DFL, baby!

I've had May 30th on my calendar for the past 2 months since this whole EBV came back to put a wrench in my life again. May 30 would be my return to racing and my first Wed night racing at the track as a Cat 3 (oooooh!!). However, whilst having a Zack-tacular time in Santa Fe doing some high altitude training and green chili tasting, I managed to come down with a nasty head cold/flu thing that beat me down quickly and rendered me a giant fleshy wasteland of phlegm. But being as stubborn as I am, I wouldn't let this bug keep me from showing up and fulfilling my goal. Plus my parents and Zack were in town and I had to show them that I really do know how to ride a bike fast-ish.

So between hacking and farmer snotting in the infield and along the banks, many friends welcomed me back to racing, which was a sweet sweet feeling. The girls that I race with are such a good group. Everyone supports each other and is happy to see you at the races. However, just throwing my leg over the bike I could tell that my energy just wasn't there. No zip to be had, but I figured I just needed to warm up. After a few dozen laps I could tell that this cold was having a bigger impact on my health than I thought. Lungs are generally a useful tool when it comes to breathing hard, but they were full of the goo that was previously up in my head and my energy was still tapped. Well I paid my $15 so what the hell. I figured I'd do as Tamara says and just learn one good thing each race.

There were 3 great races - an 8-lap scratch, a 2-lap scratch heat, and a 4x4 snowball. In each one I pretty much finished DFL, "mostly" on purpose. No use in throwing it all out there when I wasn't up to it. I learned a lot, including that hucking loogies and hacking up a lung is a great distraction on your competition.

My prince did want me to test out my high altitude training and talked me into giving it all just once to see what I could do. He has a great way of reminding me that I have more energy than I think I do (sucker!). So in the first bell lap on the 4x4 I saw that no one was surging forward, so I attacked on the bell and expected a squadron of girls behind me, but all of a sudden I was totally alone and no one was near me. I have no idea how that happened other than they let me go out of sheer pity. But even more, it absolutely crushed my system and I was a sad little puppy following them the remaining 12 laps. So this is what it's like to totally suck!!

It was a great pack of girls, including a few 2s, 3s, and 4s. I figure if I could hang with them while hacking disease all over the track I could be ok with them when I'm healthy. June 6 is on my calendar.

Adventures in Hooville

Not since seeing the Vagina Monologues have I ever become as well educated on the travesties of women's hoohoos as I have since being on a women's cycling team. Over the winter there was minor talk here and there about the discomfort that comes with endless miles, but that was all eclipsed by the eye openers at the Walla Walla stage race last month. After the first day of racing, one of our racers had such an injured hoohoo that she had to shove a bag of ice down her pants to relieve the pain and swelling of her precious jewels (oh if I only had a picture of that today!). She iced it again the next morning before the crit, but was only able to do a few laps of the race until her hoohoo cried uncle. All the teammates offered their advice and suggestions, but it was too late, no amount of lube or ice was going to make that hoohoo happy again.

The weird thing is these aren't novice bike riders here, each woman has tens of thousands of miles under her spandex, but they still experience the pain every female cyclist can relate to: the swelling, the numbness, the not-so-pleasurable sensation of pressure in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sure the "anatomical" saddles provide relief for a small number of the population, but get real, sometimes they act more like a cheese slicer. Give me my Brooks any day.

What is it that causes such torture? My first guess would be bike fit. If your pelvis is at the wrong angle it can put too much pressure on your hoohoo (this is what we're thinking happened at Walla Walla, she'd had a new bike fit a few weeks before). Second would be the saddle type and position. Most women think the cushier the saddle, the better, but actually it's the opposite. A firmer saddle will support the seat bones properly (ever wonder why Brooks are so popular?). That's where the weight and pressure should be, not on the jewels. With a cushier saddle, your seat bones will melt into its gel or foam and put increased pressure on the exact place you're trying to protect. I recently bought the Specialized Women's Jett saddle and it was a revelation in new seat technology. It's a fancy carbon and ti saddle, but very solid and with 3 different widths to choose from to support those different ancestral-cursed seat bones. For the first time, I think someone actually designed an anatomical seat properly. It perfectly supported my seat bones only, and not the delicate tidbits in between.

Some racers will say the hoohoo issue just comes with the territory and it makes you tougher. One local chickee calls her "the leather labia." OUCH. In the movie "2 Seconds" you get an idea of how it feels to do a few hundred miles and be so numb that nothing your partner does in bed will bring the poor nubben back to life.

And so the adventure continues for women who love bikes a little too much. We ride, we race, we endure.

Your Mom is a Derailleur

That's my favorite team name so far in the Group Death Bike to Work Challenge. I only wish I had thought of something so crafty before typing in my rather unoriginal Solo team name. "An Inconvenient Commute" was in the running for my favorite team name also, but then I scrolled to the very bottom of the list and found the above gem.

We have a bunch of people at work participating in the contest this month, including about 4 in our office (and me!) who were too lazy to email each other to form a unified team. So we're doing the Solo category just to sound so much more hard core and most importantly, to keep better tabs on the competition down the hall. We have a rather cutthroat group when it comes to bragging rights. The Battle in Seattle is going down at Sandpoint, pansies!