I am not very Irish. My hair is dark and I can’t hold my liquor to save my life. I’m more of a russian, italian, lebanese. However, “Looney” IS Irish, more specifically from the Isle of Man. Special holidays that embrace drinking Guinness and other Irish delights is always a great thing(in the US and anyway)! So, from me to you, Happy St. Patrick’s! Pinch yourself if you’re not wearing green.

P.S. Just got back from Seattle… update coming today or tomorrow!

One word. MUD.

Snow is melting and the sun is peaking through the clouds more often. My training ground is all the fun gravel roads in the mountains, which are now muddy rivers of fun. It’s a good thing I like getting muddy!

My poor drivetrain.

My helmet has mud freckles.

Mud dork stripe. My shorts were much worse.

You start getting these funky knee warmer tanlines.

Shoes were made to get dirty…and then clean.

I wonder if this has the same effect as a “mud facial?”

Daylight savings on Sunday…. another good sign. Now, I’ll be looking for little teeny buds on tree branches, signs of a warm breeze, and the smell of fresh pine.

Off to Seattle on Wednesday for 5 days. If you’re in Seattle, come to the bike show! I’ll also be paying some dealers a visit. Training… not going very well right now. No time, unfortunately… I’m riding an average of 3x a week. Guess I should look for later season fitness this year. Sigh.

Well, I finally got around to downloading a couple of my HR files from 24 Hours of Old Pueblo. I know some of us geek out on this stuff, so here we go:

Lap 1. Solid, hard, XC type effort. Executed nicely

Lap 2 (night lap) Started really well. You can see how the HR at the end dips down. That is what happens to your HR when you get a flat tire, you have to stop, and you have to go slow and baby it for the rest of the lap.

Lap 3. This is what happens when you bonk because you were eating too much in between laps and have a brick in your stomach, but no blood sugar!

I’ve honestly been in sort of a funk this week. My body doesn’t seem to want to let me train which is frustrating, considering last week and the week before were pretty light weeks in terms of training. I guess stress is really wearing on me.

My training objectives on my rides were having to switch to that of recovery and going home. I know what happens when I don’t listen to my body! At least I could enjoy the view.

I got up to ski at Loveland yesterday. It was by far the coldest day on that mountain in awhile. They even shut down the 9 chair (the one that goes to the divide) due to wind and snow. I’ve been trying to work on my technique so I can ski the harder stuff with more confidence. Maybe I just need my friends to hook me up to one of these!

Today is a brand new day for brand new opportunities, and hopefully a good training day.

Spring is coming….

I forgot to post this! For some reason, the Fort Collins newspaper wanted to interview me for the Xplore Section of their Sunday paper. Here is the online version if you’re interested!

Click the image to read.

See! I got behind again. This time, I was in Phoenix enjoying the sun and all 70 degrees. The cold, wet white stuff was just a distant memory by the end of the week.

Bicycle Retailer does a tour called the “BRAIN” Tour to 4 different locations over the course of the year. Ergon is one of the sponsors, so off I went. It was actually pretty fun. Giant provided us road bikes and we rode to 12 different shops (very very mellow pace, not the crazy group rides I try to avoid) Here is the post on Ergon’s blog by yours truly.

Here are some pics NOT on the Ergon blog from the tour that I thought were super cool. If you want more on the bike shops we went to and those photos, make sure you go to Ergon’s blog. I unfortunately have lost some of my favorite photos, so these will have to suffice.

There was a fire in the lobby the first day.

Rage Cycles was super cool. They had a bunch of different bike part artwork everywhere. There is a younger guy (teenager) who actually makes all this stuff. Creative!

Checking who had what Ergon product in the shops.

Fun!

I think this is the smallest little bike/trike I’ve ever seen.

Sweet paint job. I have never owned a cruiser. Is it time?

One morning before work, FRS’s Jim Murph-dog and I headed out on the road bikes. I was pleasantly surprised to discover a huge network of bike paths with scenic views.

I didn’t know there was water in Phoenix!

brahhhp

The coolest concept I saw was at Tribe Multi-Sport. They are a triathlon store, but they had a workout room with one of those pools that are like a pool treadmill, weights, trainers, massage therapists, physiology tests, and coaching. Pretty impressive!!! They also had wine where most bike shops give out beer. I’ll take both

Gotta get in shape!

The tour was Tues-Thurs. On Friday, Murph-dog and I met up with some of the folks at Pivot Bikes to go ride South Mountain. I got to ride a Pivot Mach 5, which is the first time I rode a “big bike.” 5 inches of travel?? YES!

It was soooo nice to finally ride some dirt after being on the road bike all week. (can you tell I’m not a big road person… I will ride dirt roads before I ride paved roads!) The owner of Pivot, Chris Cocalis rode with us too!

The crew! L to R Jim Murphy, Chris Cocalis, Rob Aguero, myself, badass DH’er Cindy Cocalis, and Cybil. Thanks for the ride guys!

After the ride, I hopped on a plane to Albuquerque to spend some quality time with my friends and family. I moved to CO over 4.5 years ago, but I still love the life I have in ABQ!

I got to bleed my eyes out on the trails all weekend. This travel and the snow have made it hard to actually train the last couple weeks. Oh well, it’s only February.

I’m lucky to have such an awesome family. That is 3 generations of Looneys right there. WHOOOAAA CRAZIES.

TOMORROW:

Tomorrow night, Jeff Kerkove and I will be doing a mountain bike Q&A clinic at the Fort Collins REI. If you are in the area, come on by!

Time for some down time this week, training time, yoga, a ski day, and some much needed catch-up for work and school. I think down time and catch-up in one sentence are oxymorons!! I have about a week, then I’m off to Seattle for the Seattle Bike Show (with a list of awesome coffee and bike shops in hand!).

I got back from Tucson on Tuesday night. On Wed afternoon, the snow began to fall, but not before I squeaked in a ride. I was definitely still tired from the race, but able to get in a good workout.

I spent Thursday up at Loveland skiing!! It was one of the best days skiing I have ever had. I with my roommate, Brad, and my friend, Jason. Jason is an incredible skiier, so I basically had a private lesson all day and I saw major improvement thanks to him! I bet he was like, “OMG, she is so slow.” Particularly when I was standing on top of this run, looking down at it and not moving. I had to tell myself, “1.2.3. GO!…and GO!” I had reasons – it was a double black with basically zero visibility. Descending into a steep abyss!

I admittedly shied away from riding this weekend. It snowed nonstop. I could have gotten outside and ridden… but it wasn’t worth it to me to suffer through that. Plus, I had the luxury of knowing I was coming off a race which gave me ample recovery. I did supplement with cross training – yoga, running, and I tried something new – Crossfit. I am STILL sore…. This is where I went: Flatirons Crossfit. I think getting through that workout was harder than the 100 mile races I do! I went with a friend who frequents that place a lot, and was squeaked in. They don’t allow drop ins and you have to pay monthly for memberships (I need to see if this is the case with all gyms). With my travel and racing priorities, I couldn’t go enough to make it worth it, but if I could do the technique classes and go when I’m in town and don’t have a race, it’d be sooo awesome!!!! I’m definitely looking into this new painful addiction that has left me crippled! In fact, on the waiver, you’re supposed to circle your fitness level. Being a pro athlete, I circled 9 out of 1-10. During the workout, I felt like an idiot for circling that because I certainly don’t have olympic power lifting fitness. I was a shaking heap!

And then the best part of my weekend… It was a good reward… I spent tons of hours doing hw and school stuff because I am so behind (enrolled in 8 credits right now which is more than challenging with my schedule)… BIG HEAD TODD AND THE MONSTERS!!!! I have seen Todd Mohr 3 times solo, but never the whole band b/c I’m always at a race. I think this year I may be able to catch them at Red Rocks too! They have been one of my all time favorite bands since I was 18.

They put on an INCREDIBLE show! I think they are even better live than on their recordings. I got progressively closer as the concert went on until I made it! I was front and center, standing at the feet of Todd Mohr.

Eye level…..

It was euphoric. When he raged his electric guitar solos, I’d stop, mouth agape in awe. Here are some pics. Watch out for the videos, some of the sounds are extremely distorted, but I wanted to get vid of his hands on that guitar!!!!

half decent sound. From their newer album.

First song I ever learned on guitar….. Resignation Superman.

Cover of Beast of Burden… kinda distorted, but cool.

This one has good sound.

Started back here…

Closer….

No zoom…I was this close!!

Turn OFF the sound, but check out the vid.

I am a superfan. If you’ve never heard of these guys, check ‘em out!

TODAY I am heading to Phoenix for work. There is 8-12 inches of snow blanketing the ground here in CO, so I’m very ecstatic to get out to warm weather and no snow. I’ll be doing a dealer tour with Bicycle Retailer and some other cool cats from the industry. Woohoo!

Alright! I’m sorry it has taken me so long to get back to the blog. Everytime I travel, I get behind in normal life, and then it seems like it’s time to go again once I get caught up!

In short: the event was amazing, fun, and well run with really great people. Thanks a million to my teammates, supporters, race volunteers, and race promoter of Epic Rides, Todd Sadow. See ya next year (maybe I’ll do a solo?!)

ROCK N ROLL!!!

I’ll break down the race instead of fully writing it all out.

1) Epic Rides puts on great events. If you haven’t been to one, you’re missing out!

2) My favorite thing about this race was that everyone was out there. People who had never
raced a bike before (or who don’t normally ride) to pros. It’s an eclectic bunch and it’s cool to see new enthusiasts out there giving it their all amongst the chollas!

3) Stan’s dedication dinner was cool. I got to meet Stan of Stan’s NoTubes… the guy who INVENTED tubeless. Thank you Stan!!!!

That’s him!

There was copious amounts of free beer. I tried the Pipeline Porter by Kona. To be honest, it was WAY too sweet… but I was happy for free beer! …and for cool, rusty, painted bike parts!

4) I have the coolest team!

5) My lap rundowns:

Pre-lap 2! Yuki did the first lap for our team which involved running to come get his bike from me!

and he fueled beforehand appropriately…

Lap 1: “Ok, I have only done 1 day of hard intervals this years, I’ll just go out and see what I got.” Turns out I had a lot. I was able to ride in Zone 5 for the whole lap. Score! It was super fun. The wind on the back side of the course was heinous and I was definitely slowed down by it!

Lap 2: The sun was already down, and it turned pitch black about 10 min into my lap. I was riding at almost the same pace as lap 1. My friend, Marty was riding with me and helping to push me. It suddenly felt really hard to go fast. I thought I had blown up, so I told Marty to go ahead. After awhile, I realized it wasn’t ME, but my rear tire had gone almost flat. My CO2 failed… so I had to use my hand pump which I now always bring with me after losing the Dakota 5-0 2 years ago due to a faulty CO2 and no pump (and running for 10 min till someone threw me a pump). I had to baby the tire for the rest of the lap which was a bummer…. Lost about 5 minutes, but still happy with my fitness on the lap

Meanwhile… I was eating in between laps thinking it would digest. I had a food baby and my food was a brick. I drank more water hoping that would help with gastric emptying, but it was still sitting. This also happened to me at 24 Hours of Moab! In retrospect, I now know you still can’t eat a whole lot in between laps and keep it to very simple foods, even with 3+ hours in between.

Lap 3: Night Lap… I was instantly hungry because my food didn’t digest. I went through the 2 gels I brought on the lap in the first 20 minutes and spent the rest of the lap bonking out of my skull. I was looking for food on the side of the trail… the road kill/trail kill mice started to look appetizing. I felt so weak I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to finish the lap, but I told myself one pedal in front of the other. My avg HR dropped 30 beats from the other two laps. Fail.

I managed to sleep 2 hours, and didn’t eat anymore. I think some food finally started to digest.

Lap 4: Night Lap…. the sun came up 2/3 of the way into my lap. I felt reborn with the sun and suddenly was able to put the pedal to the metal again. I was definitely dragging in the beginning, still a bit weak, and unmotivated at the beginning.

6) I got to hang out with a ton of my old NM racing buddies. We were all camped together. That was the best part of being at the race for me! Love you guys

King Kong Casey!

Pre-ride with my peeps.

Riding with Shannon Gibson

I heart Nina.

That was it. I only got one day lap! It was good night riding practice. Thanks again to everyone! I love the camaraderie of 24 hour races.

5 person co-ed category

Well, the 24 Hours of Old Pueblo are here already. This is always a fun race to kick off the new season. Not to worry, I have a little over a month break after this one… starting off slowly

24 Hour racing is cool because you get to the sun and moon at all phases of a 24 hour period.

When it’s overhead…

and when it sleepily sinks behind the horizon, you bring out the lights and tear down some singletrack. Nothing but your light and a blanket of darkness (and all the other crazy people riding!)

I’m racing a 5 person coed team under Topeak Ergon. It will be myself, Jeff Kerkove, Dave Wiens, Yuki Saito, and Rebecca Tomaszewski. That’ll be about 4 laps each. I was sick at this race last year, and we were short one person so it’s already a huge success! Braaaaaahhhp!

Look for a full report early next week!

I have thought about the fact that we are all digital multi-taskers, and I am 100% guilty. In fact, I’m probably doing it right now! I have been making an effort to shut the computer, close facebook, close chat, turn off the TV(although I don’t watch much TV), put my phone on silent… even if it’s just for a couple hours a day (when I’m not riding my bike). Admittedly, it’s hard for me. Even on bike rides, I sometimes find myself checking my phone. Can we say it? ADDICT. Point finger. Digital addict.

We got the internet when I was in middle school. I used to email back and forth with my “soccerfreak13″ email and play Quake against my friend over the ‘net. I try to imagine what things were like for people one or two generation ahead of me, where they actually went through school/college, and even started their real job without cell phones or internet. I remember when I got my first cell phone. My family shared this brick of a phone while I was in high school, but in college I got my own.

I think that the ‘net keeps us more connected in a lot of ways. I mean, look at all of you wonderful readers I connect with, I look at the people I connect with on facebook and twitter, and it is HUGE. However, I wonder if the computer and the phone also disconnect us from those who are closest to us. Sure, we can be chatting with 3 or 4 people at once, updating our facebook status, writing a blog post, texting, and listening to a TV show, all at the tap tap of your fingertips on the keyboard. However, what about those people who are physically next to you? I believe that if we are unable to disconnect for at least some amount of time, we lose that very important personal interaction with our present flesh and blood friends. What about at dinner when you are texting, answering your phone, watching the news with your computer open at the coffee table?

The digital era has also commanded a new expectation from everyone around us. For example, if you take a vacation from your work, you are still expected to “check in” and be available over email. If you don’t answer your cell phone, people get frustrated. If you don’t answer a friend’s text in a timely manner, they think you’re mad at them… or in matters of love/flirtatious relationships, if your text goes unanswered, you get that lump in your throat thinking something is wrong. … but I do love texting!

I have been trying to embrace things I love that aren’t digital and hit the “pause” button (although clearly I spend way more time online than I do NOT online). Answer: partake in all the outdoor activities I love, play guitar, read books, write, go out with friends, organize, read more, focus more on one thing at a time, focus on deepening relationships with people I can look in the face when I talk to them. I’m still not very good at it, but I am making an effort to not lose myself (and someone like me who is very connected to my online community), well that’s difficult. On facebook, a lot of people said if they couldn’t get online, they’d go ride. I love all of our enthusiasm for our bikes, but you can take that to another level – are we addicted to our bikes? Shouldn’t there be other things in your life that you love as much as bike riding? That’s just a for instance. I might go to far as to say that as avid cyclists, we may lack the certain things that make us well-rounded (not condemning it, just thinking out loud). There’s nothing wrong with eat, ride, sleep, eat – but are we missing out on other very important life experiences? Probably.

What has provoked this post? A friend of mine actually posted this link on his facebook (oh, the irony! and the irony that it’s online!) but here it is. It is 1.5 hours, but you can watch it in segments if you don’t have the time. The segments are right above the box playing the show (it took me awhile to find that out).

Click here. I highly recommend watching part of it.

Makes those gears in my head spin furiously… how ’bout you?

Well, it’s almost over, but at least I can watch my roommate jump up and down and scream at the TV when the SuperBowl is on. I’ve been watching and enjoying a bit of football this year, and part of it is because of the entertainment that my roommate provides. I will admit though… there have been times where I found myself screaming and hooting very spontaneously. Like, “Whoa! Did I just do that?”

Anyway… the weather went to snow to today, so I made my intervals count yesterday. Spent ample time riding uphill, and some time riding around my LT. The plan was to search and destroy (to a point). The cool thing was that by the end of the ride, I was still hungry for more!

Saturday:

45 degrees, return of Sonya the sweat beast, sunshine…

Altitude and HR profile. Actual structure to my workouts is nice now that 3 months of base is over. Wooo!

I still freeze riding down the canyons (mostly my hands, even with craft lobster gloves)

And scenery to make me thankful to live in Colorado. I really do love it here (when the weather is relatively nice)

and then there is today… Sunday.

haha

Thank goodness Jeff was here to help motivate.

Icy death tunnel.

Coyote! Sorry buddy, the cows are too big for you.

Still winter… stupid groundhog day.

At least I’ll be in Tuscon on Thursday for 24 Hours of Old Pueblo!

If you want to check out the race recap from last year, click here. And since everyone appears to be going for The Saints in the Superbowl, GO COLTS! (actually, I don’t really care! hehe)