in 15 minutes!  I’m excited to kick off the mountain states cup series, and hopefully I’ll have gained some fitness from last week.  There is a TT tomorrow and the XC on Sunday.  It’s in western colorado which is a little desert-y, so hopefully the weather will hold out.  It was snowing here in Boulder all day yesterday and is ominous today too.  One more month till no more snow. woohoo!

I got my cat 2 upgrade on the road (yaaay) so I will going to Tour of the Gila in 2 weeks.  I am excited to race my Cannondale SuperSix road bike.  It is totally amazing.  :)  mmm-hmmm!  Sea Otter next weekend too.  I can’t wait to see the ocean!!!!

I guess I won the doucheblog championships.  Weird. I guess I don’t need airbrushing, just 2 boobs and a sense of humor.  Whoda thunk?

I have another blog I haven’t updated in awhile, but there is some info on there that is useful if you want to try and reduce your footprint on our earth.  invigorateyourself.blogspot.com

That’s right.  I woke up this morning, woke being such a strong word, and snow is falling from the sky.  I’m so not loving Colorado right now, but hopefully all this cold white stuff that manages to chase me every single freaking week will make for a gorgeous summer.  I say “woke” because I forgot that feeling Monday morning after a weekend of hard racing.  You know, like you’re in a cartoon, you’ve been hit by a bus and you’re this melting pancake on the asphalt..and you somehow have to peel yourself off the ground and re-inflate back to normal.  My last name is Looney.  I’m allowed to use the cartoon analogy.

Oh, and it looks like I’m in the doucheblog finals and it looks like I’m going down.  If I were someone who didn’t know me, I wouldn’t vote for me.  I don’t have any model pictures, happily airbrushed and perfectly posed.  I would say every picture on there is taken from a party or a vacation.  Who knows, maybe I don’t need a professional half naked photo to win?  Rochelle can have it. :)  She deserves it!

Today is back to work, but first I need a latte AND a burrito the size of my head….

The XC went much better than the last two days.  I don’t know if it’s because it is not as intense, or because the antibiotics are finally exiting my body, but I felt different today.  Granted I’m still not flying right now, but it was a pleasant experience and I was able to push it.

The start was pretty rough as usual. There’s about 50 yards of road until it bottlenecks onto twisty, tight singletrack with no passing.  I had a half decent start, but after 15 minutes I got passed by about 10 people because I was too tired to keep up the pace.  The rest of the race was great.  My Cannondale Scalpel was PERFECT for the course.  A lot of pro women prefer hard tails, but I am partial to a full suspension.  It was evident through the rock gardens where I would come up on people like a bat out of hell! ;)  I am an idiot and I needed to put a setback seatpost on my mountain bike.  I forgot to do it after my fit and I was paying dearly for it all weekend.  I was sitting way off the back of the seat which ended up biting me in the ass at the start of the second lap.  My back and hips seized up during the second lap and I had to slow down and was peddling squares.  Fortunately my body somehow recovered from that and I was able to go full throttle again after about 5 minutes.  I was also suffering numbness in my left foot.  I have to figure that out. I lost a couple spots though.  People were dropping like flies from mechanicals on that course.

I got outsprinted at the end for 31st place.  It was an amazingly close race.  Between 27th and 31st was less than 30 seconds.  Of course I would have loved to finish even further ahead, but considering how I’ve been riding all weekend and it was my first race of the year, I’ll take it with a smile.  Sobe Cannondale had a great showing this weekend. Good job guys!

Thanks again to Eric and Chris for all the support and to my travel buddies.

Me and Jenna.  She had some great rides this weekend finishing in the top 10.

Congrats to Lynn for taking first in the expert omnium.  Yeah… I torture everyone with my camera.  Eh well.

See ya in Fruita next weekend.  Time to go home and recover.

Desert and the venue

Imagine you’re driving your car. You’re trying to accelerate but instead of going faster, you just hear your engine revving to higher and higher RPMs, and if you’re not smart, the engine will blow up. That is pretty much how I can sum up my weekend of racing so far. The engine was pushing as hard as it could. In fact, my average HR in both the short track in Super-D was around 200, and I hit 211 and 210 in both races and blew up multiple times. That shift to 5th gear just wasn’t happening, no more power! I was secretly wishing that I would show up to my first race on antibiotics after not racing since August 5 and be fast. Call it naive or call it over optimistic. Without hope, what do we have anyway? I’ve never been fast in April, and much to my chagrin, this year proved to be no different. I can’t say that I’m happy with my results, but sometimes all you can do is go hard, stay positive, and hope to be faster next time. Quick review. Super-D. Not so super, not much D. It’s more of a flat TT on double track. I did it last year, and the course was a little faster with not as many sand pits. Flat roads have never been my strength, so it was a good workout. In the height of my anaerobic hell, I saw the saguaros waving at me as I was choking on my own breath…or lack thereof. Short Track. The course was, well, interesting. There was a super steep, sandy jaunt that you really couldn’t ride. I think the only person riding it was Kabush. It was more of a cyclocross short track. I actually made up time on the run-up, but there was a long, flat section in the wind and ha, ha, that’s where I’d lose time. A lot of time. I need the trail to point up. What’s up with this flat business? Anyway, short track is usually a good event for me, but this one was probably my worst. Gotta get those bad ones out of the way, right? At least I had some sweet short track socks (which is also my thing) to at least give the crowd something to look at besides my scowling suffer face. You now, teeth gnashing, drool, head cocked to the side. Hot! Which brings us to today. The XC. I love the course. I LOVE my Cannondale Scalpel. Last year I was having nerve problems, crashed, and got a concussion…so it really can’t get much worse than that. If I have nothing in the tank, at least I’ll enjoy the desert singletrack. 3 days of hard racing is going to start boosting my fitness. Next weekend is the first stop of the mountain states cup in Fruita, CO. I’ll let you know how the XC goes, but don’t expect anything too big, just expect me to come across the line with a big grin from all the fun. Thanks sooo much to Eric for taking care of us at the swank Cannondale trailer and to Chris for feeding us during the XC. You guys are awesome.

Eric and Chris riding to the Super-D course with us to pre-ride

Nina and I being goofy as usual

Judy and I waiting for 3 hours between the airport and rental car place the first day

How you know you’re staying in a condo full of bike racers.

Short track socks…. I need to get some better ones.  These were a last minute deal.

Me, Theresa, and Nina.  Those are some hot Sobebes.

This weekend is my first race of the year at Nova Norba National in Phoenix, AZ.  Desert riding is the style of mountain biking that I first learned, and I’m always happy and comfortable going back to my roots.  I have raced at this venue every year of my racing career, this being my fourth time.  I remember going as an expert, camping with my boyfriend at the time in a ditch because the temps were above 100 degrees, and loving every minute of it.  I was riding a 30 lb free ride bike with a 70 oz camelback which I thought was the coolest thing ever.  My how things change.  I was 20 years old, learning about this new sport called mountain biking where you ride your bike really fast on rocks and dirt.  Now I’m 24, racing pro for the team I’ve dreamt about being on for the past 3 years.  This is also the first racing season I have ever had where my boyfriend wasn’t a professional mountain biker.  It’s time to rally!!

I’m a little nervous because I don’t know what is in store for my season.  I guess I’ll know where to start after this weekend in the 80 degree heat.  I pushed myself a great deal harder during the winter months this year.  I went back to competitive running in the fall and spent the winter riding up to Gold Hill several times a week, freezing my lycra-d butt off, but hungry to get faster.  Also, at this time last year, I was working 2 jobs, going to grad school, and training.  Now I’m just working part time and riding.  I am excited, but also am facing a lot of self-inflicted pressure to succeed.

Friday is the Super-D, Saturday is the short track, and Sunday is the XC.  I can’t wait to go as hard I as I can.  People ask me if I get nervous about the race itself.  I get nervous more because I want to do well, but I tell them, “You know…I did the best I possibly could to prepare.  All I can do is go as hard as I can and hope I’m fast and don’t have any mechanicals.”  I also have to realize that I’m up against the fastest women in the country (and world) which sounds intimidating, but is also reassuring in some ways. Thanks to the Eric (the head Cannondale mechanic), at least one of my wishes will have a high probability of working out since I was plagued with bad bike karma all last year!

Race reports and some photos coming up.  Stay tuned and send good leg karma my way.  I’ll need it… tell those antibiotics to leave me alone!