Thoughts go out to Kimberly Geist

...and her loved ones.
Let's hope she can recover fully.
Horrific.
See the last news feed.

Back to Racing

Last weekend was NHCC's Concord Crit and our team's Central New Hampshire Road Race. Brooke and her beautiful new baby, Claire, were there to help direct us. We kept the race hard, sending attack after attack, but nothing stuck much longer than a lap. I think I attacked 6 or 7 times in the 20-lap (20-mile) course, and launched a counter after one of my teammates was caught just before 2 laps to go. I wanted to keep everything strung out into the finish, to avoid the typical group cluster sprint. It worked, and Susanne did a nice job finishing 4th. I had a pretty good workout, and it is always fun to race with the team! Check out the red-white-and-blue NEBC train with Amy on front stringing out the field!

Sunday was HARD. The course was changed due to construction on a good part of the old loop. Now the course included a tough climb right from the start, the hardest climb of the course, then a short decent allowing hardly any recovery before beginning the long grind into the nasty QOM hill. The course was 4 laps of just over 10 miles a lap. There was no flat, it went either up or down, offering little time for rest. In a nutshell, I ended up riding 30 miles alone, often within sight of Mary from IBC, the woman in 1st place. The climber-extraordinaire was about 30 seconds ahead of me the whole race! I left my chase group in the dust, thinking I could catch her, then road a long, nasty, TT. At least the weather was beautiful and the course was good training. My teammates will no longer accept my "but I'm not a climber" excuse, even though I'm still not convinced. :) Tami threw down an awesome finish sprint to hold off the field for 4th! I wish I had a video of it!

I hit Wompi on Tuesday, but drove there. I was tired, and in retrospect, probably should have skipped it. I wanted to just sit in and focus on practicing the finish, but when a break went from the gun... how could I not jump on it? I sat up after 30 minutes over threshold with hardly any warm-up, burning from the blistering pace of the break. I decided to wait for the field and sit in for awhile, but the hard charging field was going even faster than the break at this point and my tired body quickly got gapped off and dropped from the strung out wheels. Not the most successful Wompi for me, but good training again, if it didn't wear me out.
All in the name of CYCLOCROSS!!!!

Thanks!

I can't believe how many people responded to my last entry, either through comments or directly emailing me. I got so many long and thoughtful responses, encouragement, advice, and even just sympathetic "I know how you feel" emails. I love the bike community! Thanks for keeping me rolling.

I've been having lots of fun again on the bike. Doing training races is like tricking myself into training because it's social, I enjoy it so much, and I push myself much harder than I would alone. I've done the Wompatuck training race the past two Tuesday nights, and Wells Ave training race on Sunday. I really enjoy racing with men, especially those at these races, who tend to be experienced masters racers. Ward and I met with some guys at Landry's on Comm Ave in Boston and rode down to Wompi. It took about 2 hours to get there! After the race, we bummed a ride home, but still got a solid 76 miles in. Sunday we rode to Wells Ave, raced, then did a short errand in Lexington on the way home, so that was another 75-mile day with a 30+ mile training race. Yesterday, after our hour easy spin, Ward revved up the motorcycle and we headed down to Mystic so I could practice motorpacing. Fun! We thought it might be illegal, so we were a little worried since a lot of cops patrol the area, but we got passed by 3 black-and-whites, and none of them seemed to care that I was glued to a roller on the back of an old Honda pedaling 32 mph with relative ease. Judging from all the crazy looks people shot our way, I guess we were quite a spectacle. I'll bet everyone was simply admiring my long hair, which must have been unfurled behind me at that speed. Today I need to go get my motorcycle permit so I can return the favor and pace Ward. We also need to find a good, long stretch of road to do it on. Roads like that are scarce around here.

This morning, after dropping Ward off at Logan airport at dawn (he's off for Charlotte for the Presbyterian Healthcare Crit - a.k.a. Bank of America - show me the money, Babe!) I met Caroline (NEBCer and trombone player extraordinaire) and a friend of hers for an easy mountain bike at the Fells. Wow, I miss mountain biking!! I will definitely be doing more in the next month or two.
How much fun can a girl have in a week?

Well, I'm going to tell you. I also stripped and refinished this table, which was nasty old cracked white over spraypainted army green color. Now it looks super-cute as an end table in our living room and matches my favorite candles. I am so Martha Stewart. Ward and I are also working on refinishing a dining table we got at the Crate and Barrel outlet for ridiculously cheap. Really ridiculously cheap. A $550 table for $19. No kidding. So, it was a little scratched, but a very solid table, so we sanded down the top, and we're in the process of staining/polying it now. Fun! I've been back into my jewelry-making again, too. I'm particularly proud of a necklace and matching drop earring set I made to wear to an anniversary dinner for Ward's parents, a dinner cruise on Lake Winnipesaukee, NH. (see pic)
I might quietly mention that my cross bike has seen the light of day again, too, as have my running sneaks... (shh!!)
I'm also working on my next blog post, which will be a spotlight on our basement, or more interestingly, the 12 bicycles that inhabit it. :)

The Greatest Rewards

Okay, so where have I been? I've been home and dealing with the existential dilemna of how racing fits in my life. For a short few weeks, cycling just wasn't fun anymore, and I simply had no idea what to write in my blog that would be beneficial for others to read. So I decided silence was best until I figured out what was eating at me. I think I found some answers, and in turn, am having fun again on two wheels.

After a couple weeks of reflection, I believe I raced this whole season from the wrong mental perspective, and it "did me in." I look back to earlier in the spring, when I was chomping at the bit to race and to go out and prove myself. I had not gotten onto a "pro" team, but knew that was my continued dream and goal for next year. At some point early into my season, I read a short write-up on cyclingnews about the Women's Cycling Development Program, run by Mike Engleman. I figured that there could be nothing wrong in finding out if I could take advantage of any sage words of advice or guidance in reaching my dream, so I got up the nerve to send an inquiry email and included a brief race resume. I now believe the response I got set the tone for the psychological mistakes I made this season. He basically said that to get on a team I needed results, which I did not have. No, this was not a news flash to me, but it showed me that all of the New England results that I've worked very hard to achieve probably mean little to anyone beyond the local scene. Okay, so this wasn't divine revelation, either, but it hurt to hear and made me crazy to prove myself.

Then the frustration built because I have relatively few opportunities to prove myself. The rest of the pro's can race starting in March with Redlands and crits in California. Sea Otter and the Southeast crit series is in April. With a full-time job, I'm resigned to gluing myself to cyclingnews and various racer's blogs to read about race reports and see pictures in between classes at work. Doing this was really bad for me. I was so jealous of those racers that I began to resent my job because I saw it as keeping me away from my dream of racing. I really wanted to be at those races, not at cafeteria duty at 7:30 am, or superivising detention with a bunch of 12 year old boys. Gila and Joe Martin happen in May when the New England local scene is just getting going, and then I finally get my chance to race NRC during the BikeJam/Somerville weekend. I spent every weekend from Memorial Day until end of June driving to the mid-Atlantic to race NRC crits and the Liberty Classic, wearing myself out leaving Friday afternoon and making it back to work for 7:30 Monday morning. I wanted very much to race Nature Valley, but besides the fact that I didn't have the cash for the plane ticket, it was the last week of school, and I couldn't ask for that off. The frustration and fatigue built. I got sick after Philly, raced at less than 100%, and now I still feel run-down.

Why run around like this? Because I only have so many races where I can get a result, and none of them are in New England! Since Fitchburg lost its NRC status, the national road scene doesn't visit New England. I have only raced five NRC events so far this season. Chris Thater will be next and last unless I can get out to crit nats, and I don't know if that's worth it for me at this point. I put pressure on myself to show up, race hard, and get a result because that's what I believe I need to achieve my dream of racing professionally. Every race I have been so close. I am absolutely strong enough to race in national level fields, not just sit in hanging on for dear life. I often am too active in the race, sometimes burning matches I should save for the finish, but most of the time when the last few laps come I feel great but I blow the finish every time. Sometimes I just haven't been aggressive enough to put myself where I need to be. I'm sure I've made bad tactical errors. I only race with the big girls a handful of times a season, and I just need more practice to get it right!! But the frustration of feeling like I screwed up again and again and lost my chances for a result at the end of every race eventually left me feeling negative even before the race began. "Here we go, another chance for you to screw it up, Wellons" I'd think on the start line. How's that for self-fulfilling prophecy? After the race, I would re-live mistakes over and over, wishing I could have this or that moment back, drilling myself with what I did wrong. I began to doubt that I could ever be good at this sport, and felt my dream dying. Enjoyment was snuffed out in this downward spiral. Eventually, around Fitchburg time, I felt I never wanted to ride or race a bike again. In a case of incredibly poor timing, I also got very sick after Fitchburg, forcing me off the bike on a physical level, too. I missed nationals and Superweek, but was in no shape, physically or emotionally, to race anyway. So I didn't ride for two weeks.

Maybe this time off was a blessing in disguise. It gave me plenty of time for reflection. In hindsight it seems so clear, but it wasn't while I was a tangle of frustration and denegration. Racing just for a "result" was not why I should have been racing. Nothing made this clearer to me than crying while reading this diary entry by Mara Abbott. Her theory 'That when I find pure joy in what I am doing, amazing things will follow' hit me hard and made me realize I'd been crippling myself with my own mind. I believed joy on the bike would be in the finish line result, not the race to get there. I too often spend time comparing myself to others and minimizing my own accomplishments. I am definitely my harshest critic. These things do not foster joy on the bike or in life. I can mentally push myself to sacrifice and train hard and push myself to my limits. My same strong mind can be used against myself. I wish I could understand why my mind works this way, but it needs to change.

I realize I'm not the only racer with a day job. I wonder how others make it work, especially for stage racing. I've finally decided that I am unhappy with my job regardless of my passion for cycling. It's just not the right school/situation for me, and I need to make some changes soon. Cycling has been a scapegoat, not the cause of my angst.

I'm sharing all this because maybe some of you out there struggle with the same challenges
and reading my story can help you sort through it. Cycling is such a difficult sport on so many levels. We put everything on the line as we push our bodies through hell and often neglect what that can do to our psyche. Our powerful minds can be our greatest asset and our greatest limiter.

Now I'm in the process of picking up the pieces and building a new framework for my life and racing. I feel like my road campaign, short as it was, is pretty much over for this year. Although I'm still racing on the road with my team, much of that racing will serve as training for my deepest passion... CYCLOCROSS. I'm working on changing my approaches to racing and adjusting my goals to reflect a healthy and positive mindset. I still dream of racing road as a "pro," but the moments on the journey there must be enjoyed to make it worth it.
From happiness will come the greatest rewards.