Godmother of Cycling

I was cruising around another site today when I found a link to none other than Jacquie Phelan's blog. Poking around her entries, Flickr site, and WOMBATS site sent me back about 20 years when I first picked up a mountain bike and heard of this eclectic woman who wore dresses and pearls and lace and kicked the men's asses in big mountain bike races out West. To encourage more women to embrace dirt and mud as proper athletic ladies should, she formed the Women's Mountain Bike and Tea Society, putting on skill clinics around the states, forming charter clubs, and holding annual gatherings where women would ride the trails all day and always break for afternoon tea.

She's been known as the Godmother of Mountain Biking, but that could easily be extended to all of cyclingdom given that her range includs road, cyclocross, and commuting as well. In the past few years she's been inducted into the Cycling Hall of Fame, too. I remember reading an interview where she was asked why she started riding bikes and she said that her mother wouldn't drive her or her siblings to school so they had to ride bikes, no matter what the weather, year round. Now THAT was tough and someone I knew I wanted to emulate.

Being stuck in Ohio and one of about 3 girls in the state who raced mountain bikes at the time, I never actually joined the WOMBATS, but in a pre-Internet era I cut out pages of their ads and articles from magazines and hoped that one day I would live out West and rides bikes with the same obsession as those free spirited, mud-soaked women. If I ever meet Jackie I'd say that she'd be pretty happy with what she managed to culture inside me.

Oh - and that early 90's photo of her nekkid and covered with mud playing a pair of early RockShox like a lute? It's in her new calendar. I've been on a quest to have that photo in my possession again for a long time. Sold!!

Feeling Sequimy

If you asked anybody who showed up in Sequim today, the most exciting thing about the race was the weather. Twelve hours ago it had been snowing fat flakes in Seattle and pissing rain and 35F in the rain shadow of Sequim, but we woke up in our hotel this morning to find clear skies and dry roads! Race on, baby!

So five of us from our team spent the morning rolling 36 miles along Kitchen Dick and Woodcock Road with about 35 other women, about half of whom wore that ubiquitous shade of turquoise known so well around the Puget Sound area. It was a good fast pace, much faster than last time, with lots of attacks that went no where, yet par for the Cat - all too much braking for no damn reason. They brake at the bridge crossing, they brake going up hill, they brake going downhill, they brake in the middle of no where. And what results from all this needless braking? Why wheel overlap and reckless swerving, dontcha know!

By the last few miles I was ready to leave the braking behind and take this pack home, but after an attempt at pushing the pace up front, I pulled off and watched the pack zip by me, quickly getting boxed in towards the back. Frustrated that I wasn't up front to help my teammates for obvious sprint finish that would be forming, I wanted to get around the mass of turquoise ass around me, but riders started braking, wheels and bikes started wobbling, and right in front of my eyes we went down like a herd of alloy elephants under a poacher's rifle. Luckily it was one of those slow motion events, but completely unavoidable from my doomed position. I landed on one piece of turquoise, but quickly got up and remounted my bike, knowing that it was a fine piece of Columbus tubing and didn't have to worry about catastrophic failure. My brake levers were bent, but I pushed off in time to see the pack a good 1/4 mile ahead. With less than 2 km to go I knew there was no time to catch them, although I did have a superhero headline flash in my mind: "Downed rider with heart of lion catches up to pack at the finish and zooms past to take the win". Yeah right. Don't waste your energy! Save it for another day.

Turns out that 1 other teammate went down in the pile up, but 3 of our team made it out front to continue our consistent placing. I have no doubt if I hadn't gone down that I could have led them out for an even better placing. But that's racing. I can't complain - we had amazing weather and dry roads! Our new girls also did a great job and everyone finished safely. That's all I ask for. Staying healthy and trying again another day.

Why oh Why....

....Is Kristi Yamaguchi on Dancing With The Stars? She's an Olympic and World Champion ice skater....lots of TIMING and CHOREOGRAPHY that goes along with that little hobby. And yet she's competing against the likes of Penn "& Teller" Jillette, Adam "The Man Show" Carolla, and Priscilla "Airplane" Presley for the championship title? When confronted about it she whined that she's been "retired" for 15 years (not sure if that includes the years of touring with Stars on Ice) and had 2 little pumpkins. Hey Kristi: Once a skater, always a skater. If Lance decides to come back in 10 years and race as a Cat 4 do you think his competitors might have a valid gripe?

Yes this is what I'm doing on a weeknight. This is serious Walla Walla training. Must be the chocolate pudding talking.

Go Penn! Go Adam!

Walla Walla or bust

It's officially spring so just as the petals fall off the cherry trees so do the members of our team drop out of the line up. We started in November with 17 women. Let's count who's on the sideline now:

- 1 recovering from EBV since last year
- 1 reactivated case of EBV
- 1 more elbow surgery
- 2 mental health breaks
- 1 pulled hammie since last year
- 1 recovering from breast cancer (but doing very well)

That leaves us with 10 teammates in various forms of fitness and commitment. One of our team's big goals this year is the wonderful Walla Walla stage race in mid-April. It's a beautiful setting and well run event. In fact, our field sold out in less than 2 days. I didn't bother signing up because I figured that I'd be taking it easy and rallying the stronger troops along the backstretch while sipping some good local red wine. I like my races short and fast, not so much these drawn out, 3-stage productions that favor little people who sat on their trainers all winter while watching LOTR. But now that we're looking a bit thiner (sadly, not that kind of thin) I'm stepping up to fill the ranks. I won some sweet time trial bars at Dung #1 so I took that as a sign. As usual, I'll go in with zero expectations and not come away too disappointed. And besides, when you're off the back you get to enjoy the scenery that much more.

Pray for Tibet

And for all those whose expression for freedom will cost them their lives under the unforgiving hand of China. This video shows peaceful protesters being arrested in India. It's only a fragment of the brutality and terror faced by those who will be punished for protesting in Lhasa and other areas in Tibet.

Darfur and Lhasa....China, this is what the world sees as you are blinded by the glare of the Olympic torch you polish so vainly.

First loser!

Today marked my first race in 11 months and 1 week since coming back from being sick (again). In fact, the last time I popped my head out was in Sequim for the last Tour de Dung in 2007, so my return was the first TdD in 2008. It's one of my favorite courses because it favors lazy, large-boned sprinters like myself who don't hold any particular fondness for hills. It's a mostly flat course in Sequim, WA, with a few friendly rollers to make some fast descents and hard right turns.

Our team had the biggest showing ever, with 12 girls in the bunch. It was the first official "team race" and time for a few of our newbies to pop their racing cherry. I was high on anxiety while warming up, thinking that my months of base-only training would promptly get me dropped in the first big pack surge. For 3 laps I was constantly amazed that I was able to bury myself and stick with everyone, even during the many futile attacks. At about 2 miles to go I realized that it really would come down to a sprint finish so I thought, "THIS....I can do." I held a good position about 3 rows in and we blazed down towards the finish and once the 200m mark fell and the road opened up it was just me and my 54x15 (am I NUTS!!!) that took me to the end, nipped by a spunky 22 year old college student from Western. Not bad. Absolutely amazing compared to where I've been the last year.

This whole past week I told myself that I'd be riding this race for all those who can't: my teammates who are also battling chronic fatigue, pulled hammies, bronchitis, and breast cancer, and for all those at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance whom we'll be working with this coming year. My pounding heart, labored breathing, and legs full of poisonous jello are all of you.

And another best part? Being able to eat ANYTHING and EVERYTHING in my kitchen tonight with no second thought. YUM!!

Not cool

The hot water heater for my condo unit lives in my bedroom closet. I had it replaced last year. Yesterday afternoon when I walked into my bedroom I thought I smelled some "ozone," but it went away quickly so I dismissed it. Around dawn this morning I woke up to a loud POP, but half asleep, dismissed it as Momo doing something mischievous in the outside room. After another quick POP I finally got up to see what's going on, but couldn't find anything and thought I was going crazy, but a few minutes later I heard it again and saw a flash behind my closet door. I threw the doors open knew it had to be the hot water heater. I frantically pulled all the bedding and blankets away from the shelves around it. Then it POPped again and I saw the actual sparks shoot out and small flames rise up from the top of it. Momo and I jumped about 10 feet and I ran out to the circuit breaker and shut off everything because I couldn't tell which was just the water heater. Still completely stunned, I inspected the top of the heater and saw that the electric component on the top of it had obviously developed a short since there was a hole burned through its metal lid and the copper grounding wire arching off of it was also burned. I eventually called my building manager and he came up to check it out. He'd never heard of anything like this and was stunned also and glad I was ok.

Who thinks of a hot water heater being the source of a bad wiring disaster? Granted it's a large appliance that has to heat up mass amounts of cold water so there must be some electronic component to it with as much a chance to fail as any, but hell it's in everyone's closet with all their flammable clothing too so it must be all good, right?

Fuck me. All those sparks and short flames were just inches away from all my down bedding and blankets and sweaters and clothing. That entire closet would have gone up in flames in seconds and engulfed the entire wall with the door out of my bedroom. The only other way out is the window, which is 4 floors up. Based on how frantic I was just seeing those sparks and small flames, I cannot fathom what I would have been like had there been a real disaster. There would be no time to think or be rational.

I'm getting one of my old climbing ropes and tethering it to my armour. I also don't have a smoke detector in my bedroom. I'm going to get 12 new smoke detectors and even afix one to Momo's head. I don't care if the other kitties make fun of him.

But I did make the most of a beautiful sunny day and went out for a great ride with Heather. If my place wanted to burn down while I was out, that was fine with me.

Owww

My hammies have been extraordinarily tight the past few months so I got a massage last night to try and loosen them up and prevent any hammy pull disasters. But now my ass feels like it's been through a meat grinder and I can't sit down very easily. I don't know how that tiny woman and her elbows could inflict such pain in parts of my ass I didn't know existed.

But I know it's all good.

Epsom salts bath tonight.

Oh HURL

It's funny that a number of us are talking about stomach failure as our training programs begin to reintroduce intervals back into our soft, wintery lives. I had two 5-minute hill intervals on my agenda tonight so I staked out my route around the corner from my house in Magnolia.

You know how it goes....you start out completely charged eating up that hill and breathing deep and hard something fierce and then....you look at your watch and only 60 seconds have passed by. Shit. It must be broken! You continue on up as you try to entertain your brain with the cracks in the pavement or seeing how close you can get to parked cars while going anoxic, but the lunch that never really digested 5 hours ago has awakened and would love to revisit the land of the living. Oh no not now! Think of something else.....so you lean forward over the seat and into the hill and you're thankful that you pulled on your bibs so the winter insulation packed around your waist won't insult you any more than is necessary at this point. You push the thought of your lunch back down and continue up knowing that you can make it that much farther and you do. Rest. Repeat. Hurl.

NAHBS recap

In a word: awesome. What exactly was so awesome, you ask? Well I'll tell you:

- Seeing all the bike luv hovering around and locked up outside the Portland convention center. There was as much of a show outside as inside.
- 3,000 people stuffed into a convention hall and freaking out the fire marshal
- Steel, titanium, lugs, cargo, fenders, racks, painted flower hubs, wooden rims, singlespeed CX, etc etc
- Andy Hampston's 1988 Giro d'Italia bike
- My new pink wool beanie
- Running into everyone I knew and luved all while oozing with bike luv
- Riding all over Portland Sat night
- Bike trees everywhere you turned
- The magic carpet cargo bike we borrowed from the house we stayed at
- Zack taking me to the best Cajun restaurant after the afterparty and inhaling not just my bowl of jumbalya, but his as well
- Riding home after 2 bowls of jumbalaya, not so awesome
- Defying the laws of advanced aging and staying up til 3 a.m.

Hard to pick out favorite things. I'm a Vanilla groupie so I was digging the Speedvagen, Sacha's proprietary steel tubing CX rig. Thin, teardrop tubing for an ultra lightweight steel frame with lots of lateral stiffness. It's the new Vanilla team issue bike. I know there are other excellent framebuilders out there, but hey, they say crack is whack too.

The most talked about bike was the one that won Best in Show, President's Choice, and People's Choice - the Naked fixed gear.

Total hotness of black steel, chrome, curves, wooden rims, leather, White Industry cranks, integrated top tube bike lock hole, and beer tap handlebars. Rumour is that Lance Armstrong bought it for $15,000 after oogling it at the show. The framebuilder, Sam Whittingham, also hold numerous world speed records such as the one-hour record. He said that he made this bike as an homage to Portland and its luv for bikes.

NAHBS pre-show

Like a 6 year old kid at the gates of Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, I am absolutely GIDDY in anticipation for this weekend's North American Handmade Bike Show!!! The past few years I've coveted all the bikes from afar, but this year there was no way I'd miss it being in the bike haven of Portland. Sacha, Indy Fab, steel, lugs, cargo, fixed, cross, hotness. We'll be there tomorrow and Sunday. The previews, as always, have me tingling.

You

will

be

MINE

Another reason to ride Campy

Our team is supposed to be getting a deal on SRAM components. Wonder where the shipment came from?

A little more for Sheldon

Remembrances abound this week around the Interweb for bike guru Sheldon Brown. They ranged from misty-eyed tributes to witty, succinct observations. I liked this one in particular, "If you tallied up all the gear inches calculated on his Gear Calculator, it would reach the moon." No kidding. The number of gear inches I've tallied alone from that page could get me most of the way to Cape Canaveral. I'd walk back and forth from my bike stand to my computer figuring out which combination would work best and if the 36t wouldn't give me a good enough chainline, what would I have to change out to still keep 58"...oh but then if I change out from 23s to 32s what does that do....etc. etc. If his Gear Calculator were a paperback, it'd be dogearred and covered in Scotch tape.

More of the best:

Bike Snob
Belgian Knee Warmers
Bike Portland
Kent Peterson
Velonews
The semi-official Blogspot remembrance site

"Like Santa Claus died"

Bicycling icon, hero, inventor, muse, artist, humorist, mechanic, historian, inspiration, and all-around Good Guy, Sheldon Brown, passed away last night from a massive heart attack. We were saddened to hear of his diagnosis with Multiple Sclerosis a few years ago, and I followed his journal as he made his way through the bumps of dealing with this degenerative disease, which slowly robbed him of time on his bicycles, but no one thought it would end like this or so soon. Sheldon was supposed to live forever like Santa Claus, but caked in Phil Wood grease, squirreling down in his Massachusetts bike shop looking for that odd component from 30 years ago that he knows will do the trick for your restoration project or updating one of the many pages of his web site that so many of us turned to at 1 a.m. when the brakes just weren't working right or to calculate how many gear inches we'd have with that shiny new 15t cog and 19mm tubulars.

Most of all, Sheldon loved his wife and they spent most of their lives together raising their family and riding bikes together. Just earlier this month he mentioned that he'd miss her while she was away for the weekend. I guess that's what I loved and admired most about Sheldon. He and his wife shared a wonderful, simple life together tethered by their love for bikes and their family. They rode around France and went on silly rides around town. They epitomized what it means to grow old together and to share even the most routine moments of the day together.

You are missed by so many people! Our hearts go out to you and your family. Thank you for sharing your life with us.

I rode my bike this weekend

(This is for Christine who says I don't blog about riding my bike, hence I must not be riding it, which isn't totally off.)

I went on our team ride Saturday. It was really fun. We started next to the Snohomish airport, rode up to Everett under SUNNY skies (big thanks to our team meteorologist!), wound back to Snohomish where Laura made an emergency chamois cream application stop (she of saddle sore self-surgery fame), continued our way at Mach 9 over to Monroe, then south through some rolling hills at nearly the same silly-fast pace that made my legs question why I ever got off the couch this winter, then down out of the hills zipping past Miss Christine and her man, Pat, going the other way, finally ending up back at the cars 41 miles, 5 full heart rate zones, 0 flat tires, 2 Heed water bottles, and 3 mini-Lara bars later.

Ellen and I got in my car and she was the first to blurt out, "That was HARD!". No shit, little Ellen. This is not the team of old. If I could survive a team ride like this, I can hopefully survive my first race in 5 weeks, which my coach is deliberately not preparing me for. He wants to see how well I do "not being in shape," holding me back for later spring and summer blossoming. I'm only starting to come out of Zone 2 next week with some intervals thrown in once/week (ok minus the full-throttle team rides). So roger that. I am on target for a serious ass kicking by amazon women on bikes come March.

Fluffy fluffy snow snow!

Snoqualmie Pass has been closed since Tuesday! Avy after avy after avy has been coming down over I-90 and there are some lucky ski bums who have been stuck up at the Pass enjoying all the freshiez and jumping off the overpass into massive piles of FLUFF. How epic would it be to skin up I-90 to the Pass, then ski back down? ("What's that loud rumbling noise, Honey?")

Of all the years for my knee to be completely effed up:

"Additional heavy snowfall was received in most areas on Thursday, heaviest near and west of the Cascade crest, with 24-hour amounts ranging from about 8 to over 16 inches and 6-day totals since last weekend ranging up to 5-8 feet."

I do still have my snowboard. And it's not like my knee could get much WORSE. Just a few runs on deep.....fluffy...puffy.....snow!!!

The problem with yoga

I'm trying for the umpteenth time to incorporate yoga into my weekly routine. I find, however, that it is impossible for me to participate in an activity that I'm not supposed to inhale mass quantities of food beforehand. When I come home from a long day at work, what wins out? Not my yoga DVD, but a fabulous, well-earned dinner washed down with some decent French red wine. Now if I was supposed to get on my trainer or even go out for another ride - totally do-able given the contents of my fat belly. But to get on the floor and bend and twist and heave-ho is a recipe for something far messier than Momo's litterbox.

First thing in the morning? Doesn't work either. That is time preciously carved out for sleeping til the 8th hour, putting lunch together, checking that the bike will roll, and heading out the door.

I know it's good for me, but it's just not meant to be. Thxvmch.

Drilled with Love

The Birthday Fairy came into town this weekend and made me my first studded tire for going into battle the next time the city is encased in ice. 162 sheet metal screws of death! Some kids stay up at night praying for snow to go sledding, now I'm praying for ice to go ride my bike. Full report to follow, hopefully sometime before spring. If cherry blossoms begin to bloom before its maiden voyage I'll make a trek up to the Pass for a test run, but nothing could possibly beat trekking across an incapacitated city and feeling absolutely BADASS.

For Sale! Chamois Creme - NOT USED (much)

(Not to pick on one of my guy teammates, but this is too good to pass up)

"I bought some Assos chamois cream in an effort to try something other than the Butt’r I have been using for seven years. Well, it seems that this stuff has menthol in it which should only be used in Halls cough drops, IcyHot and cigarettes. Well after trying it once, I found it was NOT for me. 'Susy' tells me that the lady folk really like this stuff (???) Anyway, I’m looking to offload it as I wont be using it again. So here is the important info – only used once and more importantly, I didn’t double dip! I paid $18 for the 140 ml container and would be happy to let it go for $10. If you are interested, let me know."

I told him that I dunno what unsavory ladies he's been talking to, but anything with menthol has not been approved for use in HooHooville so he should stick with the yummy shea butter found in Greyhound Juice. Love your jewels and support the Locals!!

Well golly

I got this unexpected surprise at work today. I guess they were going to give me the actual letter at our staff meeting, but I skipped out in favor of going to the gym (even though I ended up yapping on the phone with Jane in the parking lot longer than actually being at the gym), so all I get right now is a fax transmittal.

It's a letter of commendation from our department head for my work on the oil spill the past 2 months, the spill that's pretty much taken over my life and put me under far too much stress and taken away far too much base mileage for the upcoming racing season (oh, but the herring!!! Who will save the herring!!). At first I figured it was just a form letter, but then people started coming in at the end of the day to congratulate me and explain that these don't come out very often and it dawned on me that this might actually be a true letter of acknowledgement and appreciation for all I did.

I guess all I can say is THANKS!, but how about a RAISE! This fax doesn't do much to help the water damage in my bathroom!!

Just kidding.

It's nice for people down in the trenches to be recognized. Salut!