to be the premiere event for the Ride Studio Cafe Endurance team, with their new Seven Cycles bikes, with SRAM gear,  Clement tires and Rapha clothes.

DK was on my calendar too, but only marked as a weekend where I'd be on my own at home and outnumbered by demanding cats. Matt, David and John would be off racing and Mo would be crewing. But then Matt finally finished off his eight years of work on his PhD this spring, and decided it might be nice to actually attend his graduation. And after all the sacrifices one must make when a partner takes eight years in pursuit of a PhD, Mo wanted to be there too. So this is how I found myself crewing at DK200.

DROVES - 2013 - Sunshine

Crisp and sunny! That's more like it.

Traditionally, Memorial Day is the unofficial start of summer in the USA. But this year, it sure didn't feel like the start of summer. We'd had snow and sleet and cold and rain so far. Then Monday morning, the sun poked out and by the end of the day, the warming rays had even melted the snow on the Burke Mountain Ski slopes. It was still quite chilly in the morning, but by the time we packed up the car to go home, we were in shorts - so maybe summer is starting now afterall!

A few folks headed home Sunday night, either just not having any confidence in the improving forecast or needing to work (w-o-r-k is nasty 4 letter word). Those of us who stuck around were rewarded with a glorious day. We split into several groups. David and Mo decided to go back out on the Kingdom Trails for more shredding opportunities. Matt and Constance went out for more picture taking, and Ted joined John and me, as we took the tandem out for its first anniversary ride. And in case you are wondering, after a year, we still love 007!