Happy Thanksgiving

Hey all, I just wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving!

Things going on:

Nissy Cobb is in town from Portland, OR. She is here to ride, hang out and check out the college. After the races this weekend(I got 3rd both days) we went to the soccer game Sunday afternoon and watched the Sky Hawks take a victory which will advance them to the semifinals, so they are headed to Tampa, FL.

Today(Wednesday) Lance and Karen are taking Nissy and I skate skiing. Neither of us have done it before and I'm so excited! Thanks Missy for letting me borrow your stuff;)

Then tomorrow we are headed to Lance and Karen's for Thanksgiving. I'm doing a corn casserole, roasted veggies, 2 desserts and a cocktail:)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I will post my plans for coming home after this weekend, hopefully by then I will know;)

Randoms

Things I like:

Music- Rusted Root, Widespread Panic, B.B. King, Allman Brothers, Dave Matthews Band, Jack Johnson, Delbert McClinton, any blues, any rock and roll/jam bands....

Sports- Soccer, football, baseball, basketball, cycling, anything outdoors, beer drinking(it can be a sport sometimes).....

My awesome family, my dog, my truck, hunting, friends, crossword puzzles, socializing, traveling, good food, sunshine!!!!!

The end....:)

Cortez Race

Pictures:

1. Missy and I post race:)

2. Ned Overend

3. Start of the men's A race

4. Snow on the truck that morning

Watching the snow coming down on Saturday, I knew Sunday was going to be a new experience for me. Racing in the snow....I was actually excited and wasn't worried about it being too cold.

The women's/men's B race went off first at 10a.m. and our start/finish was on the sidewalk that was still a bit iced over during warm up. Thank goodness, by the time we started, enough people had ridden over it and the sun hit it just enough to melt but everything after that was snow and mud all over the course.

From the start, Teal(very talented mtn bike/cross racer) took the lead, a FortLewis girl was in second and I came in behind her. After a couple of turns, Teal was slowly making ground, so I made my way around the FLC chick and jumped on Teal's wheel. I thought to myself, if I can just stay here, maybe towards the end I can find a place to jump her. Those thoughts only lasted a couple of laps as I didn't have the stamina Teal had and she slowly pulled away. So I set my pace and went about my business b/c we had a substantial gap from the other girls. I was right at redline, just a bit below, which is all I can ask of myself.

There were a set of barriers and a sand pit towards the end of the course and it felt like I was standing in place going through the sand pit but I was told I did really well through there. There were a couple of the Men's B guys I caught up with and we swapped positions a couple of times and I came in second for the women's race! I don't know how far behind Teal I was but I'm pretty sure it was a couple of minutes....oh well, more practice and racing to be had, then off to Nationals December 10-13th!

Post race, I talked to Teal, she is a cool chick:) She was saying that she didn't know how long she could keep the pace with me on her wheel. DANG IT! Maybe if I could've held on a little longer maybe I would've cracked her! Or I would've been cracked, hmmm, things you have to consider while racing. If I would've blown trying to keep her wheel, I may have gone slower and another girl may have caught me! So I just held steady with second and I'm pleased!

My skills are getting better, I'm handling the bike better, sliding around in the mud, mounting/dismounting, it is all slowly coming together. I still need to work on properly dressing for races though. I was plenty warm during the warm up but I didn't bring leg warmers or knee warmers to go under the skin suite, instead I was just wearing tights and figured I would do hot balm on my legs come race time. But it was TOO cold! So I just left the tights on over my skin suite. Oh well, not much on etiquette anyway;)

This week: lift weights, ride bike(supposed to warm back up to the 50's) and get ready for next weekend's race.

Bike for sale/Dotfit

It's rainin today, which means fun on the cross bike:)! I will probably ride the race course from last weekend and do some efforts......I'm thinking about going to the rec. center afterwards and shooting some hoops.

New videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVOPJRpf1Yo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9RMgs8Wak4&feature=channel

It's funny I have days like this, I want to lift weights, play ball, ride my bike whatever, just a bit of everything! Is that my competitiveness going into overdrive? Or me just wanting to have some fun doing everything? But I have to keep all that fun a bit at bay because I have a race on Sunday and I surely don't want the residual effects of all that fun to show up Sunday when I really need to be on my A game. So I will probably ride my bike and then shoot some hoops....

On Wednesday, I took Miller to the vet for a little bit of surgery....he had a tumor removed from his eye, something else removed from his butt(no details) and a skin tag removed from his back foot. He is such an awesome dog, he comes home all drugged, wobbling around and the first thing he wants to do is chase the tennis ball, awwwww. He is better now, he will have the stitches removed from his foot after Thanksgiving and the stitches in his eye and butt will dissolve.

I'm planning on coming home for Christmas after Dec. 13th, hopefully that week and stay till right after Christmas and come on back. I will be in full swing of riding my road bike by then so hopefully I can catch up with some of my ridin' friends......

Ok, it's just getting colder by the hour, time to go ride......

Cross eyed

There is a funny thing about racing cyclocross, or racing in general for that matter.....

A lot of the times you are running full bore, meaning you are at your max limit, you can't push any harder, if you do you will certainly die!!! Or so it feels. Your whole body hurts, right down to your fingertips! You can hear people cheering for you but you can't even muster a smile or a nod, that would be wasting excess energy that you don't have!

That was the case for me towards the end of our race yesterday:) Rebecca Much, my teammate from Boulder, came to the race, cause she is cool like that, as well as Carmen Small from Durango and the Fort Lewis College girls. It was an awesome field and I knew it was going to be a hard race. And it was! From the gun, I got an awesome start and was in the top 5 and never looked back, at one point I knew I was holding up Much so I got out of her way and let her do her thing, which was WIN:) Carmen got second and I ended up 4th, not sure who was 3rd sorry....

But back to being cross eyed...at one point I looked up and there was a girl in 4th place and I knew we had 2 laps left so I was going to do everything in my power to catch her. But it seemed like every time I caught her in the technical stuff, she would just pull away on the flats, ugh!! Those last two laps hurt me SO bad! I came across the finish line about to loose my marbles, caught my breath in enough time to talk to her and tell her I was trying to catch her.....then she says, "I had a mechanical, I wasn't 4th you were." WHAT???!!! So at some point she came out of the pits, a lap down, and I didn't even realize it I was so cross eyed;) hahahah!!! Now that is what I'm talking about! I thought it was pretty funny.....

Anyway, post race, we all headed to the pub and had some beer, pizza and all in good company. They had awards at the pub as well and then everyone started clearing out soon after. I get home around 7:30 and I was exhausted! Is it ok to go to sleep that early? hehe.....

Today, Monday, is a rest day. I'm headed over to Durango to try on some Endura pants. They are windproof, waterproof, everything proof! Perfect for cross:) Perfect for warming up if it is muddy, cold, snowy, wet....cross racin:) Thats about it....

Another race this coming weekend:)! Whoohoo!

Racin

Last weekend, Chad Wells and I drove 6hrs to Boulder for Haunted Cross and Boulder Cup, it was a total blast! It had snowed that previous Wednesday and Thursday, hence my previous post of snow:) so the conditions were super muddy once it all melted by Saturday morning.

Saturday's race was all about skills, muddy, tight turns, roots, hills and one small sandpit. That was my first CX race ever......thank you Katie Compton for kicking my butt all over the place and lapping me:) Good times for sure!

Sunday was based more on fitness, it had a lot of grass/gravel sections and 3 sand pits that were killer! Again, Katie lapped me and I called it a day w/ 2 to go....but I still had a blast as you can see from the pictures:)

So we came on back home on Monday after going out Sunday night w/ a couple of the guys...Troy Wells, one of his Cliffbar teammates, Adam Synder and Chad and this week I'm getting ready for the local race. I'm hoping most of the people from Durango are coming over(45min drive) Sunday afternoon for some racin and socializin at the pub afterwards.

I'm hoping to do a bit better this weekend, I've been on the course a bunch practicing my skills but my fitness for cross is still lacking a bit but I'm ok with that.....I just enjoy being out there playing:)

Now to see what mom sent me in the boxes:) Thank you MOM!