ex necte ad lucum

It is approximately 5 billion degrees outside right now...okay maybe 96.  I just got back from doing a 70+ mile ride with the team.  Next weekend, many of my teammates are doing the one day 120 mile Harbor to the Bay charity ride to sponsor the AIDS action committee.  If you feel generous, a couple people are still looking for sponsors.

Despite the heat, we had a huge crew of well over 50 people roll out for the early part of the ride.  For many people, it was there first time on a club ride and they had some difficulties mastering the whole "riding close to others but not actually hitting them" thing.  We keep it pretty slow until the end of the bike path and the club regulars and the racing team usually hang way off the back or torpedo to the front to stay clear of the newbies.  Unfortunately, today Will did not.  One particularly anxious new rider slammed on his brakes with such force the rear of his bike bucked up.  Will was drafting the guy and slammed right into him.  Will now likely has a fractured leg 'though it was still okay enough for him to ride home (and then go to the ER). 

I ended up working almost exclusively with two of the guys all day today since they were pretty solid wheels.  The way that we worked so well together really makes me wish that I had fellow women to work with when I race.  

I think it's nap time now.

It's kind of strange that on the very day that one of my close friends KD moves away, I find out that another friend is moving here.  Yay for Gatitas!  *emo sigh* that KD is gone (temporarily).

In other news, I bike lots, come in last place at one race, and win one race.  And I bike to New Hampshire and back.  But not all in the same day. 

Time for another race recap:

This Sunday, I raced in the Bow Road Race in Bow, NH once again representing the entire Quaddie women's team.  If I can't get another women to join up, I'm so flipping over to the Organic Athletes Vegan Team next season.  Not that I'm good, I just want the team kit with "Go Vegan" written on my ass.

So...the race.  Next time when a race recommends a specific cassette gearing, I will take note.  I rode with my 25 cassette when a 39 was recommended.  Yep, that means that the hill absolutely killed me.  The race started on an uphill, a fierce uphill, a hill the likes of which I have never biked before.  It was big enough that a KOM/QOM (King/Queen of the Mountains) was awarded if you got to the top.  And get to the top you needed to do. Three times.  That's right.  You had to climb the damn thing three times.  Post race, a fellow female racer commented that she'd done the Mt. Washington hill climb a couple weeks prior and that hadn't been as tough as the Bow Race.  I dropped my bike all the way into the smallest chain ring and I drug myself up to the top.  It hurt.  A lot.  At the final lap, the photographer takes your picture on the KOM line.  While the photos have not yet been posted, I know that mine shows me drenched in sweat, water (spectators sprayed me down with a hose), with my tongue hanging out of my mouth, and a look of either intense desperation or snarl.  I don't remember which.  I'll have to buy a copy when they're posted, my mom's been wanting an up-to-date picture of me.

How did I do?  Last.  Out of 23 starters, I finished 18th--the last of those who actually finished the race.  Since I have *no team* I was unable to convince any of the women on rival teams to work with me and they all did better through a combination of actual climbing talent and having other women to pace them.  At least I finished, that's better than a bunch of my male teammates did : )  I'm thinking that my style--pushing a big gear with a lot of force--actually lends itself better to the crit races than to road races.  It's not like I'm upgrading this year so I'll continue to race whatever has a Cat 4 Women's division and maybe figure out a specialty later based upon what I do less than terribly in.  It's hard to put in over 20 hours of training every week to pull out a last place finish but I guess there's a pretty steep learning curve when it's your first season racing and there's zero support of your team.  Next time at a road race I'll know to buy/borrow more appropriate gearing, station someone in the feed zone, and strive harder to make deals to get *someone* to work with me if I still have no team.

Today's a rest day for me since my ass muscles are sore--tomorrow's back to sprint interval training when I take on the NEBC women's night ride. 

http://www.cyclingnews.com/road/2007/tour07/news/?id=/news/2007/jul07/jul25news

Vino...how could you?  How? 

Cyclists: stop doping.  STOP DOPING.  Injecting drugs and OTHER PEOPLE'S BLOOD into your body is disgusting and wrong. 

Amateur cycling races has shown me how much determination, training, and magic makes for a wonderful sport that seems to defy the boundaries of what the human body can do...professional cycling should be doing the same. 

This athlete is powered by excessive quantities of tofu and coffee and I'm doing just fine.

This weekend, my friend Scott is doing the Seacoast Safari charity ride to benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.  It's a great cause--one of the members of my team has CF--and a challenging but fun ride.  Scott (also known as Robert) is still looking for sponsors if anyone should feel generous:

http://www.cff.org/LWC/dsp_DonationPage.cfm?idUser=212602&idEvent=5672

*hugs* to my Quaddie boys...(and Jon)...who managed to make the time to get trashed with me tonight

this is not helping today's anger management issues in which I seriously wanted to punch a fellow sword student in the face.

not helping

am I somehow unfun?

It's official!  I've finally sucked it up and bought myself a race license:

https://www.usacycling.org/clubs/members.php?club=9800

Yes, I'm licensed now to race a bike but not to drive a car.

Bike rant: in the last couple days and weeks I've seen a lot of people on bikes without helmets.  I've also seen a lot of people wearing helmets backwards.  No joke.

Anyway, it's Bike Week and I feel obligated to point out that 1) Biking is awesome 2) Biking is more awesome if your skull doesn't get smashed in.  I have my small gallery of busted helmets that protected my skull but nothing quite compares to this story:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/15/mangled.helmet.ap/index.html

A delivery truck ran over this guy's head and he's fine since he was wearing a helmet. 

Dear friends,

Do you shudder with horror to recall sleeping on our metal futon?  Good news!  We now have a new (to us) sleeper couch.  Perhaps now the thought of coming up here and staying over the night is less terrifying?  Come on over, give it a sit.

I had a young boy come to the desk this afternoon.  He looks at me earnestly, "Do you have fifty cents?" he asks.  Or at least that's what I hear.
"I'm sorry," I reply, "I can't give you money."
He stares at me in confusion.  "Fifty cents." he repeats.
"I'm sorry.  Do you need to make a call?  You can use my phone if it's local..."
"Fifty cent," he enunciates, "do you have any music by 50 Cent?"

"Oh."  

Let's try the reference interview again?

I get up early this morning for my Power Sprint Intervals this morning.  After looking outside and determining that the 30 degree weather, rain, and 40 mph gusts will indeed make my ride suck, I feel solid in my decision to torture myself with Spinervals 2.0 "The Sprinting Machine" DVD.  On a scale of 10 in difficulty, it rates a 9.9.

I get on my bike.  I start riding.  My trainer breaks.

It's 8 am, I'm covered in spandex and I'm grumpy since I can't get in my workout.

Must become World's Fastest Vegan, must become World's Fastest Vegan....

lapak got me a white noise machine for a gift a couple of years ago to drown out the irritating apartment sounds of the TV/computer/neurotic cats/snoring.  I selected "thunderstorm" from the list of sound options.

In this fantastic weather, I now find myself unable to stay very away.  Rainstorm make leppanen sleepy.  I am pavlovian-ly programmed.

I cannot even begin to describe how happy I am that Starbucks in the Heights was open this morning. 
Jim and I met up for a 40 mile ride at 7:30 this morning which featured new roads, me having no idea where I was, and a hill that can only be described as "soul crushing."  Despite his claims that the ride was leisurely, my legs are feeling it.  Must work on hill skills, must stop being crushed by the 50+ men. 
Riding extra early Christmas morning was fantastic: virtually no traffic, no people, and assorted woodland creatures doing adorable woodland creature activities.  I love squirrels, especially obese squirrels.
Hung out with Jim at Starbucks for a good while, getting feeling back in our toes.  That's something I love about the people on my team: they're all about the sitting around drinking coffee.  We had a long discussion about intellectual property in the digital age.  I have both thought too hard and worked my body too hard for 10am on a holiday.   Maybe I'll go back to sleep now.

I'm spending another exciting Christmas watching World's Strongest Man competitions and feeding other people's cats.  Tonight I decided to clean out the fridge, really clean it out, every nook and unexplored crevice.

I found cabbage which, I swear, had become kim chee.  I cannot wash my hands enough right now.  I think I need smelling salts.  Ugh, ugh, ugh.  Cleaning cat boxes, doing lapak's laundry, and cleaning the fridge on Christmas Eve...does this mean that I might end up on Santa's "Good" list this year?

And why, oh why, did I agree that 7:30am was a good time to ride with Jim tomorrow?  I wish I had bought the coffee cup mount for my bike after all.

Yesterday I:
biked 40 miles
came home, refilled water bottles
biked 7 miles to Shim Gum Do
did two hours of Shim Gum Do
biked 7 miles home

forgot at any point to stretch...but not too bad, considering

I should not be allowed in a bike shop by myself.  Really.  I have no self-control.

After months (maybe years) of searching, I finally have procured for myself a long-sleeved, tri-pocket bike coat that is as warm as it is possible to make a bike coat.   It's garishly green and blue with my team's name emblazoned across every surface.  I feel like a race car.  I am, somewhat embaressingly, sitting in front of the computer wearing the coat and overheating.   Gotta make sure it works?

And thus ends another year of NaNo goodness.  Like last year, I got through somewhere  between a third and a half of the story and, if anything, the plot is significantly more depressing than last year.  So who wants to read my half-finished, un-edited angsty novel?  Anyone?  Come on, I know you're dying of suspense to read the really, really gross scene where...no, wait, I won't spoil it for you.  It's called 'Cost of Survival' and it chronologically comes before last year's NaNo 'Shadow of Legends' should you be intrigued and have a lot of free time on your hands.

I'm hoping to keep a pace of 500-1000 words a day from now on so this thing'll actually get finished.  I'm just about ready to start killing off more charachters!  Huzzah!

I'm totally brain dead now!  Huzzah!

_tumblweed, I stand ready for our private NaNo challenge whenever you are.  Bring it.

Okay, I haven't been posting all that much about my crap job since it seemed crushingly depressing while I was job searching.

So, I have 30 hours left here...I feel like sharing.

Dear student,

I don't care that you listen to web clips of Michael Richards commiting career suicide. Srsly. I just ask that you wear headphones when you blast it in the library. When I ask you, "would you listen to this with headphones?" and gesture to the headphones you're ALREADY WEARING, the correct answer is not "they don't work." You see, you have to unplug your headphones from the CD player you're blasting and plug the headphones into the computer. And no, the volume on the computer isn't broken, you're just not listening to your music blast over the YouTube clip.

Is it weird that this, the last week I'm here, is the first week that anyone has every shown any appreciation for the library or me as the librarian? "But what are we going to do without you?" Um, be nicer to the new librarian or, failing that, hope really hard that she's not a vegetarian since I've been here TWO YEARS and find out that they didn't order anything that I can eat at my going away party.

Gah.