Frozen Otter

January 17th was the Frozen Otter Ultra-Trek. For me, a long hike. I attempted the half: 32 miles. I completed half of the half: 16 miles. Single-digit temps, and it snowed the whole goddamn time. It was a trudgefest of a good proportion. One of the more difficult things I've done to date.


I trekked with the guys from team POLeR, Chad Hannon and John "Code" Morris. Chad made a video.


I think this will be excellent training for the Bataan Death March.

CTS Performance Testing Camp

January. Subzero. I have been going so crazy riding the trainer that I started to move my whole workout room upstairs into the empty spare bedroom. I half-assed it, so now the house is an mess of weights, stability balls (yes, plural), bosu, mats, etc, etc, all over the house.

I decided to mix things up a bit and go to the Carmichael Training Systems Performance Testing Camp in Colorado Springs.

All in all, a rockin’ experience. I hadn’t been to CO in a while, and never to CO Springs. It’s a great little town, with cute local restaurants with good food within walking distance of the major hotel.

CTS headquarters is a surprisingly low-key building. I had this illusion of some intimidating structure, full of coaches buzzing around being important and impersonal. The exact opposite is true. A one-level repurposed brick building in an art district, CTS headquarters is totally unassuming. And there were maybe a dozen people in the office, every single one of them friendly and approachable, even Dean Golich (though he seems to have an unnatural lust for Porsches). Chris Carmichael’s office is also unassuming. Many coaches were out with their athletes.

Only two other athletes were at this particular Testing Camp, which is understandable. Only the truly masochistic want to know their performance levels in the off-season, especially that soon after the holidays. One was a pro triathlete. The other was an elite road racer. Truly out of my league… but you would never know it. Everyone treated me exactly the same as the other two campers, and all test results were confidential, given directly to me by my coach.

I’ll spare the lackluster details. The results are: I’m not a pro, I have a lot of work to do, I need to eat better, and I bought a Powertap the second I got home.

hopelessly spoiled~ VandeCross

Yesterday was the Old Towne VandeCross, Race #2 of the DICE series ("Double 'I' Cyclocross Experiment", I believe) out in an old Belgian neighborhood in Moline.

The weather, up until about Saturday, had been unseasonably warm- 70degF on Wednesday- so when Mother Nature decided to bitch slap us with sub-freezing temps and flurries on Sunday, many of us were caught unprepared. I found myself loaning out more than one piece of winter gear. I also wore my Craft balaclava (available for purchase at Healthy Habits) for the first time this year, and was pleased to discover that it smelled way too much like a urinal cake. I did not, to my knowledge, ever place it in a urinal, so I'm not sure where the smell came from. Not that the smell stopped me from wearing it...

Note to self: wash all winter gear before trying to use it.

Anyway, the course was sweet: lots of power climbs and fun, technical descents; corners that allowed speed (when handled with skill- which is not me, but made for fun race viewing); wide, sweeping areas that allowed recovery and acceleration. DICE has me hopelessly spoiled when it comes to race courses.

Did I mention the cold? Not enough to freeze a bottle, but defintely below anything I was prepped for. Layers, layers. I did my best, considering: I hadn't ridden since Thursday, and before that, Monday; my right eye has some sort of unknown (and mildly alarming) allergic reaction that makes me look a bit like I've had a stroke; and when I woke up yesterday morning, my G.I. tract was rocking like a Bosnian discotheque. I rode within my ability, and ended up fifth (in the money!) out of seven.

I'm just glad that this year I am actually racing the Women's races, instead of copping out and going for the Beginner's.

On to Psyclofest!

cultural jackass

Not sure if I did anything wrong here, but it seems highly feasible.

I just got done shooting a portrait of a man from Finland. His English was pretty good, but I still found myself making a lot of hand gestures, including the dreaded "thumb's up".

The first time I flashed the awful thumb, my subject startled a bit- as though I had flipped him the bird. I instantly realized my faux pas: many a hand signal means something else in other cultures. (Such as our "OK" symbol basically means "asshole" in certain Asian countries.) I do not know if a thumb's up is offensive in Finland or not, but it seems very possible that it could mean "up yours, shit tooth".

I never, ever use the "thumb's up". I know it's totally lame. So it's baffling that it was my instinctive first move with this guy.

But more horrifying is the fact that I continued to use it. I must've flashed my thumb half a dozen times, including as I walked him out. "Okay, thanks! See you later! Up yours, shit tooth."

I'm an asshole.

sideways flying corn trash

So, last Sunday the DICE Women's Team (i.e.: Lindsay and myself) made it over to Des Moines for day two of the Spooky CX races.

The course was a little above what I have come to expect from some CX race courses. There. I said it. You know you're all thinking it anyway! Someone once said that adventure is one part poor judgment and two parts persistance, anyway. This race was at Living History Farms, and included some rolling forest trail (sweet), a murky field trail ending in a face-planting muddy ditch (dumb), a short but steep-ish gravel/asphalt hill (sweet), grass switchbacks with one more-than-180- degree left-hand downhill switchback (dumb), and a long, steady, grinding hill with a few low barricades (tough, but sweet). There was also and inexplicable double-mound of mulch. Weird.

The Women's Open field consisted of 9 riders, including me & Lindsay, Sydney Brown (I wonder who's going to win?), Brittany from ICCC, a couple of DesMoines riders and a few others I didn't recognize. Considering the weather, I consider this to be a pretty solid turnout. Speaking of the weather, did I mention the wind?

Iowans/Illinoians/ Nebraskans who are not in caves (and probably those in caves as well) experienced Sunday's winds: 32mph steady, gusting up to 54mph. There is no reason I should be able to see the side of my wheel like that while racing! The good news is, this leveled the playing field a bit. The field spread out pretty much from the gun, but that's to be expected in a Women's Open. The wind did keep us Cat 4's from getting lapped, though. I spent most of the race leap-frogging with Michelle from DMOS-- which was nice because I was able to sit on her wheel in a brutal headwind section for two of the four laps. She's a tough chick- she face planted in the ditch on lap one, successfully tried again on lap two, wrecked in the same spot on lap three, and made it on lap four. I have to say that after watching her face plant the first time, I decided to make this section a personal mandatory dismount. And you know what? The five to ten seconds lost for a dismount was definitely worth it. (With an honest assessment of my bike handling in mud, a wreck would have been inevitable.) I later found out that Lindsay had used the same tactic.

On the last lap, I sat up a bit in the tailwind section for a boost, and got away. Michelle stayed within sight of me for the entire lap, but didn't quite catch back on. I ended up 7th. Lindsay ended up third, but you can read about that on her blog: http://smurfettebike.blogspot.com/

All in all, a good workout.

On to Vandecross!

seriously: HOW DO THESE PEOPLE KEEP FINDING ME?

Just a quick anecdote from the bike path.

Last night I was going to take the CX bike out for a few hours~ the path to Devil's Glen, out towards Scott Co. Park and into some gravel. Got to the path and realized it was about 15 degF cooler than expected, so changed my plans on the fly. I decided to ride the path to the Riverdale end, then back towards a park where I could do some mount/dismount/carry practice.

Got really cold, headed into D'port a bit, and decided to turn around after about an hour of jacking around on different grassy knolls. As I was passing through the softball complex area, I saw a man. A man with a bike and a lot of bags. I assumed that he was homeless.

I should mention here that while vagrants in general do not frighten me, I do believe that in order to be a vagrant in an area such as the Quad Cities, there must be at least a small degree of mental illness.

That said, I gave the obligatory nod and kept riding.

He yelled something after me about how I should have a spare tire.

I kept riding.

Crazy Hobo: "Hey! You can't ride that fast!"

(I should mention here that I was traveling at maybe 16 mph.)

I kept riding.

CH: "I'm gonna whip yer ass!"

Me (under breath): "Grand."

I have never been good with threats anyway, whether they are idle or not. But when I heard the clicking of gears on the Crazy Hobo's bike and glanced over my shoulder to see him gaining, I must admit I kind of freaked. Fuck! This circus sideshow had legs. He was loaded down like a pack mule and rolling at about 24 mph on an ancient Schwinn Collegiate. Did I mention that he was missing a shoe? Nothing like a crazed derelict to start some forced interval training! I dropped into my biggest gear and got the fuck out of there. He chased me for a while, giving the occasional hoot, literally: "Whoo hoooo!!!". I lost him for sure around Duck Creek golf course when I opted off the path for the roads, where I felt much, much safer.

I know that he was probably just an old cyclist who had said "Enough!" to society, as many of us dream of doing. But the situation was this: I'm female, smallish (in comparison), it's getting dark, and the path was unpopulated. In these parameters I have to give a resounding "fuck that!"

Fuck, man! Where do these people come from? And why are they so attracted to me?

the thunder rolls

Saturday, Sept. 6 was The Thunder Rolls AR-- put on evil genius race director Gerry Voelliger. Sean and I did the 12-hour event.

Giving specifics of this race would take way too much time. Here are some highlights:

Section 1: the dreaded pack raft

Gerry (GV) threw a curveball this year, putting "pack raft" on the mandatory gear list. The forum was ablaze with questions, most of which boiled down to "what the hell is a pack raft?" A pack raft is exactly what it sounds like: an inflatable raft that is small enough to carry in your pack. Luckily GV was kind enough to not make us carry the rafts. We biked to the dock (TA1), where we inflated the rafts and hit the river.

Sean and I had tried out a number of pack raft formations. We had the 3-man boat and two single trail boats. When we were doing our military-style recon of the Mississippi backwaters, we actually ran into Gerry, who was in a single trail boat himself. He recommended using two trail boats and tying them side-by-side. We tried this and did find it to be somewhat efficient (a relative term when you consider that we were in an inflated craft).

However, on race day, we decided to use carabiners to attach our two boats, which creating a frustrating wobbling as our boats bounced off each other. Teams in the exact same 3-man boat that we had in the back of our car were flying past us. Kind of a downer. We got the two pack raft checkpoints (CPs) and got the hell out of the water.

Section 2: Loud Thunder o, also known as Shut Up, Eat, and Follow the Navigator

At the dock, the volunteers gave wristbands for the first orienteering course. We did alright on this course. I set my watch to beep every 15 minutes, so we drank every 15 and ate every 30. There was one CP that really fucked with us, but there were three other teams with us in the woods lost on the same CP. When we found it, we hadn't gone far enough... and had confused some of the other teams as well. {sigh}

This section was somewhat uneventful, but did present some mild exhaustion. We have a tendency to take a direct bearing from CP to CP, and just deal with the terrain... which ends up wearing us down really quickly. I think some of the faster teams might be a little smarter about this, finding trails and ridgelines to follow. {double sigh}

Section 3: canoe 1- never buy a kayak paddle from Dick's Sporting Goods

We got back to the dock, turned in our wristbands, and got our canoe. I climbed into the front, Sean got in the back, and as I was preparing to push off, I hear this: "Aw, shit! You've got to be fucking kidding me!"

I look back, and Sean is holding his kayak paddle in two pieces. (I should note here that we bought that paddle at Dick's about a week before and had only used it twice.) He is the stronger paddler, so I gave him my fully-intact paddle and took one of his halves to use like an oar. Luckily we had tried this formation during our recon, so it wasn't much of a stretch. We picked up the island CP and gave the duck blinds a wide berth, the way Gerry warned at the pre-race meeting. (Perhaps a wider berth than necessary...)

Section 4: Wildcat Den is under-appreciated and volunteers rule

At the opposite dock (Iowa side of the 'ole Miss), the volunteers had hot baked beans and 180 energy drinks waiting for us. As we were leaving the dock, the energy drink must've taken hold: "I feel awesome!! I am having so much fun!"

We headed into Wildcat Den State Park for six more CPs. On the two-mile walk to the park, we had to stop and wrap Sean's ankle. He has an old break that gives him problems at inconvenient times--such as at the beginning of a 3-4 hour hiking section of a race. The Ace bandage seemed to help and we went on about our business. We struggled a bit on this O-section, but the park is so beautiful that it didn't matter at all. One particular checkpoint was just off a sandstone creekbed. We got really lost on this section... but it truly didn't matter.

We also struggled with a CP in a cave. There are two caves at Wildcat Den-- one of which was too small to house a CP. The other, the Brandt Memorial, is placed high with a wide mouth and a low ceiling. I had to climb up several levels to get into the cave, only to not see the CP flag. We were stumped and ran into more teams. One team with a particularly tall guy climb into the Brandt cave (all the way in)... and found the CP all the way in the back. It was completely dark and I had to belly-crawl to reach it to punch my wristband!

The final checkpoint at Wildcat Den was a tyrolean traverse over the creek by the gristmill. This was as exhausting as it was fun. I was relieved to see Janelle at the starting side of the traverse-- she always makes me feel safe. I continued to refuse to believe that I have inherited my mother's fear of heights and made it across without shitting myself. We headed back to the dock, hopped in our canoe, and headed back to Illinois.

We approached the IL dock at almost exactly 6:00, the time we were supposed to be crossing the finish line. We still had a bike ride to Snowstar for two CPs, and a MTB ride at Loud Thunder for two more CPs-- in addition to the 45-minute ride simply to reach the finish line.

Needless to say, we opted to simply ride back in. We crossed the finish line at 6:55, exhausted, exhilarated, and not dead last (although nowhere close to first).