In This Body

WinforKCWed: Your Starting Point

2012-01-24T23:45:00.000-06:00

You're ready to sign up for your first triathlon. You know this means you're going to swim 550 yards, then bike 10 miles, then run 3.1 miles. How do you get from point A, where you are now, to point B, finishing the race strong?

That all depends on your Point A. Are you a lifelong athlete in some sport who has never done a triathlon? Are you coming off the couch and setting the triathlon as your goal? Your preparation for race day will be different.

At the end of this post, I'm going to list some resources to help you get started understanding the activities that will help you complete your triathlon. But none of those resources is based on starting from your Point A.

So I'm also going to suggest a four step approach to planning the months before you race. This approach helped me organize my thoughts, my time, and my goals, and helped me see how I could conquer a seemingly impossible goal. It is geared for someone who is a new athlete and at a true beginner point in all three disciplines.

Four Steps to Triathlon Prep Planning

Step One: Define Point A
Write down an assessment of where you are in each triathlon discipline. No, don't just know it in your head! This is essentially arithmetic and calendaring. So get out your paper and pen. Write it down.

How far, or for how many minutes, can you swim? If you don't know, guess. If it's "not at all," that's just as valid a starting point.

How long, or how many minutes, was your last bike ride? If it was when you were twelve, you won't know your real starting point until you get out on a bike. The good news is, you can rework your race prep as you go based on what you find out.

How far, or for how many minutes, can you run? If you are not running at all, how far or for how many minutes can you walk?

Notice I didn't ask you to figure out how fast you can go. That is what you are going to find out on race day. It doesn't matter when you're getting started. Not one tiny little bit.

Step Two: Make Your Calendar
You will need four copies of a daily/weekly calendar that looks like this, starting with today's date and going to July 28:

Wed, Jan 25
Thur, Jan 26
Fri, Jan 27
Sat, Jan 28
Sun, Jan 29

Mon, Jan 30
Tues, Jan 31
Wed, Feb 1

and so on. It doesn't matter how you generate this list. You'll need space to scribble next to each date. By July 28, write this: RACE DAY

And by today's date, write your sport assessments, for example: Swim 50 yds, Bike ?, Walk 30 mins. By July 14, write your race goals. If you are coming from the couch and aiming to finish, this will be Swim 550, Bike 10, Run 3 miles. You can do this! If you already have some base experience in a sport, your goals might be different; you might want to increase your bike distance, for instance. Refer to the resource list below for schedules geared more to you.

Take one of the calendar copies and use it for the swim. July 14: Swim 550. Today: wherever you are today. April 28 is roughly the halfway point. On that date, write: Swim 300. Count out the weeks and find the quarter point; write Swim 150. That's what you're aiming to swim without stopping. Don't worry about the latter half of the race prep period yet. You will likely need to reassess your swim capacity as you move through the weeks. You may be able to do a lot more than you think you can!

Take the second calendar copy and use it for the bike. July 14: Bike 10. Now, by the end of the summer, you might be cycling a lot farther than that! But if you are not used to a bike, coming to it as an adult, is is a huge, huge achievement to get comfortable riding 10 miles on the road. (Never say "only 10 miles." It is a really big deal to do that.) Again, break the summer into halves, then halves again — but start in April. Seriously, if you can bike before then, great, but don't fight the weather if you're not ready. Cut your goals in half to correspond with the time periods. If you're starting from ground zero and have never ridden a bike, a one to three mile ride is a fine starting point.

Take the third calendar and use it for the run. You get the idea... you are going to run 3.1 miles by July 14, so aim to run 1.5 miles by April 28.

Step Three: Fill in Workouts

Consider a workout as 30 minutes to an hour for each of these sports. (If you can do more, I'm not stopping you! But let's face it, most of us have full plates with our time as it is.) VERY IMPORTANT: You are creating guidelines, not laws. This kind of planning creates a flexible framework, not a by-the-book recipe.

Take each calendar by itself. If you were ONLY swimming, how would you reach each interim goal in 3 workouts per week? You would do some longer swims; you would do some sessions of drills and short, faster swims; you would maybe take some lessons or swim with a master's group. You would aim to stay in the pool swimming progressively longer.

If you were ONLY cycling, how would you increase your distance? If you could ride your bike three times a week, how would you incrementally increase the distance or time you were riding to meet your goals? Write it down.

If you were ONLY running... well, on this one you have a great cheat sheet, with the couch to 5K program, below. It is a 6 week program, but if you are a new runner, you can spread it out over the entire time between now and the race. Again, given your own Point A, calendar out your three runs per week.

Are you doing the math? That's 9 workouts in a week, which means some days you would be doing 2 workouts! You may find this doable, or you may not. The next step is to combine all 3 calendars into one master calendar.

When you do this, be sure to write on 3 weekends in the month before race day, "Brick." This is a workout that combines the bike and run. Leave July 21 blank. Those last 2 weeks before the race are special as you let your muscles recover. We'll get to that later.

Now, transfer your sports-specific goals to the master calendar. Next — wait, don't start filling in workouts! Put a rest day in each week. It doesn't matter where. Now, start filling in your workouts. They don't need to have goals next to them - swim, bike, or run is enough. Your mini-goals will keep you on track. Don't worry if it looks like a lot or which day you stack up 2 workouts. In the next step, you'll clean it up a lot.

Step Four: REVISE, REVISE, REVISE

This step is going to go on from now until July 14. You will revise when you learn what your capabilities are. You will revise when that unexpected project lands on your desk at work. You will revise if you have an injury or other slowdown. You will revise when you find yourself progressing faster than you thought. Set more mini-goals as you go!

As you fill in workouts, remember — keep it doable in terms of your time. Maybe you can do 9 workouts in a week! Maybe you can do four. Stretch your goals and mini-goals out over the weeks so they make sense for you. Some weeks, you can concentrate on swim; others, do more bike rides. Look for balance. For instance, the week you're aiming to run your first mile, you might want to do shorter, lighter swims. The weekend you're riding your first 15 mile bike ride, you might do a long walk the next day. If you can devote 1 hour every day to activity, your calendar will look different from the person's who can devote 45 minutes, and different from the person who can devote 1 hour three or four times a week. And along the way, revise, revise, revise.

Take what you learn from the resources below to revise your plan: all these resources have a lot more expertise in triathlon coaching than I do! Look at their schedules, compare them to your own, and revise with what makes sense.

Your Starting Point Resource List

1) WinforKC. After you sign up for the triathlon, or if you don't sign up this year but want to find out more, take advantage of the information and mentored workouts offered. They're fun and will rocket-boost your effort.

2) Books. I recommend Triathlon Training and Slow Fat Triathlete — even if that's not how you identify, this is a great book for first time women triathletes. Joe Friel's book, The Triathlete's Training Bible, is helpful if you want to go into more depth, but isn't geared toward new athletes.

3) Web sites. You'll find lots of blogs about other womens' athletic journeys, and it may be helpful to read those stories. But for triathlon prep, I'm a fan of these: www.beginnertriathlete.com for general triathlon preparation; www.coolrunning.com for the Couch to 5K running plan; and www.swimsmooth.com for swim technique.

As with any resource, remember that you are an experiment of one. Pay attention to what works for you, use what helps, don't get too wrapped up in whether you are following anything to the letter.

Firsts

2012-01-22T21:47:00.003-06:00

Some fun firsts over the past couple of weeks:

First Ride On Snow

The Midwest rarely gets dry powder snow. Great traction on the singletrack — not a single slip or slide. "Wow," I said to my bike. "Is this your preferred surface? You are really railing this stuff."

First Ride at Night

This is a good one, and if I can find the cable that attaches my phone to the laptop, I'll load up the picture. N. got me a helmet mounted light for Christmas, a really nice MiNewt 350. Except the helmet mount was for a different model. The first good chance I got to night ride the trails, I still didn't have the correct mount. So I macgyvered this:

That is an empty thread spool attached securely with a length of seam binding tape. It worked great. Only problem was that my chinstrap was a little loose so the light bounced up and down.

I really dig riding at night, but there was a lot to get used to. The white light makes the rocks and trees look very different than in the daytime, so the brain is processing this stuff coming at me in a whole new way. Trees that I never even notice beside the trail in the daytime looked a lot closer to my bars. The focus required was much more taxing than in the daytime. I stayed on the easier trail and had a fine time. It started to snow lightly, and the snow glittered in the air all around.

First Full Ride of my Local Technical Trail

Disclaimer: I didn't clean it, not by a long shot. But for the first time, I rode the whole trail in one ride, with fluidity instead of jerky hesitation.

It was like when I first got off the couch and started moving around and the world was full of firsts. That ride was special. I felt like a whole different kind of creature. Translated as a huge unstoppable smile.

Today's Tune
Andrew Bird looks like somebody I would try to make laugh.

Healing Day

2012-01-19T13:31:00.001-06:00

My energy's been slowly draining down all week. Something's been off. It felt a little like last year's staph infection. Yesterday, co-workers were telling me to go home and go to bed. Still not sure why things were off kilter, but after a protein-rich dinner and a restful sleep (OK — a glass of whiskey and a restful sleep), I'm on the upswing again today.

To be on the safe side, I took a day off work to get some extra rest and TLC for my body, because I would rather live one quiet day so I can live a bunch of rip-roaring loud days after that, than live all those next few days half-baked.

Question: Why do we call them "sick days" and not "healing days"?

On a sick day, you're supposed to be sick. Too sick to do anything but be sick. It is supposed to be black or white, on or off. Sick or well. "If you're not sick enough to stay in bed, you're not too sick to go to school!"

What would a healing day look like? For me, today, it looks like quiet rest, no soul-draining TV, sleep, a long stretching session, and some moist heat.

It helps a lot that I don't have deadlines today and am not letting teammates down by staying home and letting my body recover from whatever was going on. I don't know I could take the same kind of day if I were an ER nurse or a grade school teacher. It helps that whatever was going on is not, as far as I know, a chronic or otherwise serious condition.

But since I have the opportunity to do so, thinking of it as a "healing day" has kept a focus on choices that promote better functioning. Sick is something you are. Healing is something you are doing. Seems like the shift in mindset might affect other choices in thought and action.

We'll see if it holds up. Next time I have a puking flu, we'll see if I can manage to think, "I'm healing," instead of "I'm sick," and how it affects the quality of that day.

WinforKCWed: Doubts

2012-01-18T05:00:00.000-06:00

You decide to sign up for your first triathlon. But it's not time to register yet, and you have days or weeks to play with your doubts.

I'm not a runner. I'm not a cyclist. I'm not a swimmer.

Well, you're OK. Doubt is what our brains naturally do when we can't immediately take action. The good news is that we don't have to let our doubts drive our action.

Yes, I doubt whether I can run. SO WHAT. I am going to go out and run.

Between February and the end of July, you're going to take a lot of steps toward your goal of becoming a triathlete. Many will be baby steps. Some will be giant leaps. Sometimes it will seem like you are standing still or even moving backwards. Get used to it. Get used to not caring about it. Get used to MOVING ANYWAY.

No, I have never seen myself swim that far. I DON'T CARE. I am going to go swim. And oh yeah, I am not confident on my bike. But hello, I am riding my bike! And having some fun!

There is a path from your starting point to your goal. On the run, there is a progression you can make from walking to walk/running to running. (Want specifics? Tune in next week.) On race day, every single participant is at a different point in this progression. Wherever you are, you will be able to push to your limit. It's an amazing feeling and has nothing to do with how fast anyone else can run.

On the swim, there is a progression you can make from swimming a few yards at a time with rest in between to swimming continuously. Keep working at it. You will finish the swim and may be surprised by how short that part of the race feels in retrospect. Standing up and coming out of the water is an incredibly powerful moment. And it has nothing to do with whether you had a perfect stroke.

On the bike, every ride has a high potential to contribute something to your endurance, your balance, and your confidence. On race day you will put your power, whatever it is, all out on the road. You will know you are doing everything you can to use every bit of strength and endurance you've found in your body. Nobody can take that knowledge away from you. Nobody. And it has nothing to do with how many people you pass or who passes you.

If you spend time over five months in each activity, small but consistent amounts of time, what felt at the time like a thousand useless baby steps suddenly appears, when you look back over the whole process, to be a giant leap.

Will you still have doubts? Maybe. Probably. Who doesn't? The difference is, they won't have stopped you. On race day, you will be a runner. You will be a cyclist. You will be a swimmer.

You'll be a triathlete with doubts, which means you're human. But you'll be a triathlete.

Welcome to WINforKC Wednesday

2012-01-11T21:47:00.000-06:00

I've talked to a half-dozen women over the last few months who have looked me in the eye, drawn a deep breath, and said: "I'm doing the triathlon."

THE triathlon. For the Kansas City area, the WINforKC women's sprint triathlon in Smithville, Missouri is becoming a game-changer. Every year, more than a thousand women sign up. Every year, 70% of the field are first-time triathletes.

Some of these are women who had never run, who couldn't swim, who hadn't ridden a bike since training wheels when they signed up. Women like I was. And every year, almost a thousand women learn how much stronger they are than they thought. How much they can accomplish in the bodies they are already in.

Every year, Kansas City through its women gets stronger, bolder, more confident. I'm proud to have been part of this.

The women who talk to me about doing the triathlon, knowing where I started (almost on the couch!) and where I am now (racing my fool head off, getting a podium now and again!) have lots of questions about how to get started.

So I'm writing WINforKC Wednesdays. I'm not a professional coach, or a nutritionist, or a trainer of any stripe. But I'll share from my experience and give whatever thoughts and encouragement I have that might help you.

What I have for you today: It doesn't matter if you are heavy. It doesn't matter if you are slow. It doesn't matter if you are older. If WINforKC holds the faintest gleam of appeal for you, GO FOR IT. You can participate. You can complete.

What matters is your determination. What matters is your willingness to go into temporary discomfort for something really, truly worthwhile and lasting. What matters is your belief that one step in front of another will lead you to a goal.

If you're thinking about it, GO FOR IT. There's a whole lot of support out here for you. We're a big community of stronger, bolder, more confident women, and we want you to race where we've raced. We want to cheer you across the line.

Get out your calendar; mark it with a star — registration opens February 3.

Cross Season

2011-12-30T22:02:00.001-06:00

I've lost track of how many races this year. I had good intentions of writing a post to recap all the races, but it is a race itself against the clock to see if I finish that out by the end of the year.

There is more stuff I didn't write about this year than stuff I did. I can't believe I haven't verbally fondled my mountain bike since I built it.

At least, not in front of you people. Anyway.

A couple of weeks ago Zoolander threw down the gauntlet: one week, three cyclocross races. This would quadruple my number of cyclocross races.

It's muddy here in the Midwest, and dirt trails have been closed. What did I remember about my first cyclocross race on the MTB? That it was a brutal beatdown and every cell in my body was horrified by what I was doing to it, and that it took me a few days to recover.

Naturally I agreed to all three races this week. It is hopeless to compete on a mountain bike. I have promised a plate of truffle fries and a beer to any woman who can lap me twice. I guess if one of the 11 year olds laps me twice I will donate to their college fund.

On Boxing Day I raced in the footie PJs. Sometimes you just want to look as ridiculous as what you are doing feels to you. Here's a picture.

Points for style, but fleece does not breathe. Would have been wise to remove the arm warmers and tights underneath, as it was a rare warm day! However, I was kind of happy not to be wearing my bike shoes through the mud on either side of the creek crossing. I came in 3rd out of 4 women in the category. That 4th woman must have had a heck of a time.

The footies and flat pedals didn't let me drive as hard as I might have, so by Wednesday night I was almost recovered for the Grote Prijs, a night race. Friends, it hurt so bad I wanted to cry. 2 laps and I was burnt through. I was just praying to stay ahead of some of the 8-11 year olds.

As I am learning, in CX you go to the point where everything burns and you don't back off. You keep going as hard as you can. It burns. I didn't mean to back off but I must have, because I had enough wind in me to remind Aubree Dock, "Truffle fries!" as she passed me.

Then I was sad because making any noise besides a gutteral moan meant I wasn't going hard enough. So time to put myself in the crusher. After about 20 seconds was right back in gutteral moaning territory. By the end of lap 3, life became incomprehensible. I started thinking crazy things, like, I could just throw my bike over the fence. I am NOT DOING THIS AGAIN. My cross season is OVER. I would have to be SICK to come back and race on this course again.

So guess what is happening tomorrow.

I mean, why not. Somebody needs to go home with those truffle fries.

Trails for Christmas

2011-12-30T21:20:00.000-06:00

So, did we get dry trails for Christmas? No. But I did get the helmet lights I asked for in the song, and this was a lot of fun.

Enjoy!

Abandonment, Part 2

2011-11-27T14:20:00.001-06:00

Read Part 1.

I love to race. It is a high of goofy joy and surprise and pain and intensity. It is amazing to share this experience with other people. And I love riding my mountain bike. I love the focus and the animalness, the unforgiving challenge, the full engagement with earth.

Anything that leaches from these positive feelings has to go.

What good would it possibly do for me to carry even the slightest anxiety about participating in an event that requires technical skills? The anxiety won't keep me from showing up and plunking down my money and racing. So it's nothing but a drain on a happy vibe and mental resources.

I am not a person who wants to hang onto her issues like they were a club membership or a pedigree.

So. Already an emotionally and physically insecure child, I spent six or so years learning that sub-par athletic performance was a ticket to ridicule, pain, and loneliness. Do I expect the same thing to happen now? No. Everyone in racing and the local MTB scene has been welcoming, and races have been exhilarating and fun.

And really, nobody gives a second thought to how bad anyone else sucks in a race. Obsessing over others' weaknesses is not why they lined up.But it's no wonder I'd have a knee-jerk fear of feeling that I don't belong out there.

Answering the question "Why?" prompted me to see for the first time that it wasn't my early experiences with athletics that fed the fear. It was the child's feeling of working without a safety net of affectionate approval, of not being wanted.

The answer was immediate and crystal clear: BUT I LIKE ME.

I pictured the child I had been. At age ten, at age six, at age two. I pictured me holding that child in my arms. You are safe with me. No one is going to hurt you now. I will take care of you. I love you. You can try anything and I will be here for you.

That exercise was strong medicine. It made me see myself as separate from that hurt child. It made me see myself as powerful enough to protect that child. And it let that child hear words it had been hungry for, and know they were true.

It was shockingly rapid, how quickly it cleared mental clutter. The old fears, what were they? Dead trash. Nothing to keep. It was like closing my eyes on a scene of disorder and opening them in a spare, peaceful room with the windows open to fresh air.

If I race, it is because it is in my nature. I can love it without reserve.

I can love it without need.

Whatever, whoever I love, I can love this way.

It has been days now since this realization. The sensation of bliss has not passed.

Abandonment, Part 1

2011-11-26T20:37:00.001-06:00

Zoolander and I were talking this week and he asked me a terrible question. We were talking about a 3-hour mountain bike race in April. I told him I had some anxiety over not being able to ride the technical course, over not being at the proficiency level of other racers, and that I thought it wouldn't be as much fun to be out there struggling, walking, falling behind.

ZL opposed this line of thought, and asked why. That's it. Just why.

I have avoided answering "why" questions for a long time, and this has worked out OK for me mostly. I hadn't understood the usefulness of it. Why am I the way I am? Who cares? If there's something I want to change, more direct to ask how I can change it. Forget why; why is a dead end, a curiosity.

But I was wrong to think this way. I was missing something valuable. Here is Why.

I skipped second grade. Because I was also born in late May, this meant I was one to two years younger than the other kids in my class. Academically, I had little competition among my peers. But on the softball field, on the basketball court, and in foot races, which I deeply wanted to enjoy, I was badly thrashed. I was always last, was a liability to teams, and in locker rooms, was terrified.

You know that kid in your class who was dressed funny, half-bathed at best, with boogers in her nose and who never talked to anybody? Cluelessly living in her own mental world, unable to make friends? YEAH. I was that kid. In a school with grade sizes of about 30 kids, and nowhere to hide, and reading Shakespeare, and always getting hit in the face with the ball. I didn't have friends until late junior high. I had predators.

There were no adult protectors. Who would I go to? Adults who had actively harmed me, adults who had ignored the harm, adults who had been either blind or dismissive? Adults who ignored the cruelty, threats, and teasing as long as I read at college grade level and aced tests?

Adults did not understand the world I lived in; they made that clear over and over. Life was not safe, except near my sister, who watched and understood and protected me as much as she could, though she resented it and probably needed the same for herself. I was fed, clothed, housed, and otherwise attended to, and felt incredibly ungrateful and unfair for wanting more. I felt guilty for being unhappy and afraid. That is how things were, from one angle.

It was not all bad. Being home with my sister was wonderful. We laughed a lot. There was an extraordinary access to beauty in that childhood. We had any book we wanted to read and music to listen and dance to and play. We ran around on our own, outside school's organized games.

Fast forward.

It didn't occur to me until I was 43 years old and finally participating happily in sports that maybe I hadn't been weak or slow as I had thought all those years. I had been weaker, slower, and smaller than kids two years older than me. You might think a coach would've pointed this out sometime. Oh well.

And I didn't see, until this week and that question, "Why?" that I equated not being able to keep up physically with being ridiculed, humiliated, ostracized, and scared.

I have a theory that humans are like trees. Who we are at five, at twelve, at twenty, lives in us like rings in a tree. Whatever we feed our minds filters through all those rings. We are every age we have been, all the time.

That is why going out in a race and not being able to execute at what I imagined was a minimum level of competence made me feel anxious. You might say the idea hit a lot of sensitive targets. One stood out.

What do you know. I have abandonment issues.

Which is an awful lot of baggage to carry into a local mountain bike race.

Read Part 2.

Cross

2011-10-10T22:18:00.000-05:00

N. did not care to see the photos or video from the cross race. But I am not cross with him. We are not at cross purposes.Hee. You want to see the pictures, don't you?Here's the Flickr gallery, photos by the esteemed Lanterne Rouge, aka Roger Harrison.

APai at Cross Out Cancer, a gallery on Flickr.

And here is the video taken by Zoolander. You will hear him yelling. You will see Melissa laughing and see me laughing. By the way, I make cyclocross look dainty and amusing, do I not? Sheez.

2011 Race 11 - Cross Out Cancer

2011-10-09T17:59:00.000-05:00

Did my first cyclocross race today.

First and most important: The Cross Off Cancer cyclocross race in Shawnee, Kansas is a fantastic beginner's race. Fast, flowing, nothing super technical. You can bust yourself wide open on this course no matter what level you race at. And it's an extremely well-promoted and well-organized event, with good food, stuff for kids to do, a raffle with great prizes, a pint glass (!) in the schwag bag, and all the race volunteers professional and on top of their game. Go do this one. It raises money for the LiveStrong Army of Kansas City, and it brought out a huge field.

Now. About going out of that comfort zone. First cyclocross race and all.

Are you thinking: yeah yeah, you race all the time, this is no big deal. That's sort of true. And sort of not.

I am 44. I am chubby for a racing cyclist (look, I report that as a fact, not as a failing. Chubby doesn't mean "out of place," it means I may expend more effort than lighter cyclists to do the same amount of work). I have been riding a bike for 3 years and am really only getting comfortable with the posture and the effort. Any natural gifts I may have as a cyclist are as yet underdeveloped, nor am I strong, compared to my competition, on a bicycle.

And doing anything new, by definition, takes a person out of her comfort zone. Doing things in front of spectators takes me out of my comfort zone. (I am simply riding a child's toy around in the grass.) Racing a bicycle where I can see all the competition is out of the comfort zone. (Participate fully!) Going anaerobic and staying there voluntarily is WAYYYYYYY out of the zone. (It's not going to kill me; it'll just feel like it.)

Now I am giving you credit for being the sort of reader who understands I am not running myself down when I say I am not as good at this as others. I was in a large field of 19 women today so it is pretty easy to see where I stack up. It is not a matter for feeling BAD about, for god's sake. I don't need to feel bad or good about myself for any athletic participation.

What I feel is worked over. This feels good. Good chemicals are rocketing around from my brain. The word for that is "happy." And the people out there are feeling worked over, good, and happy.

Did I feel good in the cyclocross race? No. Did I feel happy? No. The pain didn't leave room for anything else. My legs haven't hurt this much since my last 20 mile trail run. The cat 4 beginner women's race was 30 minutes, 3 laps.

Do you get that? You can make your legs work as much in 30 minutes as in 5 hours. This is how.

Lap one didn't hurt enough. I hadn't warmed up properly and I didn't get myself up to full effort quickly. And I admit, my competitive hammer didn't drop until my heart rate went high and until I'd been around the course once and gotten through the "newness" factors.

By the end of lap one and all through lap two, I felt like it was almost going to kill me and I was hammering as hard as I could, leaning hard and pedaling through all but the tightest turns. It hurt. It was punishment. And the field kept pulling away and I kept trying harder and it kept hurting more.

Why did I do this? I will never do this again! My legs were burning and I was pulling great unseasonably-80-degree gasps into my lungs, trying to catch the stragglers in the field. I was the only woman on a mountain bike, but the field's advantage was clearly in its legs.

It was magnificent! Watching 16 women in front of me, taking the tight turns and wrenching the steam out of their muscles! What an awesome thing to be a part of!

Would it be also awesome to know 16 women were BEHIND me as I raced and were trying to catch ME? Probably! Probably it would!

Dismounts, barriers, cornering, all slow but not as clumsy as might have been. Remounting, total circus. Lots of ways to enjoy getting better at this.

I almost caught the woman in 16th place right at the line. She had been my rabbit for a lap and a half. I was at her wheel and took her at the inside of the last turn, and she saw me there and jumped into her sprint. I jumped with her but didn't get up off the saddle and find a bigger gear.

At the end of the race, my pal Amy waited for me to cross the line. I felt like a burnt steak. Once I'd gotten up to speed, I hadn't quit or let off. Full participation is the name of the game, and guess what, that is a gift there for our taking no matter our skill or experience or gifts.

Full participation feels GREAT.

I could barely breathe, much less speak. "Yup," Amy laughed. "That's a good face to have at the end of a race. That's what it looks like."

2011 Race 9: The Pike's Peak Ascent

2011-09-05T23:40:00.000-05:00

The first wave of runners, the fast ones, have gone, thirty minutes before. As the serpentine line for the porta potty evaporates and we gulp one last shot of water from the aid table, the start area fills with the second wave of runners.

In the crowd are experienced trail runners, triathletes, mountain air addicts, relative newbies, people doing their 20th Ascents, people doing their first. We chat and find our spots in the pack and look up through sleepy Manitou Springs, up up up to the Peak so far away. I meet Jonica, a triathlete doing her first Ascent. I meet John, a Barr Trail native who's done the Ascent many times. The vibe is friendly and mellow and unselfish and eager with a thousand people ready to do their best.

The race director welcomes us. America The Beautiful wafts over and through us. I am a big softie, and that song always chokes me up. (So does "Oklahoma." Seriously. Now you know my embarrassing secret.)

Three two one go!

The air is still cool but the sun is bright and the lower half of the trail is going to be hot, in the 80s. Feels pretty good to me as I have been running 4-5 hour trail runs in the 90 degree Kansas heat with 85% humidity. I start out at a super slow warmup pace, Matt Carpenter's words ringing in my ears. (Matt Carpenter, short version: GO SLOW.)

For those who don't know, Matt Carpenter is the champion of Barr Trail in more ways than one. He champions trail running, the Pike's Peak races, and has been the champion of them many times. I can't improve on his course description. If you are running the Ascent for the first time, knowing that course description may save you a lot of uncomfortable mental hijinks. It was wonderful to have some feel for where I was on the trail and what was to come, and that description is on the money.

Just after the start, I tuck in behind a woman in a KU tank top, a little Jayhawk emblazoned on the back. I have a hunch. "Hey Jayhawk!" I call out. The woman looks around. "Are you Julie?" I say. "Are you Ann?" she says. We'd traded e-mails back in the summer. We'd never met. And here we were. Julie-from-Kansas was significantly faster than I was. She rocked.

We run up Manitou, hook around the roundabout, and start up Ruxton. N. is photographing the field. He yells as loud as he can, "GO ANN!" just at the point where we are all about to start hiking. I am already tickled by the whole day and I don't know why but this just ices the cake. I try not to use energy laughing but I feel like I have helium in my lungs.

The road starts going up and up and up. Legs aren't warmed up, and this is the steepest hill, so we hurt. We hike. We are now a pack of hikers. What it reminds me of is when I watched fourth of July fireworks for the Statue of Liberty's 200th anniversary in New York City. A million people were packed into a small space to watch the display and when it was over, a million people turned as one and all tried to get into the nearest subway. Like that, only with beautiful woods around and gorgeous dirt underfoot.

How can dirt be gorgeous? I am in love with Barr Trail. When it is smooth it is soft underfoot, finely chipped gravel or packed dirt, a soothing palette of pink or gray or peach or brown. When it is rocky the rocks are inviting, eroded into smooth round shapes but with grippy surfaces. Someone has looked after Barr Trail. It is not rutted or pitted and it wants feet on it.

We are hiking in our big heaving animal pack, surging up the trail. I fall in behind Carrie, a woman in her early 60s who introduced herself earlier as the pack was funnelling from road onto dirt. She is a Barr Trail veteran and would run the marathon the next day. "Hey Carrie, do you mind if I pace with you?" This was fine with her and I was delighted. She knew every rock and since the view was mostly of the feet of the person in front of you it was helpful to be behind someone who knew instinctively where to put their feet, and who also was cheerful company. Carrie and I would be together for the first hour or so. Then I would unwisely surge ahead, and she would pass me at the halfway point and beat me up the mountain by an hour.

I know. It is going to take forever to tell the story going at it like this with all the tangents. But that is how it was. It wasn't like a race where you have tunnel vision toward the finish line and you are only sort of aware of the people around you. This race is everything around you and in you and a sensory swirl, plus the people around you.

Because if you are hiking-to-running at a three to four mile per hour pace, you are going to get to know the people who are ascending at the same pace. They are your peer group. Your graduating class. You are going to recognize their running styles, their voices. They are going to push your pace a bit from behind; you are going to follow them. They will do the same for you. If you stop and they leapfrog you, they will ask if you are OK and you will exchange encouraging words. You will do the same for them. You will want each other to be having the time of your lives.

You know who else will want that? The spectators who hiked early up into the Ws. The mountain biker boys who line the trail and high five everybody and tell you how bad ass you are. And above all, the volunteers, twenty to an aid station it seems for the amount of noise and encouragement and sustenance and smiles they give. I would rather have the heartfelt support of the 100 or so people up and down Barr Trail than any packed and cheering but anonymous 5K course.

But wait, when are you going to tell about the race? OK. Here we are.

We funnelled into the dirt and up the Ws. The trail would widen a bit, then narrow a bit. At switchbacks I could look down through the scrub and trees into the steepness, down, down, dark. Feet in front of me. Feet behind me. Getting a feel for the rocks. Getting a feel for the fast hike. Glad there are barriers. Don't look down off the side of the trail. Breathing fine. Legs loosening. Feet feeling grateful for the dirt and the Pace Gloves. No pain.

(By the way, good people at Merrell — at mile 5 a woman passed me and chirped out: "WOW! Cute SHOES!")

A few people come down the trail our way. "Medicals," says Carrie. She's seen it before. A few runners come our way as well. "Gym rats," says Carrie. These are the people who run the miles of stairs of the Manitou Incline up the mountain, then loop down on the trail. I don't realize it yet but they have canceled the descent for today because of storms that may brew. We will not be making way for oncoming runners. On the other hand, we won't get to see the marvel of those fast folks bounding down the mountain, which would be fun to see.

At the second aid station I had been going hard for an hour and change, and was ready to grab food. But as soon as the minipretzels hit my throat I knew I was going to have to force myself to eat. I ripped open a gel and ate it and drank some water. On we go.

We were past the end of the Ws before I realized it. "That's way back," says Carrie. "We're halfway from there to No Name Creek." Really?? One super tough section done? We clamber up and over bigger rocks. The views open out onto the valley, over dark green trees, with a deep blue sky soaring all around us and birds soaring in it. Little purple flowers bloom in the rocks at trailside. We clamber with quads and core and everything we have gotten ready for this.

We run down little sections that don't go up. I see John from the start line. He tells me I am doing great. I tell him he sounds strong. Up we go, the pack beginning to string out, able to see yards of trail without feet on them, and under the rock arch and to No Name Creek. On this uphill I burn a match.

If you don't know what burning matches means: it means through effort, using up some of your capacity to manage fatigue. I have never before so distinctly felt myself burning a match. It happened when I powered fast up short steep sections or held a slightly fast pace up sections that were longer than I anticipated. It would honestly feel like I had burned something up in me that was now just smoking ash, that I could not get back.At No Name Creek, I am ahead of my projected splits for a 5:45 ascent but not so much that I worry.

However, I am beginning to feel the altitude. I pull aside at the switchback and talk to the El Paso County Search and Rescue guy. He teaches me the rescue breathing technique of breathing out through pursed lips so you suck in more O2. This works. And nice to find out, when I start up again, my legs feel all freshened up. Wow.

That's a good thing because now it is just relentless up up up up up. This is when it really sinks in that I am going to be going up like this for at least three more hours. That there will be scant relief from the pain. It is just going to hurt.

And yet it is the most beautiful place and the most amazing feeling. I am simply numb with effort and my feet are still moving on this luscious dirt and rock. The trail is heavy and thick with trees and it is like running inside origami. Because of the uphill grade, even the hike feels like running. This is not a walk. It is a weird slow run. Then hey!

Hey! Downhill! Woooooooo hoooooooo! I watch as the people in front of me begin to shuffle run, as though they can't believe it is happening, then pick up pace, as I do the same. Yes! This section of 5% grade is like flying! And then it ends and we go back to the relentless up up up up up.

I stop at Barr Camp, which is halfway up in terms of both elevation and distance, to send N. a text. If he hasn't already, he might want to start his drive up to Devil's Playground and shuttle to the top. He texts back: "Cool! Keep it up!" I don't get his text but I assume the sentiment anyway. I have been on the trail for 2.5 hours. This is faster than I thought. I do not know whether I have been going too fast. I don't know what I'm capable of. The rescue breathing has helped. And now it's time for the secret weapon.

After a Larabar and a gel and some deep slugs of water, I unwrap a coca tea bag and stuff it between cheek and gum like a tobacco wad. I wet it down with water. I suck on the coca tea for the next hour until the bag disintegrates. IT WORKS.

My pal Sandra had told me, "On our dig in Central America, they had us drink coca tea before we went up the mountain. Nobody had a problem with altitude." My co-worker Paco: "Yeah, we use coca tea when we go up in the Andes." My co-worker Alejandra: "Here, I have some coca tea. Take a handful of tea bags. You want more? Take some more."

I am giving Sandra and Paco credit but I brought Alex back a present. Alex, you made my day. No headache. No nausea. No dizziness. All of the oxygen got sucked out of my leg muscles and diverted to heart and brain, but OK. It is what it is, and it's not falling off the side of a mountain in a hypoxic hallucinatory state.

Once again, Matt Carpenter is right. The next section of the course is mentally very tough. If I thought it was relentless before... now it is just upstride after upstride, ache after ache, and I feel myself burn through another match but there is no stopping. Except I do stop to rest. And find that I have no trouble getting moving again. It is like the ashes of that burned match have to get blown away and then my legs find what they need. This is heartening.

The big rocks are everything now, with bits of trail between. Keep going. Keep going.Why did I do this? Why did I want to do this? Dear God, I will never do this again. My legs sting. It is a special pain. It is like frostbite from the inside out. It is like my legs are turning into something other than meat and tendon. Pulverized plant pulp maybe. I do not understand how they are still working. It sort of cracks me up. I don't want them to keep working! Why don't they stop? I don't want to do this anymore! This is fantastic and I wish I could actually run Barr Trail — it would be such a fun trail to really run! The whole thing is surreal and I am moving as fast as I can through the folded green of trees. The pocked surface of rounded boulders says to my feet, "Come here, you."

Some kind of bird keeps chattering overhead. It sounds like a child's squeaky rattle toy. Because of the warm day it is humid and stifling inside the forest and I watch for my water, which has to last me between aid stations. There is no way to drink enough water.

The trail winds and ducks in and out of trees ahead, and it is a good thing we can see only the steepness immediately ahead of us because we might weep. We are far up a mountain now. My peer group, the Pike's Peak Graduating Class of Five to Six Hours, surges and swells around me, now ahead, now behind. We give each other whatever positive vibe we can, if it is only an understanding look or a half smile.

And I start to understand that as bad as it hurts, there is more to learn and more to experience yet and that as much as I have just learned about my body and what the previous five months have meant to it, I am about to learn something completely different. The trail is about to totally change. This makes me happy.

As I get to the A-Frame, my spirits lift. I am behind my splits now but well ahead of the cut-offs. And at this point I know, even with treeline ahead, that my legs have everything they need. My core is strong and can carry me up and up and up and up some more. Even with my back hurting because I am pack-muling all my supplies around my waist, which I am not used to doing, the muscles oblige me and let me stretch them out. Three miles to go, and soon we will exit the trees. We arrive at the last aid station under the canopy.

They are almost out of water. No. No. Poor volunteers! Poor us! But we are tough! We can do this as we need! The volunteers put three cups of water in my bottle. "You can fill it at the next aid station," they say, "Plenty of water there!" I stuff the second coca tea bag in my jaw and give it a tiny swish of water.

It will be a long way.

Remember how I said it was like running inside origami? At the end of the trees, at treeline, it is like you step out onto the outside of the origami. And it starts unfolding under your feet. And it unfolds and unfolds and you are UP, and it unfolds bigger and bigger until the planet is just sort of under you, way down there, and you are so far up there is no more sky, just a sort of empty clear soup that the clouds swirl and gather in. You are running on the outside of the folds. You see the mountain. Your feet feel the connection. Everything you see you also feel underfoot. You are as heavy as a rock and as high as a bird.

You see the whole thing. You see down into the forest and across to the other mountains and up the winding trail, and tiny dots of people impossibly high above you moving at an unreal angle to horizontal, and you are to go there though it blows your mind that this will happen.

I loved everything above treeline. The day was warm but the wind picked up and if you are from the midwest you know how to eat the wind. I moved slower and slower but could not tell; for the most part it felt smooth and controlled. I was happy for the rock step ups and boosting off them. I was happy for the level trail and the chipped gravel that wasn't slippery underfoot. I could see so far in every direction! I ate a gel and a couple of pieces of candied ginger.

My legs had almost nothing left. I told myself to let the matches burn slowly. I wanted only one left when I got to the 16 Golden Stairs. At the Cirque aid station I refilled my bottle with welcome cold water. All I wanted now was water and to find any strength at all in my legs. My legs had started shaking. I would stop to rest, and they would come back refreshed.

And the clouds swirling in go dark. Thunder booms over the mountain. A sizzling white bolt of lightning streaks from the clouds to the mountain. OH SHIT. We are too far up for them to find us and send us down. The whole side of the mountain sends up a gasp. You can hear every runner say it. Oooooooooh. And then the storm curls away around the mountain like a big cat that isn't hungry.

As I ascended and my legs could not work any harder, my heart rate was dropping. It had been fairly steady between 145 and 155 beats per minute and now was hovering around 138. Good. I wasn't getting everything out of my muscles, but they weren't getting any O2. Fair's fair. At least I wasn't going to explode.

And then, just before two miles to go: Vertigo.Barr Trail is not unsafe by any means. It is broad enough and level and there is absolutely no reason a person might go staggering crosswise and plummet down the mountain. But there are places where this could happen. All along the trail, there are places where a bad step could turn into a really long bad step. You have to pay attention.

And if you are prone to vertigo, there are places where the correct footing takes the angle of descent directly into your field of vision. It is best to know this. It is best to be prepared. Don't let it scare you away. You can manage.I kept moving forward. Partly because I knew if I got vertigo paralysis I really might not start again. Partly because there were people behind me and as a too-politely raised midwestern girl I did not want to inconvenience others. Partly because I did not come this far to half-ass anything. Find the footing. Boost up. On we go.

But my legs were shaking after every time I looked down and this made the going a little slower. Particularly when there were tricky step-ups to manage, like the gigantic one that I stood in front of saying, "Well, how the hell." And finally I used hands and crawled up the steep side and went over it on my butt, trying not to look down the precipice to the right, not at all trusting my balance.

And the finish line announcer's voice was booming down the mountain and the tiny dots wayyyyy up top were winding forward and there was still more than an hour to go. I stopped three or four times above treeline. I sat on big rocks and looked out at the views. The recovery felt good in my legs, I wasn't concerned about cutoffs, and hey, this was my first time to really be on a mountain. If I never did it again, I wanted to remember what it looked like! It took me 35-40 minutes to cover each mile above treeline.

Two to go. Come on. Come on. You can do this. You have run two rocky miles so many times. You have done it on days when you had already run eighteen miles and those last two were a staggering, slow mess. That's all you have to do. Pull off the same staggering slow mess. Wouldn't this trail be a blast to really run? I never want to do this again. My legs can do this though they feel like they can't.

One to go. One to go! YES! I don't want this to be over. All I want is for this to be over. And suddenly — if there is such a thing as suddenly after almost six hours and climbing laboriously over big rocks and chewing two coca tea bags of which I now have to pry one out every time I see a photographer, and there is a photographer at every switchback — if there were such a thing as suddenly when I am moving more slowly than kelp — if there were such a thing as suddenly in the epochs of time that form a mountain — suddenly, the 16 Golden Stairs begin.

Where is dread? Where is anguish? Every step is an amazement. The 32 switchbacks are so short, they have a rhythm! Closer! Closer! Closer! From the inside I feel smooth and from the outside look like a drunken zombie. The outside doesn't matter or exist. Up. Up. Up. Up! Up!

One after another, the switchbacks rise and I am a tiny dot high on the mountain above the giant trees and the cities and everything I have just seen and moved through. Every step feels huge and strong. I disappear. The mountain disappears. The feeling that is passing among all the people, that is all there is, while the announcer calls my name, the most unimportant words in the world, and the people are smiling and clapping and I raise my fist and run across the line and into a life where this has happened, where Jonica and John and Julie-from-Kansas and N. and the other people there loving their racers and the race volunteers and director and Matt Carpenter are bound to this moment. And it ripples out. It keeps going.

It is the best day of my life.

I wrapped my arms around N. and he around me. I kissed him and he kissed me. I ate some oranges and drank some water. I hugged Jonica (who rocked). We took my picture. N. and I looked out across the sky. We kissed again.

And then we left the mountain.

My first cyclocross dismount

2011-09-01T22:48:00.000-05:00

OK, I promise. Tonight is my first clean shot at a chance to write the Pike's Peak race report and supplementary detail. But cool stuff keeps happening in the meantime.

Last night my pal Mallika (aka The Blaze as she has a long record of fast marathon paces) and I went to the park to roll around on our bikes. The Blaze has been on a bike for less than a week and is picking up the feel for it fast. The deal last night was that I would ride around with her and be cheerful, helpful company while she gets a feel for balance and momentum, and she would hang out and keep me company, possibly videotaping, while I tried some new bike skill.

If you recall, last year's cyclocross attempt was less than promising. But moving around on a bike that way looks like fun, and my bike really wants me to have fun on it. So here we go:

How to Dismount For Cyclocross, by Ann Pai

Unclip your right foot. Put your right foot down on the left side of the bike. Don't think about too much else. It will work out OK.

I didn't fall until I tried something silly. See if you can pick out the moment when I took leave of my senses.

The Blaze quite naturally let go of the record button when she saw me going down. ("Oh, I didn't get it on tape! That's a shame! Do you want to fake the fall again?" "Yeah, I think I'd have to really fall again." "Well, do you want to fall again? It would be great video.")

P.S. If you are going to fall, do it just outside right field of the Smoking Hot Men's Softball Team practice. That is probably not their real team name. Falling on a bicycle in the grass is an effective way to draw the attention of 10 Smoking Hot Men. As it turns out.

Let's just say that all those internet pages and youtube videos you will see that say to put your hand firmly on the top tube, well, are UNNECESSARY for a beginner to emulate.

You do not need to cross your right foot between your left and the bike. You do not need to put your hand on the top tube. Just bring your leg around and set your foot down. That's it. You will do the rest pretty much automatically. Really.

Bikes Post Peak

2011-08-28T22:41:00.001-05:00

I promise you lots is coming about Pike's Peak. More than you really want to read. The thing is, once I write this down I won't want to tell it anymore. I end up just reciting what I wrote. So I am telling for a couple more days, then pickling the story here for whomever it might interest.

But do you want to hear about the week after Pike's Peak? It involved bicycles. Lots of them. We followed the US Pro Cycling Challenge for a few days. Rode our bikes in Colorado Springs all around town, to the Garden of the Gods, down to the sharp corner that the pros screamed around (the brakes literally screaming), and then hauled tail across town on the bike path to watch the prologue finish line.

Tried to find the singletrack in Salida and fumbled around on rocky doubletrack, then rode a pea-gravel road along the railroad track and river. Milled around amidst the pros before the stage start (no big pro encounters but I did get my picture taken with Bob Roll). Again, hauled tail across town to watch the cyclists exit Salida after their two parade laps.

Rode around Aspen by evening with our pal Patty, who is a strong cyclist and one of the most hospitable people I have ever met (and I have met Russians, who make a religion out of it), then the next morning did a 15 mile bike path ride, part paved and part sandy gritty gravel, to Woody Creek. Rode along the side of a bluff, past a waterfall, above a rapid river, amongst the oaks and pines and aspens.

By the end of the week my legs had pretty well recovered from the shock they'd been through. That first ride was rough. Legs felt like cooked pasta and I hyperventilated. By the last ride, I was daydreaming of riding someday over Independence Pass. Which my beloved has done twice. Wow. I hug somebody every day whose body was capable of riding over that mountain.

But then, look who HE gets to hug on. Ha!

Today's Tune
Annie's Song, by John Denver. I'm feeling all sentimental what with the talk of hugging.

Grand Slam for Zambia

2011-08-22T09:08:00.000-05:00

The best money I ever gave to charity was a small sum to a woman in Pune, India, who was raising money to buy bicycles for village girls.

The junior high was in another village, too far for girls to walk alone. So their educations were ending at age 12 and bright, motivated girls were channelled into restricted lives.

They sent us a picture of themselves with the new bicycles. Girls would share the bikes so they could go to school in shifts. I looked at that picture every day for a week and cried every time I looked at it.

Buying a bike for a kid in a developing country is one of the best things you can do. Ever. It makes the planet a better place and changes a person's life in a tangible and permanent way. Here's your chance.

Go to the Fat Cyclist web site and read about the Grand Slam for Zambia. See how little it takes to do something amazing. Give if you can, and please repost, retweet, or FB if you can't. Thank you!

Peak Delay

2011-08-22T08:57:00.000-05:00

OK, y'all, I wrote down a bunch of thoughts right after the Peak. Immediacy. Vividness. Stuff I would forget.

But here's the thing. I am not the world's fastest writer, and for the next week or so I am getting lost and disconnecting. So it'll be a few days before I give you the whole skinny on the Peak experience. I'll try not to let it escape into the rear view mirror before then.

I will tell you this: I, a chunky, 44-year-old woman with few natural athletic gifts, who could not run up a half mile of 11 percent grade five months ago, ascended a mountain. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. There is something you can do tomorrow that you cannot do today.

And I will tell you that I'm proud of the conditioning and the preparation, because it was right on the mark to get me to the time I expected. (Can't do anything about the altitude. More on that later.) I built the legs that could get me up a mountain, the preparation was on the money to qualify me to participate, and all of that worked together beautifully on the day.

I will also tell you this, and I'm both giddy and serious when I say it.

This was the single best day of my entire life. As of this morning, I am still able to look up at the Peak. I don't know how to explain the connection I feel with this place, and did from the first time I saw the mountain.

Maybe I can figure that out in the next few days.

Take care everybody and surprise somebody with affection.

My new screen saver

2011-08-19T20:04:00.000-05:00

Peak Prep

2011-08-19T20:02:00.000-05:00

Hung around the campground this afternoon and pre-packed my run stuff for tomorrow morning. There are several bags:

Bag with stuff I'm wearing, incl. heart rate monitor and a separate plastic bag with my Merrell Pace Gloves. They are a little messy with good Kansas dirt.
Sweat bag. This is the plastic bag that packet pickup came in. You give it to the race officials and they take it to the top of the mountain. It contains warm clothing.
Plastic baggie of my shower stuff. This is so I don't have to dig through my toiletry bag for the relatively few items I will need tomorrow.
Sling bag with change of clothes. This will stay in the car. It will be mid or upper 80s in Manitou tomorrow, so I won't want to leave those warm clothes on very long.

I am also carrying gear on my person. Here's how it's sorted out:

Windbreaker front pockets. Left pocket: Vanilla gels, chapstick, tums, electrolytes. Right pocket: chocolate and raspberry gels, candied ginger, gel trash baggie. Upper zip pocket: gloves. Interior pocket: Girl Scout layer. (If you can't figure out what that is, you will never need to know. And now you figured it out, right?)

Where to put the sunglasses? I need another pocket. Hola duct tape! The vented back of the jacket is now a pocket. I don't like to run trail in sunglasses, so this pocket will only come into play above treeline. I won't need to put the jacket on until some of the gels are gone, so when it goes on, the glasses transfer into a pocket.

Not pictured (sloppy camera work; it was right there): my stretchy amphipod race belt, which is holding my rain poncho ($3 at the race expo) and the phone.

Now for the clever part. When the jacket is rolled up and tied around my waist, the stuff in the upper half and the makeshift sunglasses pocket will sit snug in a roll at the small of my back. The weight is distributed so nothing is flapping around and no part of this whole package feels heavy.

I pinned it with some extra safety pins from packet pickup.

OK, this is not technically a gear pack picture. I am just very proud of this bib pinning job. My bibs are always somehow askew and they never lie flat and neat like this.

And here's my pace card, taped to my water bottle. I didn't mean to test its waterproofitude, but it worked out OK.

So that's it. I just ate my dinner of sweet potato, romaine leaves, an avocado, and an apple. I'm drinking another half liter of water. And then I'm going beddy bye.

Take care everybody and hug on the people you love.

Today's Tune:
In the Hall of the Mountain King, performed by a Lego Orchestra.

Title only, no pay raise

2011-08-15T23:11:00.000-05:00

OK, this has nothing to do with anything.

I have been having apocalyptic dreams, where civilization is crumbling and we are reverting to tribal societies. In the suburbs. So it didn't surprise me to dream that we had fallen under a repressive regime.

The government's new regulation was that every business had to start collecting data on how much employees were shitting every day. How much shit (and that was the word for it) was being produced and flushed down the toilets of the American Work Force, how often, with what regularity? This was very important, we were told.

So they sent forms to every business, and every company had to designate someone to fill out the forms. This person was to be known as the "shitler."

The form was called the "shitlet." And I had the shitlet in my hand, and was thinking, Aaaaagh No Not Me, but the very obvious protest gesture did not occur to me, frankly, until just now.

Peak Thoughts

2011-08-15T22:49:00.000-05:00

I'm trying to imagine being ready to run up a mountain. But I have no frame of reference for this.

So instead I imagine: Am I ready to run a marathon? Could I run downtown and home this weekend? Could I do 20 miles worth of stair repeats? Could I run the hills out west and then run them again? Yes. I would be beaten up and brutalized. But I could.

I have no way to know if I'm underprepared. This is a good thing. It is a good skill to pick up, becoming comfortable with not knowing what might happen.

I expect I will hurt a lot. I won't be able to breathe and my legs will likely feel like sacks of concrete. It is funny how feelings can pass. You just keep moving and sometimes your body and brain shift to the new normal.

My brain is doing something annoying today however. It is saying: "Look around you at the athletes you know. Look how much stronger their bodies are, how much more experience they have. They could run up a mountain. What makes you, in this body, think you can possibly really do this?" And then I get a little scared.

I get scared, not of the pain or of failing, but of being blind to my own hubris. Of the feeling of emotional vertigo, perception of reality suddenly being exposed as false. But here's the thing. We create our reality as we go. Reality isn't the path; it's the footprints.

So this is all right and in balance. No matter what. And on the placid surface of that cake, this icing: I could run a half marathon this weekend without even eating breakfast first. In this body, I could do that.

I feel so grateful for this I can hardly stand it. It's all cake now.

The Pace Gloves

2011-08-14T23:11:00.001-05:00

I tried on every minimal trail shoe on the market. The Pace Glove made me want to laugh, dance, run around, hug people. I wore my new pair around the office all day. I didn't want to take them off.

They didn't even need real breaking in. (My feet did - these are even more minimal than the last pair. Zero drop soles are no joke, friends. Stretch your calves and Achilles after you run.)

Anyway. The first week I had these I ran 35 miles in them. Loving them so much, loving them still. But somewhere on the red trail, the toes of both shoes separated from the soles. Yikes! I pictured myself running in them like huaraches up the mountain.

It took a few days of corresponding with Merrell to get my request into the right hands, but the result was that Merrell basically said, "This should never happen to our shoes and in fact we have never seen anyone do this to a pair of shoes before. Clearly this isn't your fault. Don't bother sending them back; we will ship you out a new pair with fastest shipping."

And they DID. Merrell knows how shoes are supposed to be done; but wow, they also know how customer service is supposed to be done. And it would've been totally fair of Merrell to require me to send mine back first and wait the 2 weeks that refund exchanges typically take. They went above and beyond for a random runner.

I even got follow up emails from customer service making sure I'd been taken care of. Here are some things I learned:

1) Communicate through all the channels. I went to warranty, customer service, and tweeted a message to Merrell explaining the issue and asking how we could move things along more quickly.

2) Send as much info as you can. Merrell's web site tells exactly what to send them to get an exchange process started. I sent the pic of the huarachified Merrells, shown above.

3) If the company's willing, help them be the hero, not the bad guy. Merrell came through HUGE on the hero scale.

4) A philosophical note, always be ready to cut your losses and realize that, Ponzi schemes aside, whatever's gone wrong with your product or service is probably not the worst thing that could happen to a person.

Friends, if you're looking for a trail or hiking shoe, check out Merrell. They stand behind their stuff. Good job, Merrell. Really hope I can get your shoes up to the summit for you.

Today's Tune
Paolo Nutini, "New Shoes"

Spider Stick!

2011-07-30T22:29:00.003-05:00

Today I am going to share with you some helpful tips for trail running in late July and August. The first tip is this: Carry a spider stick.

This is a spider stick. Do not be fooled by the apparent absence of cobwebs. It is wound up like cotton candy.

The spider stick is meant to clear the trail ahead of you as you run. It is marginally effective. Your hat, your hydration pack bite stem, your gatorade bottle valve, and your entire exposed skin will be plastered with spiderwebs and their helpless bits of insect. But you can tell yourself how much worse if you were not carrying your spider stick.

The women who took these pics thought the butterfly hitchhiking on my hat was really cool. So did I until I took off my hat and realized it was stuck there. Big stories around the mudpuddle tonight, I bet.

Tip two: Carry a spider stick. You can entertain yourself as you run. What is the best spider clearance technique? (Answer: It doesn't really matter.) Is it "whisking the giant invisible egg"? Or the "timid schoolmaster's caning"? The "drum majorette"? Or the "Hogwarts figure eight"? What spell would you use to erase a spiderweb? What is the Latin word for spider? The Greek is arachnid, what is the Latin? Is that question seriously going to be stuck in my head for two hours while I run around the woods waving a stick? (Answer: Yes.)

Tip three: Carry a spider stick. If you round a corner and approaching you at a distance of twenty feet is a skunk, you can, after a moment of initial startle, use your spider stick to tap loudly against a tree. The skunk will be disconcerted and will toddle directly back down the middle of the trail. You can then follow slowly at a safe distance, whacking trees with your stick to confuse the skunk, until the skunk has enough of this bizarre harassment and vanishes into the woods. Do not be impatient. You are on the skunk's time.

Tip four: Carry a spider stick. If you are on a remote, deserted, overgrown trail, and you did not happen to think before you got on the trail, "My, if I trip and hurt myself today, no one will find me until I am bleached bones," but instead think this when you are six miles into a ten mile run, which takes your attention briefly off your path so that you immediately slot your toes under the lip of a rock, consequently flailing fully airborne, possibly toward a long fall into the lake, then staging a spectacularly improbable still-running recovery, you can say proudly, "Good thing I didn't fall on this stick and put my eye out."

The trail

Finally, tip five: Carry a spider stick. When you have completed your run with no trail scrapes or bruises, no badges of your trail toughness, and are walking out at the trailhead, you can use it to scrape the gluey remnants of spider silk from your person, administering to yourself the nasty scratch that your run itself did not succeed in delivering.

Doesn't look so bad here, does it? Bled pretty good.

Gah. Also, check out my dirt gaiters:

In sum: Spider stick! Enjoy the heights of summer, y'all.

Today's Tune:
Ladies and gentlemen, The Vapors!

Treadmill

2011-07-25T22:24:00.000-05:00

I don't like the treadmill. I know some people do. It's much harder work than running outside, where you can launch forward from rock or dirt or pavement. Treadmill = struggle.

Sunday I was on a treadmill for four hours, with a box of water and gatorade bottles on the floor. The grade and distance mimicked the Pike's Peak route. At about mile 10, drenched and flinging sweat, legs numb, I said, "I could stop. But I would just have to do it all over again." So I finished.

Some observations:

1) In March I couldn't run at 11% grade for three minutes. The human body is scarily adaptive.

2) This in no way simulates running up a mountain. No rocks. No high steps. But the people who know best say the treadmill is an effective tool for flatland preparation.

3) If you start saying "have to," everything looks like a treadmill.

Today's Tune:

One Month

2011-07-21T20:51:00.001-05:00

In one month, if all continues well, I'll be standing at the base of Pike's Peak grinning goofily. It'll be early morning; I'll see the sun rise about 90 minutes before the first steps of race day.

But those won't be the first steps up the mountain. Those were in March, on Ogg Road, 3/4 mile with an average 11% grade and one section up to 18%. I said: "If I hate this and don't want to do it again, then it would be stupid to spend all summer doing it."

I ran, walked, hauled myself up, sides heaving. I turned around and ran back down and ran again. When I got to the top and was disappointed that I had to get back to work and couldn't run three times, the fix was in.

I wanted the legs and the lungs that could run up Ogg Road any time I felt like doing it. I wanted that not to be out of reach.

I've been running toward the mountain ever since.

I can't prepare for altitude. I can't prepare for solid climbing. The mountain will be different, and harder, than anything I could do to prepare. You can't really know if you're ready to climb a mountain until you've climbed a mountain. But here's what I've done to try to make this proposition less ridiculous.

Get my legs used to hills. I run repeats up Ogg or the steep, scrabbly powerline by the singletrack.
Progressively longer runs, on trail and hills as much as possible. I'll be running for at least five hours. In a month, I'd be able to run a road marathon with hills. (Wouldn't want to.)
Long treadmill workouts with grades between 12 and 15%. I used Matt Carpenter's tools to create a Pike's Peak simulation with pace and goal times for myself (I'll post it tomorrow). On the treadmill I go faster than I will be able to on the mountain.
In the gym, work on my core, upper back, and do lots of step-ups.
More recently, hard intervals on the trail in my shorter runs.
Tryouts of different kinds of nutrition and hydration.

I've also narrowed my boundaries for foodie treats. Keeping things simple with high-quality fuel.

All of this could fizzle out in a bad day of thunderstorms on the Peak. There's no guarantee. But I already got what I wanted. I can run up any hill, hurting and working as anyone would, whenever I want it. My legs can connect me to that amazement now, that bodily satisfaction.

Wouldn't the Peak be a grand way to celebrate a change like that?

Today's Tune:

For Life Is Quite Absurd

2011-07-19T18:17:00.001-05:00

Twelve days from now will be the anniversary of my first big race. My raciversary.

It’s only been two years, but racing has quickly become a focus of my time and life. Some days it is like being in a funhouse: in one mirror, racing and athletics are integral to who I am now. It’s important to me to keep making physical progress, to make my body stronger (faster would be OK too).

In another mirror, they are an expensive and timeconsuming hobby, a luxury indulgence. Not essential. And inconvenient and irrelevant to my domestic life partner.

I could get just as much health benefit out of cycling, running, or lifting weights for an hour most days, without focus on goals or races. I could make domestic goals the anchor of my time management. As much as I love running or biking on singletrack, it isn’t helping us pay our bills or keep me in any better shape than if I ran and rode in our neighborhood.

I love racing.

I love being active with specific race demands as the carrot for specific physical changes.

I love my bikes.

I love my legs that I get to run around on.

I love being so in love with my time, because it didn’t used to be that way, and I know how quickly life can turn off that spigot. I truly hate that there is such a gap between most people’s lives and their being able to love their time. That isn’t fair and isn’t good. Many days my priorities give my own spouse a bigger gap to try to close. That sucks. Anyway.

I love telling you all, my seven loyal readers, about racing and riding and running and swimming and trails and dancing Zumba and whatnot. I love knowing that more than one person has joyfully thrown themselves at these things, using me as the mirror. That’s an honor.

Just please, remind me next year that if I’m committed to races in July and August, they may start feeling, to both me and my spouse, like an unpaid parking ticket.

Perspective is a mug's game; pick one. But balance is a skill worth mastering.

Today's Tune:

2011 Race 8: Shawnee Mission Mayhem

2011-07-17T22:17:00.000-05:00

3 laps, nine miles, mostly flowing singletrack, some rocky sections, one long root infested climb, one climb in the sun up a powerline, roughly 6% grade. 95 degrees, heat index 105, 5mph winds.

The staggered start was Marathon, Cat 3 Men, then the four Cat 3 Women. The start was down gravel doubletrack. I had shifted up into my big ring and on the line, the chain skipped and jammed and I couldn't get the pedal to hold my cleat as Zoolander (his cycling team promoted the race; he masterminded the course and race day) kept loudly counting down. OH THIS SUCKS I said out loud, prompting some laughs. Weird; that's how the last race started too...

Off we go! Into gear and out of the saddle to rush down the doubletrack with the leader (and winner). I wouldn't hold that pace, but I wanted to get an idea of how the field would string out, and if it looked like I was strong, get into the singletrack early.

One of the Cat 3 women, a road cyclist in her first MTB race, DNF'd pretty quick into lap 1. So all I had to do was finish to hit the podium. And that's pretty much what I did.

I had a good jump on 20-year-old, 85-pounds-soaking-wet runner turned MTBer Lexi, but she climbed faster than I did, so was with me when I hit the technical rocks and dabbed. I let her go and was about 30 seconds behind her until we got to the powerline. She was riding completely smooth.

And relative to how I rode 3 months ago, so was I. Downhills with far more confidence, floating over rocks. And then I went out into the sun on the powerline. And that was it for me.

Friends, I am a shade-growing plant. A delicate alpine flower. The heat and full sun sap me. I climbed maybe four feet on the powerline and knew that if I wanted to finish at all, I'd be better off hiking the bike up to where the trail leveled out.

On lap 2, strange things started happening. I could feel my core heating up. I constantly sucked water out of my camelbak. I started getting heat-dizzy. And anytime I was pointed uphill for more than a minute, it was like my eyes wouldn't focus properly on anything beyond 6 feet. Also my reaction times were bizarrely slow, so I snagged a couple of trees on that lap; hit one hard enough to rotate my left brake lever down. Didn't come off the bike. But I heeded these warnings and walked up the rooty climb on both those laps and dabbed or walked anything where I could get hurt if I, y'know, blacked out coincidentally with going over it.

Took those opportunities to dump water in my helmet. Drained my camelbak and two frozen water bottles in the hour and nineteen minutes it took me to cover 9 miles.

This was not so much off my predicted time for myself, but given how well I was riding (when I was riding) and how much I walked, my predicted time was probably too high. Ah well. There is zero point in saying "If things were different, I would have had a different result!"

Still, it's funny to me to have been working for 3 months on that course to be able to ride to the level of skill that would satisfy me (and did!), only to end up walking so much of it.

A couple more thoughts, then I will play you a tune that really gets me ramped up to get on the trail.

1) I am going to stop talking to people before racing! I must sound really scared because people say things like, "oh, you'll be fine!" What? Of course I will.

2) I really have nowhere to go but up with my skill level and fitness. Just about any improvement I make will make riding that much more fun. That's pretty exciting.

3) I love my bike. I mean, I REALLY LOVE my bike. I feel like when I built it, I built the rest of me.

Today's Tune:

My pal Meg turned me onto this. I am pretty sure she was thinking of me on the MTB with the line, "She's got knee high socks, what, to cover a bruise."

Not Punished

2011-07-12T18:52:00.001-05:00

I'll be missing the Prairie Punisher this year.

It was one of my favorite duathlons last year, a hot, rolling, out-of-body death slog with out and back 5Ks and a funky, warped race day energy. I'll know people who are out there racing it, while I am pacing myself alone on a 4 and a half hour trail run.

I won't lie, the six year old in me, easily distracted by shiny toys and wanting everything I want at the moment I want it, looked at the registration. Race day will be so much fun. Maybe I can make it all work, fit in the long runs and that race.

I am crazy in love with race day, I fell in love with the Punisher last year, and I know where I belong and where I want to be.

Getting ready for Pike's Peak, I've realized my lack of interest in distance running as a long-term gig. It requires an exclusivity of time that isn't attractive to me right now. And the aloneness of it begins to hurt.

But there is a deep current of euphoria, a removal from everything destructive, in moving through the woods for hours. No matter what, I believe there will now be days when my legs and my heart want to run in the woods for hours. And I will be able to give my heart what it wants.

This is an incredible gift. So that's what I'll be doing.

Today's Tune:
This popped up in my playlist when I was on the treadmill at 15% for 3 miles. I laughed out loud.

Acme Blog Post

2011-07-11T21:25:00.001-05:00

I see Wile E. Coyote everywhere lately.

He's chasing the Roadrunner as hard as he can, using every crackbrained idea, and suddenly off the cliff he goes! And for a second, he doesn't notice! He is wild and fixated, pumping away! About to plummet, and still nothing is as important as catching that bird!

And I keep thinking I'll have some tidy sermonette conclusion about this, about maintaining perspective or focus vs. tunnel vision. Something. But I don't. I'm just looking around at people desperately chasing something, could be any high, a different job, money, a sexual conquest, attention, respect, to shout everyone else down... crazily intent even as they shoot off a cliff. I'm looking at him, at her, at you, at me.

I see Wile E. Coyote everywhere.

Today's Tune
Power and cadence, baby.

Doubt, Injury, and Noise

2011-06-26T22:10:00.002-05:00

Athletes get injured all kinds of ways. If you're in amateur athletics very long at all, you know someone who is rehabbing or recuperating through something that has put them out of the game for weeks or months.

Very close to home, N. has been off the bike since February and has borne it with far more patience than I have borne my one week of strained back muscles. (Hurts even to sneeze!) After a few days of not being able to run or ride a bike, here is the fungal garbage that was budding in my head:

"What was I thinking. I am weak. I will never be able to run up Pike's Peak."

"Those are serious trail runners who do this thing! I am barely going to be able to train adequately for the distance. The oxygen debt is going to make this impossible."

"What if I've really hurt my back so badly that I won't be able to run again?"

Do you see what these things have in common? They are all absolutes. Absolutes are a stark sign of irrationality. Maybe doubt itself is a sure sign of irrationality. So hooray! An irrational thought is just noise to be ignored.

The truth is that nobody knows if I can run a Pike's Peak Ascent in this body, or the body I will be in eight weeks from now. Isn't it enough to be grateful and happy that I get to go find out!

In the meantime, heat, lots of gentle stretching, a deep tissue massage, and arnica seem to be working their magic. I ran in the deep water pool last night and on the treadmill at a 15% grade today, which felt amazing. Hung in for 3 miles before I needed to get home for another commitment, which gets me in simulation to the Top of the W's checkpoint on Pike's Peak.

Which is something that was not possible 3 months ago. And that is the truth that fades noise into nothingness. As my Granny would have said: "Don't matter about tomorrow, 'cause can't nobody take that away."

Today's tune:
Obvious choice.

Happy Father's Day

2011-06-19T20:57:00.000-05:00

My father's day chat with my dad, who was a very active young man, at 79 still mows his 3 acres by hand, and was a runner until the gout took him down. (Best thing ever said to my dad at the gym: "Hey! Mister! Did you know you run like Forrest Gump?" - a 10 year old boy.)

ME: I thought of you while I was out running today.
DAD: Were you in a race?
ME: No, I ran 15 miles today, walked a couple more. I'm getting ready to run up Pike's Peak in August.
DAD: Why'd you want to do that? Can you get out of it?
ME: I don't think so. Well, technically yes. But nobody's forcing me.
DAD: That's the kind of thing people should only do if someone forces them. There's hardly any oxygen up there!
ME: Yeah, there's no way to prepare for that.
DAD: I could barely get my CAR up that mountain! I can't imagine how YOU'RE going to do it!
ME: Well, that's what we're gonna find out.
DAD: At my most fit I don't think I would have tried anything like that! When are you doing this?
ME: August 20.
DAD: When?
ME: August 20. Not til August 20.
DAD: Oh! Well you have plenty of time then...
ME: Yeah...
DAD: To back out. (pauses) Do they give you anything for doing this? Like a piece of paper that says you finished?
ME: I think you get a medal and a t-shirt.
DAD: That's good. You ought to have something to look at for the rest of your life. To remind you to ask yourself why in the world you wanted to do this stupid thing!

This whole conversation cracked me up. He also told me that if I had that kind of energy I should come mow his lawn.

Happy Father's Day, everybody.

Today's tune, which my dad used to play as a wake-up for house guests:

2011 Race 7: KC Cup

2011-06-16T23:39:00.002-05:00

Last Thursday, it wasn't even in my head that I would do a mountain bike race on Sunday. I'm nowhere near ready, I would have said. I'm still a pedal-dropping, rock-dyslexic greenhorn half glued to my saddle, braking in the middle of tight turns.

Yet there I was Sunday. Nowhere I'd rather be. At Landahl, in a light drizzle, pre-riding. You know how people say the important thing is that you finished? Sometimes the important thing is that you start.

Gearing up, signing my name on the registration, ignoring the rain, lining up alone in the crowd — feeling the cold pump of adrenaline on my spine and in my belly, knowing beyond doubt that I'd lay out whatever I had in me, without panic — at the back of the pack, foot clipped into my right pedal, itching to race, to find out — I felt like I'd already won a big trophy. I could keep it where my fear used to be. Ha!

The horn sounded! The race started! I accidentally unclipped, couldn't clip back in, and the field rode away. "Glorious start!" I yelled to the race officials, and they laughed, and I caught up with the field at the slippery climb, where the other Cat 3/beginner racers were hiking their bikes up.

A big guy and I played tag most of the way around the first 5-mile loop, vying for last place. We were walking over the same slick rocks. I'd catch him when he'd stop; he'd ride away while I was off the bike. Most of the course was flat, fast, and flowing, with early visibility of rocky bits: wheeeeeeee! I rode happy and in harder gears. I passed the big guy in the long grassy uphill; he caught me and was on my wheel soon after we re-entered the singletrack.

Turns out, having someone on my wheel pushes me to go harder and take more chances than trying to catch someone does. I cut a slick corner with a late apex, hit a root, and flipped my bike, falling over the bars. My first endo! Excellent; so that's what that feels like when you don't break a collarbone! OK then. Back up and on the bike, no chance to catch the big guy this time. See ya, big guy.

Finished the first loop in 32 minutes, not great compared to the field but thrilling given my experience. Had a blast riding down the gravelly, grassy, uneven hill with a couple of ledges that the course marshals warned was dangerous. DFL didn't bother me; I was so happy to see myself doing way better than simply surviving, and I was looking forward to lap 2, where I could let go on the fast sections.

I had just passed the last bit of rock and climb at the beginning and I heard another first: BLLLLLLPffffffffffff. Great. My first MTB flat. Rear wheel, too, so this was going to take me for freaking ever. Bike flipped. Wheel off. Tire off. Tube out. New tube in. Fumbling with new frame pump. Pumping, pumping, pumping for ever and ever. Wheel back on and locked in. Bike flipped. Crap! Crap! The chain is twisted, what the hell did I do? Bike flipped. Wheel off. Wheel on. More air. Pump. Pump. All the while, marathon racers and cat 1/2s who are warming up call out, "You OK, hon? You got everything you need? You got a tube? You got air?" And cheering me on as they race their races. That is what happens in a mountain bike race. You are standing in tick-infested poison plants, you are smeared with dirt from collar to ankle from your endo, you are fixing your bike, and your fellow racers let you know: you may be alone, but you are not friendless.

Back on the bike! Awesome! Let's see what kind of time I can make! BLLLLLLLLPfffffff. That's what kind. I hadn't put enough air in that tube. Pinch flat. I didn't have a second tube. My tribe now said helpful things like, "You should go tubeless!" as they raced by. Sigh. OK. I will trudge out, my shoes turning to muddy sleds. My race is over. Or is it?

I remembered Draper, and how defeated I felt at my DNF. I had vowed it would take a whole lot more for me to give up, ever again. I had spent some time thinking ways I could have got myself to the finish. There was a way to do this with glory, even if it wasn't pretty.

I stripped my shoes and velcroed them to the bike. I took off my socks. And started to run. I pushed the Dragonfly, loving how light it was; I used it to lean aggressively and speed myself up. I ran for all I was worth. I ran three and a half miles. I ran barefoot up the grassy hill, over the rocks, through the gravel, down the dangerous slope, put a splinter in my foot I wouldn't feel for hours, and threw myself madly at the finishing sprint. My time: 1:59. Sub two! Sub two! I win! I win! I was more than an hour behind the woman who came in first.

But there were only two of us in the class. So I came in second, stood on the podium, and though I lost my socks (the marathoners and cat 1s later told me I'd lost them on the trail, where they were a visible race feature), I got a really cool pint glass to take home.

Today's tune:
Post race endorphin mellowed awesomeness.

2011 Race 3: God's Country

2011-06-03T12:54:00.002-05:00

Like last year, the weather flipped from April cold to hot and humid on race day. The river trails at Lawrence were lightly tacky and fast under newly green trees.

I got there early. To soak in the great race vibe? To pre-ride? No. I got there early because the night before the race I had screwed up my beautiful new bike trying to adjust the front derailleur.

I thought I’d cock-eyed the derailleur in my muddy fall at Lawrence a few days earlier. I thought I could fix it. Hey, I worked on this bike, I see how the parts work, I won’t do anything drastic.

After my “minor adjustment,” the front derailleur wouldn’t shift. Great. Game plan: I’d know mechanics at the race; my multitool could handle the parts in question; if it was unfixable, I’d race on the heavy GT Saddleback. I loaded both bikes.

Tige, who wasn’t racing, fixed the derailleur; JP, who was, rode the Dragonfly and felt my crank was loose. Yow! When Zoolander and I had built the bike, the crank had come without its spacer. Oops. JP, with his usual even humor and efficiency, tightened things down.

I owe a lot of people beers.

The race: a 2-mile run, 11-mile bike on trail, grass, and gravel, and then a finishing sprint. My legs felt elastic but I choked on the humidity and slowed to a walk, as did others. The Major MudBunny offered to run it in with me as I picked back up, but for toads’ sake, it’s a race – go on and get your PR, MMB.

The bike! This bike wants to fly fast! Passing a few people, getting that excited feeling when I near the log pile. Rider behind me. Up the logs, over! And WH—oh no—UH-OH—the bike flies forward and up! I am Evel Knievel! I’m in the air! I’m coming down on my side! I bounce under the bike, entangled in bike!

Whee. Blood on the chainring! The other rider stops. I tell him I’m OK. Then I fumble to put my chain back on. I ride. The chain falls off. I fix it. Minutes click by.

For the first time, I rode the more technical section clean and crisp. I passed three more men and a woman on the back side of the loop.

Last sprint, 100 yards, most people ran it in their shoes. Blaze of glory: I stripped my bike shoes and socks. Worth the delay, barefoot and wild, fast as I could, high kick and all! It felt amazing!

I threw myself down in the grass panting beside a couple of guys. I didn’t even recognize my bike rescuer, Tige. He laughed at me when I introduced myself again.

Zoolander and the Major, having stellar 2011 race years, podiumed. ZL pointed out the blood on my face. The cuts and technicolor bruises have since healed; the deep knots in my left calf finally surfaced and healed as well.

I figured out later that I’d fallen not because of poor weight distribution and unaccustomed speed, but because I’d clipped the back side of the log pile with my pedal.

What I remember about God’s Country 2011 is how fantastic my bike felt on that trail. Like nothing had ever felt.

Even if you told me I had to repeat the crash, I’d do this race again tomorrow. Or today. Right now.

Cookie and the Zumba Princess

2011-06-01T21:50:00.001-05:00

Once upon a time, there was a woman named Cookie. Cookie lived in a tidy house with a garden she had planted herself and a deck she had designed and built. Cookie was highly organized. She was loving to her friends and family, and the little children she knew adored her.

But there was something about Cookie that many people did not know.

Cookie loved to move.

She loved to ride a bicycle. She loved to work outside. But more than anything, she loved to dance.

One day, Cookie got an idea. She would try Zumba.

This was a little scary to Cookie. What if she couldn’t do the moves? What if she wasn’t in shape enough and got too tired? What if she didn’t belong there?

But Cookie was not the kind of person to let her imagination get the best of her. When Cookie wanted to do something, she did it, with all her heart.

So Cookie went to Zumba class. She even took a friend with her, which was brave, because sometimes it is easier to try new things in private, just in case they go sideways.

While Cookie and her friend waited in the gym for Zumba class to start, a woman with black eyeliner, curly hair, and a gray tank top walked up.

“Is this where they have the class? I can’t believe this is where they have the class. Where are the mirrors? All the Zumba classes I have ever done have mirrors. I’ve done really good Zumba classes. They have the best Zumba classes in Providence. This room is really small. It will probably be crowded. I need a lot of room for Zumba. Can you even do Zumba without mirrors? In Providence the teacher was usually up on a stage. I can’t imagine how this will work.”

Cookie and her friend looked at each other.

“I’m sure it will be fine,” said Cookie to the Zumba princess.

“I hope the music is good,” said the Zumba princess, shaking her hair. “The music had better be good. If the music isn’t good it’s just not Zumba. With a crowded floor and no mirrors and the teacher not on a stage, Zumba will be very different. I don’t know if it will even feel like Zumba.”

Suddenly, Cookie realized she wasn’t scared at all. She felt sorry for the Zumba princess, who needed every little thing to be perfect in order not to be an annoying person. Cookie didn’t know what was going to happen when she danced, but at the same time, she knew exactly what would happen: she knew she would enjoy every minute.

And she did.

She shook, and she shimmied, and she turned, and she whirled, and she laughed, and she was out of breath, and she danced more and more until the music made her feel as light as flower petals nodding on a breeze.

And Cookie’s friend saw Cookie laughing and dancing and completely forgot to feel silly that she didn’t know the steps. And Cookie’s friend began to laugh and dance with abandon too.

The Zumba princess left class halfway through. Nobody asked her to stay.

Happy to be your friend, Cookie. Thanks for asking me to dance.

p.s. In Kansas City, check out a class with our fave teacher, Wendy.

Dog Days Are Over

2011-05-31T23:17:00.001-05:00

A couple of months ago, I built a mountain bike. And no one ever heard from me again. You do the math.

I was also in an existential snail shell. I'm out, mostly, and boy, do we have a lot to talk about. Zumba princesses, 4 races, shetland ponies, flat tires, drivers license pictures, running uphill, the nature of forgiveness, soccer envy, the corn chip mudslide phenomenon... whew.

A couple new things: New sanity rule that blog posts are 600 words or less. And after the jump, as long as YouTube is out there, music. Stuff from my running playlists. Tunes that make me want to jump up and run around like the world was some hilarious impromptu duck duck goose game.

I'm here to share what keeps me going, moving, smiling. Because the world is not a toybox or playground. It's a relentless shitstorm where too few of us are fortunate enough to have raincoats, hats, and lanterns. And I really don't know what to do to except offer you my hat, swing my little lantern, and suggest that we walk together a ways.

It's a start.

2011 Race 2: Westport St. Patrick's Run

2011-04-03T05:36:00.000-05:00

This race was three weeks ago, but the beer immediately blunted memories of the experience, so it really doesn't matter that it's taken me so long to write about it.

BT, Tim, Julie, and I met up in Westport. BT loaded my bike in his truck — 10 windy but beautiful Sunday miles with no traffic riding to the race! — and I zipped his car key into my tights pocket. We posted ourselves with the 8 minute milers. No way was I running that fast, but no way did I want to in the broad, frenzied wad of green that constituted the 9 minute and 10 minute running horde. That intersection was like a fishing net tight with green octopi. No, much better to hang with pals and people watch.

Green costumery wall to wall. Green tights. Green socks. Giant green hats. Green curly and metallic wigs. One girl had fetching green bows in her pigtails and a pair of green-trimmed panties pulled over her running tights, her butt saucily festooned with the green words: I [pic of shamrock] Irish boys.

"Hey," I ask my pals at the start. "Are there hills in this thing?" They laugh at me. Yes. Evidently the back side of the 4-mile course has a couple of long hills. Excellent! Let's go! The announcer makes Irish blarney up to start time, the Star Spangled Banner is sung, and off we go! And stop. And go! And stop. And go!

The start gate congests. The course is a fine four-miler, no boring stretch, with old neighborhoods if you get tired of looking at hilariously dressed, giggling, ready-to-party runners. People waved and cheered from the sidewalks (the weather was cool but long sleeves were too much — cold drizzle last year, I hear, so if you were inclined to be made miserable, the day would have cooperated with you).

I wasn't ready to hear the mile time called out or displayed on a big red clock, and it took some wind out of my sails, because I thought I really must be running more slowly than usual, not factoring in the long congested wait at the start. Ah well. There was a moment on the uphill grade where I realized I had dressed too warmly and was a little dehydrated to boot, and said to myself, "Well, this is not pleasant," and thought about shutting it down and just shopping for vintage clothes. But then came mile 3. At 3.5, they give you jello shots. In little plastic cups with plastic lids.

Vodka gives you wings! The sugar hit, I guess. BT carried two shots across the finish line. PR'd, did our friend, running the four miles in 29:44. If he keeps getting faster like this he will be traveling backwards in time by next year.

He and Tim stayed at the finish line to watch me. One theory is that I was blazing through so fast they didn't even recognize me. Another theory is they were half-blind with distraction from being so close to cold beer. Anyway, they never saw me and it was impossible to find each other in the writhing, inebriated flux of green, so N. and I were almost into the second pitcher, hanging out with our runner pals Ryan and Jenny and meeting people around the long table, when word traveled back that BT was waiting by his truck. Locked out, because I still had his key.

After that, people kept pouring glasses and pitchers kept coming and the happy crowd inside Kelly's raised the roof, and I decided I would definitely do this race again next year. But that since I couldn't walk a straight line, I wouldn't bicycle home. And that really was up in the air.

I would've had a tailwind, you know.

How the Build Began

2011-03-29T23:03:00.001-05:00

I'd thought about building a bike even before I won the fork. I thought about it the way some people might dream of driving a Ferrari or taking their dream trip to Paris.

Building a bike, being so close to my bike that I understood each of its most subtle loads and mechanisms — this was a wonderful dream.

Friends, I can't work a corkscrew on a wine bottle.

Then I won this fork in the raffle at Spiderfest. Spiderfest is a local MTB'ers party in the fall. I'd gotten a small taste of dirt and wanted to meet people I might ride with.

I showed up with my bike, which was kind of like taking a butter knife to a gun fight... went out alone on the one section of dry easy trail and promptly tumbled on the first hill... didn't meet anyone new but managed to have an unpleasant and public falling out with one of the four people I did know... and then won the Reba in the raffle. It was the grand prize at the end of the night. I must've looked like some random soccer mom who had wandered up from her campground and won a fork, new in box. Weird night all around.

The fork didn't sell on eBay. So... why not? I looked at cheap frames online and priced components. And realized that because I had the fork, I could build a really nice hardtail for the same money as a heavier entry-level bike.

All I had to do was choke down my puritanical guilt about spending money on myself. I went back and forth finding every deal I could, developing specs. I read as much about each part and make of part as I could find. I spent a lot of time at mtbr.com, and let me tell you, there are people out there who are EXTREMELY INVOLVED with their headsets.

After many measurings of my inseam, measurements of my current ride, test stances over bikes with very different geometries at the shop, sorting through advice, and a lengthy online chat with tech support at Performance, I finally took a deep breath, clicked Pay Now, and bought a frame in January. The head tube was dented. It was the last Performance frame in my size. Discontinued. The search for a frame went on for another month, then a stretch of puritanical guilt, then the find -- an Orbea frame in my size for twice my frame budget. Do I love my frame?

Zoolander checked my specs and offered some corrections and suggestions, and I taxed my puritanical nerve at each turn. "When the hell you going to get this bike built?" says ZL for a couple of months now. We're two weeks out from the season's MTB race opener and the bike is not yet built.

But it happens this week. The parts are in or arriving. The frame and fork are at the shop. The headset will be installed and the tube cut tomorrow. To calm my panic state trying not to think of that tube cut (what if they cut too much? what if something goes wrong?), I will show off my bike parts to you tomorrow.

And that is how I came to build a bike. Why a mountain bike? Well... a) because I have all the road bike I could possibly need and then some, and b) because MOUNTAIN BIKERS ARE THE HAPPIEST-LOOKING PEOPLE ON THE PLANET.

And I want me some of that.

First Trimester

2011-03-27T22:45:00.000-05:00

Friends, I am birthing a bicycle.

I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner. I know you would have loved to share it with me, the suspense, the satisfaction, the shopping online. You would have nested with me in my growing collection of parts, agonized with me in my dim knowledge and doubt.

More importantly, you would have followed the storyline from week to week, telling your friends, and by now I would be a national blogging cult figure. These are the chances we miss in life.

But you know how it goes. You hardly want to mention what's happening during the first trimester, just in case. Then suddenly you're in the middle of preparations. It's all-consuming. And finally the week is here.

With a lot of people's help, I am building a mountain bike. N., who has not once pointed out that I am spending a good wad of our money to build a contraption guaranteed to incur medical bills.

The Groody Brothers. Pretty much everybody at BikeSource who rides a mountain bike, because they have all listened to me babble about this project and answered a raft of questions. Coach Tina, who manages the women's section there and who is taking as much care over this bicycle gestation as if it were her own. The Earthriders Mountain Bike Club -- I'm a member, but online am a lurker, so while a lot of people would know my face from the trail, they have no idea they've been invaluable. Except for Cyle, who gave me an armful of awesome lightly used tires, plus a Topeak mini pump.

And Zoolander, who is back from metaphorical Timbuktu and who has looked over my shoulder as I research parts, pointed out options, advised me on gearing, listened as I obsessed over every detail, and sold me sweet wheels. He will be midwifing the bicycle this week.

Tomorrow: the story of how a person who is so mechanically un-inclined that she cannot figure out that little sliding door-prop mechanism on the screen door decides that she will build a bicycle.

Roadie's Winter Lullaby

2011-03-14T08:37:00.001-05:00

With our recent spring thaw, I thought it might be too late to post this. Wrong vibe and all. Then winter sneezed and wiped its snotrag on us again last night.

I expect personal calls from Sofia Coppola, Emmylou Harris, and Tina Pic congratulating me on my cinematic achievement.

Bike Dream #3

2011-02-03T23:08:00.001-06:00

I am in a race, in the woods. All the racers are on cross bikes. The race is part of the summer's points series.

In this race, there are three stacked loops, ranging from easy to difficult. The riders can choose to ride any combination of the loops, passing checkpoints. We get race points at each checkpoint. The more technical loops are worth more points. But the racers do not accrue points through the season.

Our bike mechanics do.

It is early in the race and my bike mechanic is posted near the checkpoint for the easy loop. I pass him and am headed toward the intersection of the loops. I am a novice rider. Go left, and it becomes more technical than I have ever ridden. The first obstacle out there is a jump. I can't tell what my bike mechanic is yelling at me. He's yelling and yelling, but my bike is fine. I'm going fast. I can't think. Almost there. Waking waking GO LEFT.

(Whoo. You know y'all... I used to dream about normal things, like giant reanimated chicken gizzards, or Johnny Depp.)

2011 Race 1: Groundhog Run 5K

2011-02-02T22:54:00.001-06:00

The Hunt Subtropolis underground is a fine January party for runners. Sure, it may be 10 degrees outside as you trek two-thirds of a mile from the parking lot through the snow-furred streets, looking around for tundra wolves. Inside and underground, it's 68 degrees. The atmosphere is more carnival than carnivorous.

Everybody's here, from superfast freaks craving their midwinter PRs to families doing their first runs together.

I was glad to be racing with a friend, BT, who rides bikes with N. We got there a sensible 75 minutes early, before the kybo line stretched 100 people deep. Ah, Groundhog Run! You are a cruel mistress to the challenged bladders of Kansas City!

BT and I predicted our races. He thought he would run just under an 8 minute pace. I thought I'd finish in around 26:30. We were both very wrong.

Groundhog Run! 3500 souls cram into the start tunnel and hand over heart, sing The Star Spangled Banner. I lined up with Carol from Colorado and Lola from California.

"You didn't come all the way for this," I joked.

"Why yes," said Lola. "I did!" She and Carol, fast friends, are running a race in every state together. They'd done the Kansas-side 5K associated with the Polar Bear Plunge the day before, though not the Plunge itself. Groundhog would check Missouri off the list.

"Have a great race!" I said.

"You too!" they said.

I love you, Groundhog Run. Even when you hurt me.

So far when I've run 5Ks, I've started at a pace that is comfortably hard but that I know I can hold for three miles. At a mile and a half, I forget what I just ran and ratchet it up to a pace I can hold for a mile and a half. Do the same at a mile, half mile, quarter mile out, then bust everything loose for the last stretch.

Well. This little Groundhog went out fast. Before I hit the halfway point, my core heated up and gentle waves of nausea broke. I couldn't ratchet anything anywhere. But I could get some practice ignoring discomfort. I refused to let go of my speed! My legs were on their own, and they held up for me! I ran the whole race flat out, with everything I had, all the way. And watched people gently loping by me, looking easy. Finished in 27:18.

And immediately learned how much I never again want to pin my satisfaction to my time predictions. I ran a great race, more slowly than I thought I would. And then almost threw up on Carol's shoes. She had turned back to cheer me in after she and Lola took 1st and 2nd in the 65 and over bracket.

I can't wait to see the pictures from the last 100 yards. My face contorted as though I were birthing a gila monster.

Being the kind of runner who cheers the next one in, now that is something to pin some satisfaction to. Time be damned, I want to celebrate YOUR great race.

And I would've cheered at the finish line for BT. But he finished in 22:15. With a 6:58 first-mile PR. After "relaxing" in Vegas for a week. Holy smokes, BT.

I will just cheer for you a while now.

Love

2011-01-10T22:56:00.002-06:00

Tonight's post isn't about mountain biking or running or racing. It isn't about gear or athletic mentalities. It isn't about stuff I've learned or done.

I am missing Robert and Joyce tonight and just wanted to say so.

I miss my sister. She died nine years ago but it doesn't feel that long. I still imagine that she's close by, the way I always felt. But then she's not. I miss her poking fun at me. I miss her simplicity. I miss her playfulness, her lack of interest in embarrassment. I miss seeing her love the children she taught. I miss her face and the thousands of looks in her eyes.

She knew I loved her but that is still the only thing I want to tell her.

I miss Robert. He died five years ago but it feels so much longer. I don't know how I could have felt so much missing in only five years. I miss his laugh. I miss us making each other laugh. I miss his stories and his asking for stories. I miss his mock exasperation. I miss his love of the silly random mental fireworks and fizzles that human civilization spews on occasion. I miss his music. I miss us putting our arms around and hugging each other.

I loved him with all my heart, and he loved me, and that bond was as certain as the core of the earth, and everybody who knew us knew that. I would tell him that now, if we could stop laughing.

There are people you love. Tell them.

Don't worry that it will get old. Don't think it will lose its meaning. Don't worry that they will lay claim to you. Don't worry what they will read into it. Love them. Don't categorize people into less than loved. Love your acquaintances. Love your friends. Love things about them. Find a way to tell them, in words, out loud.

Not for fear of regret someday. The love we give is the only real thing we carry around. In loss it's the only thing we keep. It's why loss feels so heavy. We're looking for a place to put our love.

So maybe if we practice giving it away lightly, that will help. Maybe we should just love a lot. Maybe that is what we can do while we are missing each other.

2010: My Psyche Has Stretch Marks

2011-01-02T23:01:00.004-06:00

I've been in racing sports now for 18 months. This is not long enough to know anything about year-to-year improvement. This is not long enough to know anything except that I'm having a lot of fun and feeling great.

Someday, I'll want to look back and see the highlights reel. For the record...

January 2010
Two-a-day workouts, lifting, running, swimming. Ice and snow galore. Changing the "power to weight" ratio. Pricing road bikes and dreaming of test rides. Groundhog Run: "How does it feel to be a top-20 badass?"

February 2010
Running running running. Picking up distance. Ran to work and back home, 7 miles uphill both ways. Running at lunchtime in the very cold. Running hills. Running trails. Narrowed down the road bike choices.

March 2010
Rock the Parkway half marathon. Crossed the finish together with Kris Pall, an old friend I hadn't seen in a long time. We raced for it pellmell. Lots of single leg strength workouts. Still thinking of myself as the recovering eating disordered person, the chunky girl who doesn't look like she should be doing this stuff.

April 2010
Run for Mercy 10K, Trolley Run, God's Country Duathlon. Faster faster faster. Back on the bike after months of intermittent trainer time. Commuting to work on the hybrid. Also, first mountain bike ride in the God's Country race in Lawrence. Thank you Brian Lopes and Lee McCormack. We purchase Gogo, the Madone. And I am gifted a steel mountain bike.

May 2010
Kansas City Triathlon, BikeSource Duathlon. Beaten by the waves at KC, ran like jolted with 500v at BikeSource, podium. Made the infamous wetsuit video. Weather still crappy. Like a delayed February. Morning rides nonexistent.

June 2010
Hospital Hill 10K. Missing strength work. Open water swims at Shawnee Mission Park, running trails first. Acclimating to heat. Road rides around the west side after work. Road rides down south on the weekends. Starting to stretch distances on the bike. Riding a couple of times at the river trails. MTB bruising begins.

July 2010
Du Draper Twice: podium on road, crashed and DNF off road. Prairie Punisher, strong on bike, walked in the heat of second run. WinforKC tri, like homecoming, fantastic field. Feeling like MTB might be a hubristic, age-and-ability-inappropriate mistake, but loving it and not wanting to quit. Riding long on weekends. Brick workouts. Found my "inner iguana" for the hot weather. One of the year's best rides, around Lake Hefner with the Bunnyman.

August 2010
Riding with pals. Spin Pizza rides. 30, 40 milers. Sunflowers to Roses. Won a fork at Spiderfest (local MTB seasonal party and ride — took all my sick-to-the-stomach courage to believe I belonged there and show up with my crap bike, where I knew no one, two days after I was told I didn't have any business in mountain biking the way I was going about it) and got called a "mojo vampire." Weird month to say the least. No more open water swims. First real look back at the year this month; I felt beaten up.

Between racing, the rapid cold-shock introduction to racing mentalities, athletic hierarchies, and cliques, gear acquisition and the new economic stresses thereof, huge new time commitments to athletic activity, being in a very different body, completely changing my nutrition, having my brain chemistry change, being around people socially a LOT and liking that for the first time, the unannounced amputation of a singularly valued friendship, constantly diving into and through physical fear (and vertigo!) on the MTB, lots of bangs and bruises, riding through the warps in home life and marriage as a result of all these changes... yeah, my psyche has stretch marks. Thank God N. has my back. The rest of the world can go fry an egg; I just want to be with him. No more multisport racing this year. Enough.

September 2010
MS 150 in Oklahoma with N. Fantastic rides, beautiful weather, reconnecting with a loved friend and kick-ass bluesman, Greg. On the mountain bike, on rocks. I fall a LOT. And I have to work hard to let the voice in my head dissipate that says I have no business on a mountain bike. Because it feels more wonderful than anything, even if I suck and can't ride very much of the trail at all. Running trail to build for the trail half in October. Turn in a 15 mile trail run with a couple of recovery walk intervals. Takes me for freaking EVER.

October 2010
Whoo! Running in Bangalore, riding in Belgium! Broken field, both places. Trail half canceled. I ran around slippery rocks at Lake Perry anyway, thanking my lucky stars there was no race. Was NOT ready for that elevation in a race. Tour de BBQ in Kansas City, windy as all get out. Graveyard Run with Kelly Grace.

November 2010
Back in the gym. Fall/winter doldrums: nutrition slips with holiday goodies. Running trails at lunch. Falling on the mountain bike but not walking as much. Decide to build a mountain bike and start looking at frames. My self-image is changing. My body not so much right now. I am seeing my body finally as its muscles, skin, fat, shape, strength, instead of as a work of salvage.

December 2010
The doldrums pass but not the holiday goodies. I nosedive into the beginning of a compulsive eating episode. Pull out of it by riding a bike around the ATV tracks by a gravel pit instead of attending the office holiday smorgasbord. Running trails and road, but there seems to be no default activity other than MTB. Riding at lunchtime, working on skills and confidence. Weather mild and dry. As the year turns, thinking of races and other off-the-books adventures that sound like fun... and who cares about wind chill! Let's go do the New Year's MTB ride on the fast and frozen river trails. Cheers.

Heart rate and psychosis monitor

2010-12-27T23:42:00.001-06:00

Santa brought me a Polar RS300x heart rate monitor for Christmas. (I don't give a flip about the brand or model; not a gadget gal. But people searching on brand names sometimes fall down this rabbit hole. Is that you? Stay for beer.) Anyway.

Maybe you did not know that the Polar RS300x is a miraculous device. According to the Polar web site, once I have taken an initial baseline reading, I can set the exercise type to "Ownzone," and after my warmup, the monitor will gauge my physical and mental state and set my heart rate zones accordingly.

You heard right. The Polar RS300x can gauge my mental state. There isn't much room on the face of the wristwatch to display a complex message, so it will have to distill into a short phrase, like the one it displayed labelling my fitness level after the baseline reading.

"Elite."

But of course my heart rate monitor immediately detected that I was for a moment delusionally self-congratulatory. Next time out, it will probably set my target rate at 150 percent of max. To compensate.

Is that all you think about

2010-12-22T17:00:00.002-06:00

Rhythm, smoothness, power, prowess. Ain't got it, but I love it when I see it. Also.... WOO HOO we are past the winter solstice! Daylight is 1 second longer than yesterday!

MTB ride looks like...

Expert: Bringing the trail to orgasm.

Sport: Copping a solid feel.

Citizen: Gynecological exam.

Novice: . . . Vagina dentata.

Can I get a witness

2010-12-17T23:13:00.004-06:00

I have never been a social beast, but wow, I gotta meet more people who ride mountain bikes. Riding with others looks like a great vibe. But it's not about not wanting to ride alone — it's just too bad depriving others of the comedy.

Pine Sapling
Rocky, twisty uphill. Grinding it out, by god not giving up, even with hopelessly low momentum. Reaching out to put a hand on the tree. Except it is a 3-foot-tall pine sapling that whips completely to the ground. It does exactly the same thing the second time around when I go horizontal on the same rock and reach for the same little bitty tree in exactly the same spot.

Delusions of Bad-Assedness
Put my tires on trail I had not ridden: an easier section of Violet, the more difficult loop. No feet down, just rode it, wheeee. Look at me, I am such a badass. I ride to the powerline and turn around. Because if I keep riding downhill, I'll have to turn around and ride up. And, ow, no, I don't wanna.

Pine Sapling, the Sequel
Oh, great ride! I am riding almost everything. I am STOKED, even hypnotized. Up and using my body to move the bike around corners, less brake. Pedaling through rocks and not having to calm my brain down; it just stays calm today. Crazy bounce uphill once, body going a different direction from the bike over every rock, and up, on, over, WHOO! So I feel like, y'know, a conquering marauder when I see I am going to ride successfully through a trickyish rock garden at the topmost point of the trail. I am all KINDS of self-congratulatory. And I ride directly into, over, high-centered stuck, THROUGH an 18-inch pine sapling. Pines 3, Pai infinity.

Ma'am, Do You Need Assistance?
I have a water bottle on my bike. Problem is, unless I stop, I don't reach down to grab it for a drink. Frankly, I'm not coordinated enough yet to drink and drive. And I don't want to stop. I don't realize I'm thirsty until I hit a long, rooty climb and am making WAAAA-AAAAA-OOOOO noises toward the top. My sides heaving. I guess I look and sound like a dying Pony Express horse. Because the rider coming toward me: "HEY! ARE YOU OK? WHERE'S YOUR WATER? YOU NEED WATER!"

No, my friend. I need (a) to lay off the holiday treats, (b) to get my bike out on the trail more, also increasing the odds of an audience to my comedic bicycle stylings, and (c) clearly, Santa to bring me a Camelbak. Cheers!

Booster

2010-12-13T21:16:00.000-06:00

I hoped to minimize the bruising. I wanted to look good in my Christmas party dress, and blackened legs might spoil the effect.

So I stayed off the nearby rocky trails last week and drove further to the flat river trails for this valuable lesson about hesitation, roots, the velocity of steel bicycles, and the ginzu knife mojo of eggbeater pedals:

Yes. Not five minutes into the ride! This, and the giant rug burn on my forearm from my long sleeved t-shirt. I was sooooooo going to be the prettiest girl at the party! Ha!

Not too deep, but one of those you know is going to be ugly because it doesn't bleed right away. Lots of guys on the trail that day riding up behind me and saying, WOW. SOME CUT. IT'S CLOTTING UP OK. HOPE YOUR TETANUS IS UP TO DATE.

Um. It is now.

Thanks, Walgreens' Nurse Practitioner. I'm all set now in case of lockjaw, whooping cough, and diptheria.

Of Hypocrisy and Results

2010-12-08T00:03:00.003-06:00

"Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike... Our nervous system isn't just fiction, it's part of our physical body, and it can't be forever violated with impunity." - Dr. Zhivago

I have lately found myself groveling before something I dislike. I have been groveling to the imaginary tyrant of "results."

My central belief in changing my daily life has been: "Do what is good for my body and what happens, happens. Don't focus on 'success'; explore satisfaction." No weight loss goals. No pace goals. Instead, explore levels of effort, observe, enjoy.

This belief was easier to hold when I had not yet seen changes. When I had not become stronger and faster. When I had not competed in races. When people had not begun to notice my changed body and reward me with attention for it.

Seeing "results" entangled me with desire for results. Much like that time I got both legs and an arm twisted in the seaweed at open water swim: after desire comes obsession.

Results are an addictive illusion. They give us something to point to, a way to share our pursuits, a tangible surface to enjoy. They are the sheen on the soap bubble. But results do not prove one lasting thing about us, they aren't a complete picture of our effort, and for god's sake, they don't confer superiority.

A person can observe change in herself. She can see whether specific changes increase or minimize her bliss. She can with choices influence the direction and forcefulness of her change. I've lived that. I know that with change I can have experiences I couldn't previously dream, much less dare.

But "results?" "Success?" Delightful mirages. Cotton candy, incredibly sweet nothing. When not yet possessed, they are fantasy. When gained, they evaporate and must be replaced by new obsessions. And yet they are seductive habits of thought.

Over the past few months, I've been plotting to get faster, charting the trajectory of how many pounds may yet come off, and indulging in guilt for not working with focus to become physically stronger.

This is the sound of groveling: If only. If only. When I get there. When I get there. I have to. I have to.

I can't hold contradictory beliefs without exhibiting hypocritical behavior. And I don't want hypocrisy to become the default. Ever. Because hypocrisy, while part of being human, is a deforming habit.

Hypocrisy is the worst kind of lie. With it, cruelty successfully masquerades as concern, greed as charity, jealousy as interest. Hypocrisy destroys trust. It makes every truth look like a lie. It makes friendship impossible.

So what to do? In the abstract: Be honest and gentle with myself; be unafraid to discover my hypocrisy; keep learning.

And in the concrete: Don't imagine run times. Run. Don't fantasize about being a stronger cyclist. Ride my damn bike. Don't imagine how many pounds should be lost or what my body will look like in two months or whenever. Enjoy the body I'm in, to the fullest, in every way. Drink a lot of water and eat high quality fuel in quantities that keep energy high.

And laugh, hard and often, at guilt.

The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

2010-12-06T00:12:00.003-06:00

No, not Christmas, though I do love twinkly lights. I mean: BIKE TRAINER SEASON. (What's a trainer?)

Yeah, I'll be taking that back in six weeks when I'm sick of the cold and the short days and dream of long rides on spring mornings. (Yes, I will whine about how I want my life to be MORE magical and pampered.)

But today I was so excited, it felt like birthday morning. It's winter! Time to be on the bike trainer, on Gogo the beautiful road bike, working from spinning to suffering to satisfaction.

I am not barking mad.

It's about options. I enjoy riding a bike and running and doing strength exercises and yoga and swimming. And my body wants its satisfaction, through intensity, endurance, and reflex challenge. It wants this satisfaction every single day.

My body responds with good happy chemicals if I give it a balance of stresses over time. So, options — ways to combine the activities I enjoy to satisfy my muscles at a range of intensities.

For instance, Friday I rode my mountain bike for a couple of hours, then ran for half an hour on the trail. This weekend, it was 20 degrees outside. My legs didn't want a run, I wanted recovery, and there was no way I could in good conscience leave N. alone in the kitchen with the paint buckets while I'm off to the trail for god knows how long. I mean, I'm the one who ripped down the wallpaper. But anyway.

Today, my legs, hips, and obliques begged me: Pleeeease we want to feel alive. What to do? Look! The bike trainer! Intensity right here in my house! Forty minutes of high-cadence pedaling, some out of the saddle stuff, and one particular interval that made me yell out loud with the effort — ow! OW! Make it stop! No, no! Keep me going! Wow! Concentrated effort, BOOM! ENDORPHINS! LIKE CHAMPAGNE TO THE BRAIN! BLOOD TO THE MUSCLES! PEDAL STROKE FROM THE HIP! WORK! SWEAT! POWER! WHOOOOOOOO! BIKE TRAINER!

Instead of regular stretches I did a cool yoga sequence afterward. That's a whole new combination of activities I hadn't tried before — a whole new option!

As I progress as a cyclist (by which I mean acquire sufficient cold-weather and night-time gear), I expect my outdoor riding season to extend through more of the year. I hope new worlds of options on bikes keep opening up for me, season after season.

But today, I love that the season has brought the bike trainer back into my routine.

It can't compare to a spring morning surge on an open road. But like every option, it welcomes embrace — the only way to squeeze out all the satisfaction! — so winter, bring it. Here we go.

Bicycling in Belgium

2010-11-26T23:26:00.007-06:00

"Now I understand why Belgian cyclists are the best in the world," says N., marveling, inspecting the street surface. N. loves the Tour. He loves bicycles. He admires Eddy Merckx. And N. is seeing pave.

Pave. (Say it: PAH-vay.) Cobblestone streets. With three-quarter-inch-wide gaps that suck down hesitant wheels, granite surfaces to slick up in the lightest rain. Pave is a jaw-breaker of a ride. Seriously. My jaw hurt from the clenching to prevent my teeth rattling.

Pave under construction

A woman rides pave, drinking a hot cup of coffee. A man pedals quickly, preoccupied, both hands busily texting. Commuters casually puff their cigarettes. Two small boys in school backpacks chatter as they downhill steep pave, one boy on the saddle and one boosted on the handlebars. We think of the Tour riders protesting this year's pave stage on their rain-slippery, bladelike tires. I squat down and run my hand over the surface of the stones. My god, the scope on this planet of what is commonplace.

Oh, yeah. We're gonna ride.

We don't ride in Brussels. Not as many people do, from the looks of it, compared to Bruges and Amsterdam. Brussels is a dressed-up city. People were accessorized. Brussels made me wish I'd brought an actual handbag with me on this trip.

We wait for Bruges.

Bruges! Canals and bell tower and gingerbready architecture and horse-drawn carriages and everywhere, bicycles. Centuries-old buildings to pedestrian scale for miles and miles. Like being in a big dollhouse of a city full of cheese shops, bakeries, and Jupiler signs. Bruges is NOT a dressy place. Because everybody is on bikes. Bruges people look a lot less fussy about a wrinkled trouser leg or slightly windblown hair. Nobody wears a helmet.

We rent bikes at the Train Station Bike Rental. The rental guy's English is colloquial, and he's super friendly. He's selling us something in a competitive market, but also he seems like a happy guy. Meeting a happy guy at his work is a nice way to start the day. I don't care if it's Belgium or Kansas City, I don't really want to ride a bike that some sour malcontent puts me on. Happy rental guy fits us on our city bikes and shows us how the horseshoe-shaped locks work. The lock clamps onto the back rim and immobilizes it. You don't have to lock the bike to anything. Just leave it locked in one of the hundreds of available bike racks in the city and walk off with the key in your pocket.

The rental guy shrugs when I try the women's frame and say I'd rather have the men's. This is evidently not a common request. The women's frame is awesome if you're wearing a skirt, because you can swing your leg through the frame to dismount. I am not wearing a skirt. And as always, the women's frame makes me feel like I'm sitting in a kindergartner's desk.

The bike rental guy agrees with Rick Steves that riding out to Damme is a nice way to spend a morning. Take the road that rings the city; the turn to Damme is four windmills past the train station.

A picture of rightness in the world

What you should know about riding bikes in Bruges:

You will be carrying a map. It is not to scale. It is close to life-size. The streets in Bruges are actually only a sixteenth of an inch apart. If you are patient and have a keen appreciation for the ridiculous, you will love riding in Bruges. You are going to miss a LOT of turns. You are going to yell things at each other like "TURN HERE!" "HERE?" "NO, BACK THERE!"

And then you will pretend to be doing something you will call "navigating" in a fruitless trapezoidal pattern, when what you really want is a place where two cyclists can pull aside and look at the map, which is something that Bruges is not set up for because the Brugeoises know where they are going. And you will be looking for this respite from traffic while your teeth are mercilessly clack clack clacking and you are yelling "WAIT!" and your riding partner is yelling "WHAT? LET'S TURN HERE!" And all of this is out of this world wonderful, because you are RIDING A BICYCLE, in traffic that watches for you! without a helmet! in street clothes, no lycra! completely free! in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

Anyway, Damme. This is the bike path to Damme on an October morning:

Pretty, yes? We saw a group of roadies in full kit. We saw people walking their dogs. We saw people fishing in the canal. We saw a sign by the side of the path, 70 KM. We were in no danger of breaking that speed limit, and it really didn't dawn on us what it was there for until the SUV passed us. On the bike path. That was a road. Wacky Belgians.

Pedaling around Damme took all of ten minutes. Damme has a church and some overpriced restaurants, but wonderful huge clean restrooms in the visitors' center. The visitors' center is on that count not to be missed.

Back to Bruges and the ~~dental shatter~~ gentle lilt of pave. We pedaled to the church to see Michelangelo's Madonna and Child. To the grocery store where we had bought our Mort Subite Kriek the night before, then to Minnewater to picnic and watch the swans and watch tourists watching the swans.

Circuitous route around town, up and down narrow streets, and the wrong way down a heavily trafficked one-way and no place to turn around. We pedaled into the main square with a city bus coughing ten feet from my back fender and me yelling at N., "Go! Go! Go!" and him yelling back, "What? Where? What?" and me yelling "Holy crap! Go! Go!"

Some of the most fun on a bike, ever. But Belgium will require a part 2, and not just because riding from Ghent to Bruges would be a blast. See, I still haven't had the heart to tell N. that we missed seeing the Eddy Merckx memorial metro station in Brussels. Sweetheart. Next time.

Ride Your Damn Bike!

2010-11-10T22:34:00.018-06:00

As I have mentioned before, I yell things at myself from time to time, mostly on the empty trail. I don't care if you hear me yelling things. I relish my role in The Big Ridiculous. But allowing that some folks are there enjoying precious time away from obnoxious noises, empty trail it is.

Anyway. You also know that I, a 43-year-old with almost zero historical sense of center of gravity, am riding a mountain bike now. I ride a trail of easy-to-"challenging less-easy" singletrack. What's "challenging less-easy"? Pointy rocks loosely clustered. Fat tangle of roots. Plenty attemptable for a beginner; helps if not freaked out when falling. If an MTB ride is foreign to you, it would likely seem to you an insane proposition that anyone should hurtle puncturable flesh over this stuff on a wheeled conveyance.

But that is what I do and I am having a great time. My phase-one approach as a beginner who is definitely not a natural: (1) Teach my brain awareness and relaxation. (2) Focus on specific physical aspects. (3) Just ride the bike. Ride everything I want, nothing I don't. It's paying off.

Don't get me wrong — as a rider I suck. That's not an issue for me; I have always been patient with fundamentals. As a human being having a blast and feeling great, this is working out pretty well. I feel great. I leave every ride wanting a next ride. That's some sweet payoff.

And it really does help to say things out loud. Like when I ride up to a bunch of rocks and my brain says "oh for the love of pete, please no," I can agree and walk or roll through with a foot down. Or I can override, usually commanding firmly and out loud, "Ride your bike. Ride — your — bike."

Mantras work by refocusing, but this one also helpfully tells me exactly what I'm supposed to do to stay upright: keep pedaling. It also makes me remember that hey, no big deal, I am not negotiating peace in the middle east. I am just riding my bike, which is a fun and wonderful thing.

On days like today, I get annoyed with any faltering and yell it out loud. Approaching the rock garden I know I can ride but suddenly hesitate at. "JUST RIDE YOUR DAMN BIKE." And roll through. Navigating the short uphill burst through rocks into the intersection of two trails. "RIDE YOUR BIKE, DAMMIT, COME ON, RIDE YOUR BIKE!" Continuing into rooty, rocky twists through the close personal space of some big trees. My brain says whoa. I don't want to stop. "RIDE YOUR BIKE. JUST RIDE YOUR BIKE."

I am through that stuff, and that's so cool. Ride your bike. It works. I am pleased but my legs are wiggly and fumbling. I walk a sparsely rocky, slight grade I've ridden before and will ride again on the next loop. Zoolander has been out on the trail and he is zooming toward me. Rocks where I wobble, he glides. I stand aside to watch what's possible.

"Hey," I say. He must have been pulling in a little extra breath, because he roars at me like a drill sergeant. "RIDE YOUR DAMN BIKE!!"

ZL's so loud there's not even any Doppler english on it as he passes, and well, shit. Busted. I am pretty sure he has no clue why I start laughing.

I didn't realize

2010-11-07T22:57:00.000-06:00

I didn't realize it's been almost a month since I've shown up here. Um. Oops. On we go. And tonight I really shouldn't be here; I should be sleeping as it's a fast-paced work week ahead.

Here's what's been going on.

1) N. and I visited his family in India and then went to Brussels, Bruges, and Amsterdam. I have (more) stuff to tell you about running and about riding bicycles in Belgium. And about drinking beer in Belgium.

2) Kelly Grace, whom you may remember from previous posts, is run/walking 5Ks all over Kansas City. PARTICIPATION, people. That's the name of the game. I'm gonna be preaching this at you a LOT.

3) I am getting different responses to my changed body than even a few months ago. Less "good for you," more "you're looking good." I'm starting to get used to people seeing me, smiling at me, affording me more benefit of the doubt as a human being. I remain more intrigued than gratified.

4) Nutrition, with which I have been vigilant for the past 9 months, went all to seed (or is that grain) on the trip. Bread, sugar, more bread... pulling in my boundaries again, simplifying what I want.

5) I've been swimming, lifting weights, trail running, and riding the mountain bike. The bike — any bike — is more comfortable and homelike than ever before. What changed? Belgium. I'll tell you, I promise.

6) I fall and wreck on the MTB. But I'm riding with fingers around the bars more and less on the brake. And it's so much fun! Riding that bike is so much fun!

That's about it, really. Oh, and I drilled down to my basic life principles. Want
'em? They are:

Autonomy. Empiricism. Participation. Compassion.

All in all, a good month. Very glad to be back and writing now.

Bangalore Run

2010-10-10T00:39:00.001-05:00

I'm a runner awake before dawn, before the neighborhood muezzin sounds the call to prayers. The dulled-pearl light of Bangalore morning filters through the gaps between thick-walled houses and apartments and the dense urban tree canopy: mimosa, palm, mango.

By evening, these sedate main roads will be a weaving, bleating traffic nightmare. Now, women in sari sweep the storefront pavements with short straw brooms; girls in jeans and kurta stroll blankly; men on huge, heavy steel bicycles pedal down the erratic pavement.

The run feels loose, fast, ready, down the long slight decline of 100-Foot Road. I hurdle down. Up. Down. Up. Innumerable half-foot curbs at street crossings and driveway entrances. From sidewalk cobbled of interlocking brick, I dodge onto the street around a slow pedestrian or a tree or mud or crumpled concrete construction rubble. Down. Up. Skim over wide skids of graveled orange-brown dirt. Some dirt is the color of cantaloupe. Some is the color of chai masala. A fine orange-brown grit polishes the surfaces of road, curb, sidewalk. Loose slabs of concrete tip underfoot.

I serpentine a six-mile grid of residential streets, the cross streets with their grand old houses cushioned in palm trees and blooming spathiphyllum, the more prosaic main streets striping like the teeth of a comb north from the spine of 100-Foot Road.

Packs of dogs with golden fur and golden eyes snuffle at streetside trash piles. Enormous fuzz-headed crows pick at banana peels and rancid crumbs in the garbage. Dogs trot in the street, unconcerned. People wake, go about their daily business. Walkers stroll the rain-slicked red brick pathways around fenced, flowering pocket parks. A bright orange carpet of limp, fallen flame of the forest blossoms releases perfume between my feet and the orange-brown street grit.

In narrow streets, women hang their washing. Water heats in blackened iron pots over open cookeries. I am running through their living rooms. I carry a full bottle of clean water in my belt. The clothes on my back and feet cost more than two months of wages on this street. I consider my form. I try to run as well as I possibly can. Bicycles and small motorcycles nestle against a wall. A boy shaves looking in his motorcycle mirror.

The city smells of last night's traffic, trees, morning cooking. Bangalore humidity can stifle, but today the air is warm, barely moist, no breeze. I am so thankful to be running. I think about the first runs, 30 seconds at a time, slow, heavy, six miles unimaginable. I couldn't know then that running in Bangalore is why I should keep running. The last two years of work gets me this: trail shoes on orange grit. Hip. Thigh. Shoulder. Spine. Transmission of power, contact with earth. I am so thankful.

Another runner passes, a young man in a track suit. We make eye contact: a dark flash with no readable message. We run on.

Man of Steel

2010-10-01T21:40:00.001-05:00

Hero of the trail award for this week goes to Mark. I don't know Mark's last name. But he saved my ride Wednesday night.

I know. What's the big deal? I'm only a beginner. I run the orange loop way faster than I ride it, for Chrissakes. I walk my bike so much over rideable stuff that I ought to put it on a leash and rename it The Fluffy Little Poodle.

Surely it can't mean that much to me. Surely it's not so much of a ride spoiled when a beginner's saddle fails, dislodged from its brackets, leaving her pushing her bike a mile back to the parking lot, pausing every five minutes to try everything to jam the saddle back on, trying to convince herself it's safely rideable, on the prettiest fall night in a long time, with perfect dry trail and barely any leaves fallen, when she's been riding road for weeks in a disciplined effort to get ready for her long ride commitments.

Surely someone who's only had, say, 20 rides on her mountain bike can't keenly feel the disappointment of losing out on the 21st ride. Friends, I have never wished to be young again until now. I wish I could be young again and on trails every single day. Maybe that is what differentiates humans: we are capable of sincerely feeling disappointed by physical impossibilities. Ah well. On we go.

I'd been dreaming of this ride. And even with the tree smacking going on that day, I was riding better than the last time I was out. Confident, aware of death grip when it started to seize up, not clutching at brakes (hence the increased tree smackage)... throwing momentum at uphill roots, and for the first time seeing and riding skinnier lines to avoid bashing a rock or two. Every ride, a few feet more of the rocky stuff looks like invitation instead of hyperventilation, and I ride through more stuff without the feeling of barely controlled panic. (I cannot WAIT to get back out to the river trails.)

I am starting to enjoy the ride, not just for the fact that I'm doing it but really, awesomely, the riding itself. When I ride, not just hanging on, but learning how to move me and the bike. Until that is I go slinging myself around a tree trunk and throwing the bike down sideways with me still on it.

That's when my saddle seat popped off the bracket. How? How?! HOW???!!! See, the seat fits onto two steel prongs on the back and over the metal nose on the front. If you put the seat onto the prongs, there is NO WAY to force it forward over the nose. Physically impossible. If you pocket the seat over the nose, there is NO WAY it will stretch backward and fit over the prongs.

This is where Mark comes in.

I wheeled the bike into the parking lot at the same time Mark pulled up in his truck. He looked like he might be an MTBer. He looked relaxed. More than that, he was very tall and looked like he might be godawfully strong.

"Hey, 'scuse me... I don't want to impose on your ride time, but I wondered if you might have the hand strength to help me out with this?"

Mark inspects the saddle. He checks it against the brackets and notes the seeming physical impossibility of what has happened. "Um," he says. "Um. I can't figure out. This doesn't look... Wow. How the heck did this happen?"

I am the last person who could tell you. But I am getting used to hearing people say this about The Poodle (sorry, bike, you are stuck with it now).

Mark is nothing if not ingenious. He has some 4x4s in his truck bed. He lays one out the bed of the truck and lifts the saddle bracket onto it. I put all my weight on the 4x4 and Mark presses down on the bike until... yes... until he manages to bend steel with his bare hands. So the saddle will fit onto the bracket again. And so I can ride in the remaining hour of daylight.

"Dude, I could kiss you!" I say. He looks disconcerted by the possibility. Well, I can look a bit of rough trade I suppose. I will amend. In case you are reading, Mark — dude, I owe you a beer.

Scenes from the Mother Road

2010-09-28T22:37:00.004-05:00


Just before rollout. Downtown Tulsa is a cool hangout. But I couldn't bring myself to eat at El Guapo Mexican Restaurant. "Would you say I have a plethora of pinatas?"

Oklahoma people #1: The guy in Tulsa who pulled up alongside us as we walked around downtown and asked if we knew how to get to Cain's Ballroom. N. told him we just rolled into town ourselves. The guy pointed out his truck window at N. and said, "HEY, man. WELCOME."

Beer review: Choc Oktoberfest. Light and lemony. More of a chaser for a beer. Sort of a Vacation Bible School beer.

Favorite rejoinder: The OSU Sports Medicine bus almost nailed Judi as it had to brake hard to avoid oncoming traffic. She heard the brakes but didn't see what happened. I told her later that dude, you almost made national headlines. Her response: "Well crap, not again!"

Oklahoma people #2: The mail carrier in Chandler. Gave a little fist pump as he crossed a front yard and yelled out, "Good work! Almost there!"

Best roadside sight: Rolling out of Tulsa. Cowboy in his cowboy hat riding a gorgeous huge American Paint Horse down the median. Evidently people do this, exercise their horses alongside the highway. Or in the middle of the highway. Just loping along.


Me and Judi. We met on the ride. She has the coolest frame, built by a small independent shop, and painted with iridescent auto body paint so it alternates teal, purple, blue, green, lavender, depending on the light. We had a good discussion on the dorkiness v. utility of the mirror attached to my shades.

Judi helps me commemorate the furthest I have
ever ridden in a day. That's 50.2, not 52. So
I guess that makes my head the zero.

Beer review #2: Choc Bier de Garde. Our server told us it was their Belgian beer, but it turned out to be an amber Farmhouse ale. Notes of honey and walnut. Pair it with your apple pie. Not bad but not the same as a gold-medal-winning dubbel.

Beer policy review: Oklahoma does not sell cold beer in liquor stores and sells only 3.2 beer in convenience stores. So you can drink warm good beer or cold Shinerbock. (Or you can be patient, N., and wait for the beer truck to open up with the free, delicious Choc Last Laugh on tap. Jeez.) Anyway, I am sure this beer policy is a primary contributor to the social ills of the state.

Oklahoma people #3: The farmer with the bushy gray moustache, beaten suede work hat and gloves, mowing his front yard on his John Deere riding mower, honest-to-God straw grass in his teeth: "Great day for it, y'all!"

Elevating legs for a few minutes
after day 1. Skygazing.

Random episode in a public park: We were sitting with Greg, with whom we go way back and who drove out from Yukon to hang out with us in a public park watching us drink Shinerbock and all of us telling stories.

Group of high school boys shows up and begins attiring themselves in RenFest garb. Those who have no RenFest garb go shirtless which has, um, a charming authenticity all its own. They commence practicing battle with their bow and foam arrows and foam cudgel and foam swords and foam electric guitar. (I don't know, you tell me.)

Every so often a girl in a purple dress will come over and drag the boy with the huge fro off for a "conversation." She will badger and gesticulate and he will look miserable. She will storm off. Ten minutes later this will happen again. Finally she yells, "If we don't f&#k tonight, this is over!" In front of a playground full of little kids whose parents do not look at all fazed.

Also, the Jim Morrisonesque shirtless boy came over and Morrisonesquely grinning and posing challenged N. to come out and join the fun. He offered him foam weaponry and everything. N. played the "I just rode 70 miles on a bike" card.

Buster and his owner. At the rest stops, we met volunteers who live with MS. HR 1362, the National Neurological Diseases Surveillance System Act, requires HHS to develop a system for collecting data to count the number of people with MS and Parkinson's. There is no available, accurate national count and the agencies that already collect this data do not share it with each other.

Oklahoma people #4: The grade-school girl with the Ramona Quimby hair at Rest Stop 5, waving us into the gravel turnoff. "Right here! Right here! We got a snack, we got a potty, we got a pickle juice! That's my mom up there, her name's Teresa, she has MS! Good job riders! Wooo!" I told her she was awesome and she said, "I SURE AM! And so are you!"

The bagpipe corps played us in at the Capitol. They had six songs but they were all really good songs.

The Mother Road: MS Ride 2010

2010-09-28T00:10:00.001-05:00

N. and I spent the weekend in Oklahoma on the MS Ride, "Great Mother Road" edition. The ride starts in Tulsa and finishes in Oklahoma City, covering 138.8 miles of Historic Route 66, mostly smooth gray road with wide shoulders. N. and I had never spent this much time on bikes together. We've left the house together on bike rides, but I am usually looking at N. as a sliver of man and bike receding in the distance.

It was our first bike vacation. Or, as N. put it, "Two days of 70 miles uphill into headwinds." Potato, potahto.

The money we helped raise goes toward research that is aggressively improving the quality of life and longevity for people who live with multiple sclerosis. If you ever have the chance to do the MS ride, do it; if you can, donate. It immediately helps people who are toughing out much harder rides in life.

I'm not sure what there is to say about the ride itself. 1000 riders, more than half in teams; extremely well-marked route, a small army of volunteers standing at 138.8 miles of turns; well-stocked rest stops staffed by seemingly tireless people; police presence at intersections in the larger towns.

The route is flat. There were things we called hills but "gradient" is probably a closer word. Long slight inclines, mostly, as the elevation gradually rises from Tulsa to OKC; a set of rollers each day bookending the overnight stop in Chandler. The Oklahoma MS ride is 3 to 5 hours, depending on your power, of steady high-cadence pedaling, plus rest stops.

What's to say? You spin. You breathe fresh air, punctuated not too often by farm odors. You look over rolling, lush, rugged prairie; into ranchland dotted with black cattle that look like boxcars; through thick post oak woods; down into creeks and rivers lined with rock and trees. Elsewhere there are scenic views more majestic. But Oklahoma has beautiful land. Calming, quiet, untamed land, stretching out to the horizon. The gray road cuts through it. Land, sky, bicycle. You spin and keep spinning.

If you are fortunate, then like me you will roll up on someone who is not only riding at your pace but who is wonderful company for 100 miles. In my case, this is Judi, on MTB and road bikes for 16 years, loving everything about cycling. She rides in a much hillier part of the state and does bike tours in utterly fantastic places around the world. She powered past me on downhills like she was on greased rails, and I feathered past her on the climbs. On the flats, we told stories and laughed. Spinning spinning spinning.

N. took off on day 1 after Judi and I hooked up, but not before saying one of the most romantic and magical things of our entire marriage. We were rolling along side by side and the Palace Cafe team was about 200 yards ahead, working together really well. N. turns to me and says, "Let's go catch those guys."

Some of you will not see the big deal there. Some of you will completely understand.

We caught them.

On day 2, N. rode with me and Judi most of the way. I don't really know how or why he did this; it's difficult to ride slower than your pace. For FOUR HOURS. Wow. My favorite part of the ride from both days was a long false flat where Judi and I were lined up behind N., both of us silent and pedaling all out to hang onto wheels, working our tiny pace line for a half hour. Judi and I laughed at the rest stop; we were both a little tender and had wanted to stretch off the saddle but neither of us was willing to lose N.'s engine pulling our combined 300 pounds of women and bikes across the great state of Oklahoma.

You wouldn't think "windbreak" to look at him. And on day 2, wow, was there wind. The temperature had dropped 30 degrees overnight, plus another 10 of wind chill. At 2 AM, we'd woken up with our tent rattling in a whistling wind, clouds streaming across a full moon which was centered, Apollo-13 style, in the tent's triangle window. Both of us thought it and neither of us said it: CRAP. We have to ride in that in the morning. And it just kept getting colder and colder.

We hadn't brought jackets or arm warmers. We shook like chihuahuas from the time we got up until about an hour into the ride. N. has fewer insulating properties than I do. I was pedaling a lot less quickly than he was. The first hour was a painful slog, north over rollers into a frigid north wind under overcast skies and over pavement that was cratered so badly (in two cases, an entire lane carved like the Pacific Basin) that someone, not the MS Ride crew, had spray-painted, "Fuck this road! This is shit road!" on the remaining road surface.

Finally we turned south; the sun came out and the sky cleared and the variable wind swirled around us the rest of the day. Crosswinds and pavement cracks but nothing to curse at. It's Oklahoma; once it was sunny, the wind felt homelike; I've leaned into that wind walking; I've stood up against that wind. This was a moderate version of the wind I knew. We caught tailwind enough times to feel really lucky.

It was cool to ride a bicycle over the miles of road I've driven so often that I already had pet names for some of my favorite curves and stretches. It was SUPER cool to do it without legs screaming for mercy. It was cool to ride into Oklahoma City, my city, past the zoo and museums, through neighborhoods I knew. It was cool to make the last turn onto the grand boulevard, the capitol building and dome looming square and center, and ride in with bands playing and people clapping.

N. braked and held up at the very last second so he and I could ride over the finish line side by side. Big smile.

Would I do it again? You bet. But I'd do it with a team. And if you're considering the MS Ride as your first long ride and live in the Midwest, consider Oklahoma. The weather can bite you, but the route is friendly to any cyclist and the people even friendlier.

Single leg

2010-09-16T21:16:00.000-05:00

I miss Trainer Kevin. He doesn't work at my gym anymore. We send the occasional text message back and forth. I'm going through the workouts he put together for me last year: single-leg work, compound movements, core.

The single-leg stuff this week consists of a single-leg bridge on the exercise ball, single-leg band rows, and a single-leg combination where I stand on one foot and curl weights up then do a shoulder press. I'm trying something new with the standing single-leg movements.

Here's how I was standing last year during single-leg movements. (Blurry pic but you'll get the idea.)

Having my knee raised to the front helped me keep my balance when I couldn't do a single-leg toe touch without falling over.

The idea behind single-leg work is that it supports the single-leg activities of running and cycling. So why not reinforce the posture of those single-leg activities? Not so easy to mimic the cycling posture. But when standing on one foot I can certainly reinforce the running posture.

Knee under hip, leg dangling from core.

I don't know whether this is an approved technique, but you do what you practice. So why miss a chance to memorize better form? And maybe strengthen the exact muscles required to help maintain that form.

Why improve?

2010-09-14T23:52:00.006-05:00

Update from yesterday: feeling much better. Took a couple days rest, laid off the soy milk, watched out for sugar, drank a lot of water, followed through on a lot of tasks. Feeling primed to move around fast and play in the morning.

I use the word "play" advisedly. It doesn't mean I'm not making my body work hard. It doesn't mean a lack of purpose. It doesn't mean half-assing my time. I use the word "play" to remind myself I'm not running, biking, swimming, lifting weights, and learning new bike skills because I'm obligated to.

Hey, I'm not obligated to even get off the couch. I'm not obligated to improve at sports. I'm not doing this for survival or to feed my young. I'm not sponsored or representing a team. My identity is refracted more through participation than performance (though that may change with time).

I run, bike, and swim because it's fun and feels good. The hurt of pushing myself feels good. Trying new and even scary things feels good. Tiring my body feels good. Competing at my limit feels good.

But there's obligation, there's unconsciousness, and there's play. This is play. I could have all that good feeling without any organized attempt to improve my performance. In fact, the more organized and the more focused on performance, the more I sense obligation rather than play. And obligation doesn't motivate me.

Why, then, do I want to improve, both at multisports in which I expect to race and those sports, like mountain biking, in which I may never race?

I expect different answers year after year as I learn more about improvement itself. I hope, for instance, to continually better integrate focused improvement into play. But here's what I've got today:

To have the most fun I can. Swimming is a good example. The better you are at it, the harder you can work it in the water and the more tough and powerful your whole body feels both in the water and out; do it poorly and you fight the water and go nowhere and it's exhausting with little reward.
A sense of accomplishment and pride. At some point there are diminishing returns on each new challenge's finishing accomplishment. Though the sense of accomplishment is of course an illusion, it motivates me in short bursts to keep doing things that promote my general stability and wellbeing.
The desire to use my potential. No.... that would have been true up to just now. Just now I see something. The determination to use my potential. Let's do it that way.
A relentless curiosity about improvement itself. About the nature of change.
And externally validating factors, which are natural to want I guess though unreliable and littered with dicey logic. Not so much validation to shore up my delicate self-worth. (You pretty much have to hit me with a bat these days to dent my self-worth. And even that just makes me question my worth to you, not me.) But I want to earn a credibility among many levels of athletes, which comes with time and proven dedication and commitment. Also, come to find out, I like being looked at with interest. I know, I'm just as surprised as you; I used to hide from personal attention. That was my M.O.. I'm warming up to it fast. Anyway, people look at you more when you do something well, or at least with confidence and enthusiasm.

That's my list. I really want to write some brilliant wrap-up paragraph here, but I haven't got one, and I want more to get to sleep. So I ask you a question: In what moments do you enjoy your greatest sense of accomplishment?

Why ask why?

2010-09-13T21:56:00.002-05:00

Little kids start asking the endless string of "why?" questions at about the same age they figure out they can soothe themselves by playing with their genitals.

I have no idea whether the two are related in small children, but I thought I would go ahead and make the connection for you before I publicly spend myself asking and answering some "why" questions of my own.

My string of "whys" started this week with physical distress. Every day, about four to five hours after I woke up, some kind of hormonal reaction started spiking, culminating in anxiety and unbearable tension in my head and chest, an iron maiden of white noise. Eventually, and conveniently enough for my work day, it would subside after about an hour, but not before reaching a sharp pitch of familiar distress.

It was the feeling I always had before a compulsive eating episode. It was the physical feeling I used to medicate with food. And it was hard as hell to ride it out and not medicate it now, physically painful to the point where I was mentally begging not to be in my body, begging to be able to let go.

Anybody who tells you that getting past an eating disorder is a simple matter of willpower is full of shit. Imagine it. (And I know some of you don't have to imagine.) I used to wake up every day knowing I was going to feel that horrible anguish at some point in the day, for some percentage of the day, and not know how to make it stop.

It is some kind of victory now to know, in the throes of a frightening sensation like that, where to find a small, completely calm island in my mind and body. Where I can gently ignore whatever rampaging thoughts and feelings, look at what's happening dispassionately, and say, "Well, this is some kind of horrible hormone spike. No matter how bad it feels, it's temporary. I don't have to react; I can stand to suffer a while."

Why was this happening? Was it something I had been eating — maybe the soy milk? Was I drinking enough water? Is it because I haven't been sleeping well? Cyclical fluctuations exhibiting new effects? All the above? (Worse yet: Is my body so screwed up that it is always, for the rest of my life, going to backlash with this kind of torment every time it reaches a given level of body fat? After all, that's the pattern to date.) I really didn't want to roll the dice on feeling this way even one more day, so rather than play with one variable at a time I attacked on all fronts that I could control. And the spike diminished significantly.

It may be completely gone now. I hope so. But in its wake I am self-soothing with "why" questions: Why am I spending so much time and energy building a more athletic life? Why do I want to improve at the sports I race in? Why race? What do I want to excel at in sports, if anything, and why? Why do people pursue excellence anyway, and what does "success" in amateur athletics mean?

Certainly the answers aren't important. Anytime you ask "why," you can ask "yes, but why??" to the answer. It always reduces down to "Because that's just the way it is." At which point you realize you could have spent your time ACTUALLY considering how to improve and excel or better, ACTUALLY improving and excelling.

I know that's how it will play out. I also know that I really wanted those answers on hand to repeat to myself when I was on the teeny tiny calm island riding out the Horrible Horrible Hormone Spike. I really want those answers firmly in my head the next time my endocrine system makes my brain compute, "medicate or let go, those are your choices."

Cross examination

2010-09-08T23:26:00.011-05:00

I am looking into all the ways to have fun on a bike. I want to improve my balance, confidence, physical poise, and body sense in general and specifically on a bicycle. All my life, playing around on bikes has always looked like the most fun anybody was having in normal life.

Putting the Boulevard Cyclocross Clinic on the calendar seemed like the most natural and unnatural thing in the world, at the same time.

N. went too, a cycling adventure not yet checked off his list. "I'm kind of really scared," I told him in the parking lot. Cyclists in team kits were whizzing around. Orange cones were festooned around the grass of the park. N. would rather I were cool and fearless. Fear is friction, a drag force. He makes a face. "It's just a field," he says. N. has been riding a bike since he could walk. Also, he has the build and balance and freaky binocular vision of a feral cat.

"Yeah," I say and make a face back and laugh at the whole thing. Falling is not scary. Sucking is not scary. My body being unpredictable, not being able to tell what it's about to do in space, is very scary to me. But so what.

Scary is something to move alongside, not something to run from.

We listen to a primer on cross bikes, wheels, and tires. Expensive featherweight Zipp wheels are passed around for us to ogle and covet. The beginners follow Theresa and Mark down the hill and behind a huge sand berm where cones are laid out in a big circle on the grass. In two groups of about twelve riders, we practice dismounts and mounts.

Drills: Get some momentum, stand on the left pedal, clip out of the right, then move the right leg over the bike behind the left, then back again. Pedal and repeat. Touch your foot to the ground. Push off with your foot a few times, then swing your leg back over.

Here are the results of the drills:

Cross Burn

This is what a human leg looks like after multiple contacts with a rotating tire. Apparently I have no idea how wide my pelvis is or how far I have to move my hips or even where my tire is located. Things To Learn And Practice. Strangely, it was easier to do the full dismount than to ride standing on one pedal. I am just very glad I didn't rip up my only pair of tri shorts.

Our teachers said mounting — jumping on the moving bike — would be harder but I didn't find it so, perhaps because at low speeds it did not involve continuous abrasion. I've been practicing throwing a leg onto the saddle and over and finding the pedals since last winter. Here my wide, flexible hip and cushy thigh is perhaps less of a liability.

Finally, we rode the orange cone line snaking around the park. Riding around twisty grassy stuff as fast as you can is a lot of fun. Kid stuff. And who couldn't use more kid stuff? At one point about six of the experienced cross racers swooped from behind and rode all around me then blew past on a curve. Blur of team kits and bikes! Grass and dirt under tires! Cool!

Back next week for the women-only night. Looking forward to it (and to some public park dismount practice in the meantime).

Oh, and... N. of course was brilliant. Looked like he had been riding cross for years. He probably could have ridden one of these and made it work.

Lost and Found

2010-09-06T23:20:00.003-05:00

Riding a bicycle is, for me, a subtle and pervasive addiction. The more I ride, the more I need to ride. Four nights out of seven, when I am falling asleep, my legs give a hard involuntary twitch on invisible pedals.

Running, however, has been full-on central-lined dopamine and delicious neuro-peptidical bliss. Until, that is, this spring and summer.

I was running plenty as I moved into multisport season. Lots of four and five mile road runs in the mornings and hot, evening trail runs of whatever length I could get between thunderstorms and the demands of other brick workout legs.

But as the weeks went by, and though I was getting incrementally stronger, it felt less and less like I'd actually been running. My runs were slower, most likely because of the heat and accumulating fatigue from racing. The slower pace never concerned me much; what troubled me was dulled endorphins, missing exhilaration, and a growing expectation that runs would end without the amazing sense of purification and pleasure.

Running, especially on trails, was tinged with vacancy and disappointment for the same amount of work, and I couldn't figure out what I'd lost.

I might have found it now.

One morning last week I stepped out into the darkness. Fall is coming early here. The air was cool and smelled like damp earth. I didn't make up my mind where I was running until I got to the corner of my street. I wanted hills. I didn't know how far I was running. Somewhere between five and six miles. I didn't know how fast I would be running. As fast as felt great, keeping legs easy, not pushing into pain but well into work. The finished route was five and a half miles with 175 feet of climbing... 9:45 pace, a minute faster than the last time I ran these rolling hills. My head felt clear, my heartbeat strong, my breath deep and rich. I still didn't know why this run felt so much better.

One evening last week I was more than halfway through a 5.25 mile trail run and realized how conservatively I was running. I was holding back. I was steady and workmanlike and on track to finish my run at a reliable cadence and pace. But I had time to hear the voices in my head. I was picking my way through rocks. As though I was afraid to fall. This is not the way I learned to run trails.

WHAT THE HELL, said a voice in my head quite clearly. I was surprised that it wasn't my Inner Ass-Kicker's voice. Among all the voices up there, it was simply mine. It — I — went on: This is not the way I ran when I first loved running trails. I ran fearlessly, holding nothing back. And I ran Violet in 21 minutes, far weaker than I am now. When did I start conserving myself on the trail? When did I start concerning myself with pace and consistency to the exclusion of hammering the trail, flying over it, ripping into it? And I'm surprised there's something missing when I run?

I stopped running for a minute. A voice of reason said, "If you run hard like that you'll blow up and have to walk. You'll finish in better time if you keep your heart rate from skyrocketing and your pace steady."

Here is what I say. Every minute doing what you love is precious and not to be taken for granted. You have to know what you want and put those minutes to work to get the most of what you want. Past a warmup, I don't really want to run a mile of trail conserving myself for some later mile. I don't even want to do it in the trail half-marathon in October, though I will to get a better overall race time. There is no guarantee of any mile in the future. I want to hammer and fly and rip.

My brain wants me to do this, too... as soon as I started running faster, it began to process rocks and send my feet flying into friendly gaps and onto flat springboards.

And no, my legs and lungs can't keep up easily with my brain's preferred pace. If I run hard I may have to stop or walk. It's worth it. My legs and lungs will keep catching up to my brain; they responded beautifully last winter to trail intervals; I don't know why they wouldn't now.

Even if they don't, so be it. Running at high cadences, stripping preconceived ceilings of pace and expectations of time, I'm flooded with endorphins, my mind is clear, and I am running. Animal. Simple. Worked. And it feels GOOD again.

My God, does it feel good.

Good signs

2010-08-20T00:24:00.012-05:00

I have finally lost count of how many times I have been on a mountain bike since my first ride in April. Four months, somewhere between 12 and 15 rides.

The two trails I'm — let's not say familiar with — on a nodding acquaintance with are the Lawrence River Trails and the Orange Loop at Shawnee Mission Park. River Trails: flat and fast, beginner-friendly trail, with one technical section. Orange: relative to my skills, 55% easy (minimal roots or flat rocks at most), 35% intermediate (more challenging lines; rocks and big roots), 10% hard (rock gardens or rocky uphills). Not completely beginner-friendly, but engaging. I run Orange and love it.

I haven't been out to the river trails in a couple of months. The last times I was there I didn't ride well. Death gripping the whole way, clipped-in falls, freaked out by one thing and another. And until last night I hadn't been on the MTB at all since my wheel-bender at Draper.

But now triathlon season is over and I won't wreck an expensive race with an MTB injury. Highs are in the 80s and low 90s, down from the high 90s and 100s; I could road bike but not much else in that oven.

My attention is turning to skills and strengths. Nothing looms on the race calendar. Like last year, what I want immediately is a long sweet interlude of play, to forget goals and performance, no stopwatches, no expectations to live up or down to.

The brain and body want to weave themselves together seamlessly. And I know how to do this: GO PLAY. Run a long way, picking the route as I go, not looking at time. Take Gogo out in the first bluegray light of morning. Swim for no purpose but to feel the water. Run on trails and stop to breathe and see the woods. And now, new entry, ride on trails.

If last year is any sign, some of my best progress will happen while I'm playing. While I'm not measuring myself against anything. While the lid is off and anything is possible and nobody even knows what I'm doing out there.

What does play on the MTB look like? It looks a lot like walking the bike right now. But it won't always. Up to now, every ride has felt like survival — hanging on, staying upright, pushing through, facing fear. Ride everything I can to show myself I can. I've ridden 85% of Orange and fallen down the other 15%. But I wasn't learning much except that I could survive.

Last night and tonight, I walked a lot of stuff on Orange that I had already ridden. My intuition told me to ride only the stuff I could approach with confidence, walk the rest. While on the trail, I wasn't thinking anything but "Now I'm riding" and "Now I'm walking." But I'll pick apart for you the reasoning under the intuition. I didn't do the reasoning first. It always starts with intuition, gets cross-checked with observation.

Why would my intuition tell me to walk my bike over stuff I could ride? Because I've lived with my brain a long time and I know how it works.

My body (including my brain) is not very good at some of the basic things required for mountain biking. Quick, specific responses. Relaxing while powering. Confidence during adrenaline rushes. It has never had to learn them. But my brain is very good at teaching itself how to learn.

So far, I have only allowed it to learn survival. Such a big lesson that it hasn't had space to learn how to ride or read the trail. It doesn't even know HOW to learn that stuff yet.

OK, brain. How do you want to learn to command my nerves and muscles to move around the trail on this bike? 'Cause that's what you're going to do. Brain said: TRY SLOWING DOWN. SHOW ME WHAT YOUR RIDING WITH CONFIDENCE LOOKS LIKE. I'LL FIGURE IT OUT IF YOU SLOW THE HELL DOWN. AND STOP SHOCKING ME WITH CHEMICALS EVERY FIVE MINUTES WHEN YOU RIDE SOMETHING MORE RUGGED THAN I CAN EVEN COMPREHEND OR REMEMBER ACCURATELY.

What that actually sounded like in my head was, "Why don't I just walk a lot a few times."

So last night, at square one, I rode the sections of trail with no obstacles and walked everything else, including some flat rocks and rooty sections I could have ridden in survival mode. Slow, easy gears. Letting my brain see how easily the bike rolls over everything, letting my brain see that I can get on and off the bike any time I want. Letting my body and brain get a good grip on the physical data of confidence. If it didn't look easy to my brain, I didn't ride it. But as I pushed the bike through, I would see, "I can ride this." And I would let my brain have a good look.

Tonight, same scheme. I don't force myself through anything. (See, brain? We can stop any time we want.) Ride what looks easy. It was weird how well it worked; might be a fluke. More stuff that I walked yesterday fell into the "of course I'm riding that," total confidence category. I didn't even notice I was riding bits of the "want to walk it" sections until after I was through them.

Today I moved around more on the bike. Again, intuition. But I understand what's going on, that I'm letting my brain feel how my weight moves different ways over the pedals on the easy roots and rocks and what the bike does in response. Feed it that data, try enough things with intuition and intention, and I can trust my brain to learn what my body should do to get the best ride. I don't even have to think about it. Which is making these rides a lot more fun.

I hit a few rocks that were unpredictable and caused me to adjust quickly to keep the bike upright. Survival. I took a couple of lines that got me into trouble. I stopped and walked the bike back to look at the better line, then walked through it.

I walked plenty, partly also because I am having trouble clipping in and out and need to alter either my cleats or my shoes themselves.

Who knows how I looked to the MTBers out on the trail. That much walking looks like a bad night. More than one asked if I was OK because I was off the bike at a rideable section. "Oh yeah!" I said with a big smile. "Great!" And to the last one, they all grinned and said back, "Okay! Have fun!"

Riding the trail clean, when I can do that, will be fun. And if I know my brain, it will have me riding better far more quickly and with more confidence this way than if I force it to process and latch onto skills when it is overwhelmed with what it perceives as survival.

It is a good sign that today when I walked through rocky sections and into intermediate stuff, my brain said, "Wow, my bike wants to ride this. My bike wants me to ride it here." It is a good sign that I was laughing and letting my hands relax by the end of the ride. It is a good sign that I was conscious of braking. It is a good sign that I wanted to get back on the bike, always. It is a good sign how I rode that last rooty uphill, accelerating, alert, eager.

And it is a very good sign that I really want to go back to the river trails now.

Bruises

2010-08-13T22:32:00.000-05:00

The Leg Lump is a hematoma, I didn't get back on the mountain bike this week, and I'm still a little freaked out by complacency. (Me to N.: Come with me tonight to watch the meteor shower. N: No, it'll be late; we won't get to sleep until one. Me: Fine, you stay home and get your beauty sleep, but I'm going, I'm not sitting around getting old treating my life like it's a doctor's waiting room, it's SHOOTING STARS, IT'S WORTH A LITTLE LOST SLEEP! N: Where are we going to watch?)

A hematoma is nothing to worry about unless you tend to hit your head against things. (Ahem.) Every bruise is a hematoma, blood spilled from your blunt-force-busted capillaries and spread out under the skin.

Leg Lump is a clot of escaped, dried blood, still chockablock like Bran Flakes with iron and essential minerals. Eventually the bloodstream will reclaim the cells. And someday after I stop falling so much on the bike, I will forget Leg Lump was ever there. Because that is the way things go, freakout then forgetting.

I ran trails a couple of times in the mornings, avoiding the 100 degree afternoons and frankly, avoiding bike falls. (Running trails is not the best way to avoid falls. If I hit my head, I was probably running when it happened, unless you count smacking headlong into the sliding glass door at the library, like a bird into a windowpane. I think I have to count that.)

Anyway, I'm enjoying not having visible bruises for the first time since March. Nobody stopping me in the gym locker room to gently inquire about my domestic situation. Nobody wincing. And except of course for Leg Lump, no painful spots.

But I haven't been on the bike since the Draper race, and we've got highs in the 80s next week and trails that might be dry by Monday, so it's likely my legs will soon be colorful again.

Why is it worth it? Because even now, even clumsy and halting, for stretches of a few seconds in every ride, everything — bike, trail, power, balance — sort of snaps into place, and those few seconds feel more right in more ways at once than anything else ever has. If I keep riding, maybe someday those seconds will be minutes. Or hours.

MTB bruises, a junkie's needle tracks. But that's not a fair comparison; I'm not in that deep yet. I could stop anytime I want.

About That Swim

2010-08-09T22:32:00.001-05:00

Franzie greeted me with a huge smile and big hug at the WINforKC triathlon finisher's party last week. The first thing she asked was, "How was your swim?" Her smile dimmed maybe a half watt when I told her my swim time. And she went into full-on analytical mentor mode.

It is one of her finest modes.

"How do you plan to work on that?" she asked. Which is how a mature, seasoned athlete follows up. No comforting pat on the shoulder, no pretending. And there's no BSing Franzie about swimming.

We'd met at our very first WINforKC group workout last year. Zip and Franzie and I were the only three who showed up for the bike ride. All three of us were on mountain bikes or hybrids. We rode the bike path and found every dead end in Lenexa, and Franzie fixed my dropped chain. Then we ran part of the bike path and got to know each other, ended up sitting in Zip's Tahoe outside a coffee shop talking for a couple of hours.

Franzie played with the National Women's Sevens rugby team and is an elite-level swimmer. Her peak workouts in the summer are around 4,000 yards. She trained for and completed the WINforKC triathlon last year on a bum ankle. She's tough, smart, kind, and knows how to cut through the crap.

"I've gotta start from the beginning," I said, and laid out my plan. August, nothing but kicking and body balance. No kickboard. Just gliding, rolling, streamlined, getting the feel of water and my body. September, keep gliding and kicking, adding lengths with the stroke. There won't be much swimming in October for scheduling reasons... November and December, start drills, increasing yardage, and a little speed work.

Franzie nodded. Not a bad plan. "What do you think about when you swim?"

I started in on pressing the chest buoy. She shook her head. "It's simpler than that," she said. "Just think about your body in a straight line. Don't worry about anything else. That's all you need to do."

It works. When I start off a kick set gliding, my hips are dropped and my whole body sinks as I breathe. I think about my body in alignment, especially my spine through my neck, and up I go to the surface. Magic.

Since Franzie knows what she's talking about there, I'm going to believe the other thing she said about my having a 13-minute 500 meter, easy.

Lump

2010-08-08T23:54:00.000-05:00

I have a lump on my inner thigh. I believe it is a hematoma, nothing too much to fret about. I tell you that right away because "lump" is a terrifying word.

I found it Friday night. It was kind of hard to miss as it was poking up like Mt. Fuji. I pressed it. It was hard and hurt like an insect bite. "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT," I say to N. He pokes it. "OW," I say. We stare at the lump for a minute. Every few seconds one of us will poke it.

When we get bored of this we shrug and go to sleep. But it's the first thing I think of when I open my eyes Saturday (followed closely by: "I wonder if N. cares if I borrow some bike socks this morning; all mine are chafing me").

Cartoons would be a better way to start a Saturday morning. Eggs and coffee. But no, I start my day with Leg Lump, and denial of Leg Lump, and rationalization of denial by saying I can't do anything until Monday when the doctor's office opens. I have a bike ride in an hour and I don't appear to be indisposed. Just a little lumpy.

I press at Leg Lump throughout the day. (That is how I googled it later. You can get a surprising amount of information from the search term "Leg Lump." Much of it though about dogs and hamsters.) Is it receding? Am I just imagining it is receding?

By the time we go to the movie that night, I've gone from denial to sick in the pit of my stomach. I don't know anything about Leg Lump. I don't know what will happen next. I am helpless.

Because here's the thing. I'm not special. I'm not different. It doesn't matter if I'm talented or have big plans. It doesn't matter how much I love being alive. My potential doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how much I want this not to be cancer. Cancer is random. At this point I'm just like everyone else who's ever found a lump and is in the uncertain limbo before they hear that word from the doctor.

This can happen to me. This can be what happens next.

And suddenly my daily life pisses me off. What the hell are we thinking, not laughing every possible minute. What the hell are we thinking playing in the shallow end of our lives, watching TV, treating our lives like a waiting room. Potential. WHAT THE HELL ARE WE WAITING FOR.

I think of all the people who are in hospitals or in doctors' consultations, hearing this same news. Everything in tumult. Everything suddenly wrong. I start playing out in my head what happens next if I go to the doctor Monday and he orders a biopsy.

Damn. I don't want to wait until I find out what's killing me to start living like I mean it.

This morning, Leg Lump had markedly receded. Still there, shifting and softer and less sensitive now. It dawns on me that it is at the site of bad bruising from the Draper crash, and that at the center of that bruise was a hard spot that never felt like a normal bruise. Most likely this is a hematoma, a pocket of blood that got released from where it was supposed to be, perhaps the muscle, and is moving around a bit and, one hopes, dissipating.

I'll still call the doctor but am feeling much less at the edge of the precipice now... even if the truth is we're all on the edge of the precipice, most of us with our backs to it.

Precipice.

Mountain bike.

This week.

Then and Now

2010-08-03T22:47:00.004-05:00

Change, how it happens and how we perceive it, is interesting to me. This past year, I didn't realize along the way how much stronger I was becoming.

I sort of realized I was becoming someone who expected more than to finish — who expected to race well. This really sank in when I wasn't happy with my WINforKC triathlon time. (I don't know who could be too excited about a 19 minute swim except for the sheer glorious stubbornness of it.)

And then I compared my results from last year to my results from this year. I stopped feeling disheartened. Do new things; get new results. Maybe not the ones you expect, but new ones.

Some of you will appreciate data. Some prefer pictures. Here's a bit of both.

WINforKC triathlon statistics - 1 year comparison

(Wooooooo-hoo, look at the change in running form!)

Race Report: WINforKC 2010

2010-08-01T23:57:00.004-05:00

About two minutes into the swim, my goggles filled with water. About five minutes before the end of the swim, one of the shirtless guys on the kayaks yelled: "Ma'am! Are you OK!" It was an utterly exhausting nineteen minutes in the water, during which my hips dropped, my heart rate rose, and my spirits, against all odds, did not flag.

That's one thing I'll remember about Saturday's triathlon. But it's not the only thing.

The WINforKC tri is hands down the best-run triathlon event in the area. It's the biggest women's triathlon in the Midwest, and shows no signs of letting up without sacrificing quality. This year, 850 women signed up; 636 finished, including some of the area's fastest, strongest athletes; 450 were first-time triathletes.

The energy in this race is tremendous. To see so many women lined up waiting for the swim start and hear their stories; to hear the crazy cheers when the first runner came through (many of us were still waiting to start the swim); to see the faces of the runners gritting it out in the heat and then the incredible smiles across the finish line... races like this are at the heart of triathlon, just a massive display of achievement.

And the weather cooperated, which is always nice. Gray clouds and a cool breeze just before the swim, clearing to a blazing hot morning.

At 7 AM, the vast shoal of pink-capped women funnels down the bike path into the grassy swim staging area. Pre-race instructions. We group by the swim minute signs. Nobody groups by the 20+ minute sign. I group at 14 minutes and think better of it, move over into 15. My pal Jen groups into 14, thinks better, bumps to 13. (She had an awesome first-timer's race: 1:35 with a walk-run. She could have bumped further up on the swim. Way to go, Jen!)

I stagger a bit on the sand waiting for my time-trial start. The starter says "Whoa!" and props me up. GO! Into the water. Dive. The swim starts strong, feels good. Smooth stroke. Hips high. This will maybe not be so bad after all. Awwwww.... crap. OK, at least lake water in my goggles doesn't burn like chlorine. And the Smithville water isn't as heavily saturated with fertilizer as the SMP water. Not too bad. But I go almost vertical to sight, hips down, not coming back up. Every six inch drop in the hips translates to 2.5 times the frontal drag. I'm fighting the water, and it's winning. Not much traffic, but a swimmer belts me hard in the right goggle after the second buoy turn. I get slower and slower, more and more tired, my goggles fuller and fuller of water, and by the time the kayak boy expresses his concern, I can't see the shore at all.

Better form would have made the leaky goggles a minor nuisance instead of a major contributing complication. I've got work to do. My main regret is that with my goggles full of water I couldn't actually see any of the shirtless kayak guys. Damn.

Anyway, no panic, enough strength to tell the kayak dude that I'm fine. Breathing steady and deep. Keep the stroke moving. When I finally hit sand, I belt pell-mell for the shore and up the mats. I just want to get to the bike. Tina Fleecs cheers me up out of the water — wow, it's good to hear her voice, mostly to prove that my cognitive function has not completely waterlogged.

I'm breathing heavily, utterly drained, and my sides hurt. No slowing down. Plenty of time to work it out on the bike. Out of transition in a hurry, clipping in. I take off like the hounds of hell have a taste for my blood already in their mouths. At mile three I realize I'm going too hard but it's too late. It will just have to hurt really damn bad.

Nobody passes me on the bike. I pass everybody. That's cool. Granted, because of my slow swim, most of the riders at this point are newer athletes on heavier bikes. But not all. From the time I clip in until I get stuck behind the farm truck riding the double yellow at mile 9, I stay in the pressure cooker. It hurts. Quads burning. Sides still stitched. Manage to suck down a bottle of water and Emergen-C and a gel (which unbeknownst to me got partly smeared on my face so I looked like a four-year-old with chocolate pudding drool. My race pics are going to be FANTASTIC).

Looking back, I could've spent more time down and aero, but was riding upright to breathe for the first ten minutes. So my swim cost me on the bike too. Will you just look at all the room for improvement for next year.

I had predicted a 35 minute bike for myself, and came in at 33:32. At our post-race beer and debriefing that afternoon, I crowed to the Major MudBunny (who had the race of the day, 1:18, absolutely demolished both the swim and the bike even though she also got stuck behind a farm vehicle) about my improvement on the bike. She reminded me that I was on a much better bike this year.

It's true. I'm crazy in love with my bike. Hey, somebody tell me why so many people coast down into transition? Wow. I am pouring on speed in my drops the whole way down the last hills. Plenty of time to brake and dismount. I don't get it.

On to the run. The sharp edge of the swim exhaustion is worn off, leaving the dull blunt force of the race exhaustion. Hydration's fine. The sugar from the gel kicks in. And my legs feel like pieces of rusted pipe, so everything normal. I go out fast and hard and as soon as I feel my breath shallowing, back off to a short, high-cadence stride, focusing on relaxed legs, vertical upper body, not crossing my arms in front of my body, deep belly breaths.

It is so godawfully hot. The sunshine is like a razor. It's worse than the Prairie Punisher, and I didn't think that was possible. It was a brutal run for everybody; there should have been a slate of women at a 6-minute pace. From the results it looks like all the regulars were running a half to a full minute slower than normal. True for me as well, a 10:08 pace. The Major and I both noted later that our socks were soaked the whole run and that this wasn't from wet feet after the swim.

On the way out, my legs feel locked up. But I know they're moving. They're moving faster than my perception. So when the sun shaves the last bit of energy out of me and the thoughts start crossing my mind that I want to walk, that it would stop hurting if I just walked, I'm ready. I know I still have room to run.

I slow my cadence. I say, "If it was easy everybody would do it." I say, "You didn't come this far to walk." I say, "I can hurt."

The run is a gradual stairstep up to the horseshoe turn, where I grab a bottle of water, drink, and walk out a few steps, then pick it up, my hips and legs finally unlocking and my stride becoming loose and easy, breath natural. Three people pass me on the run. At about .3 miles out, I hear footsteps. Oh no WAY. She is close to my pace and closing in. I'm not going to let this happen. I edge faster. She passes me. She's about five inches taller, strong-looking with a walnut-colored deep tan, and has a 43 on her calf, just like mine. All leg, good posture, but she's hot and suffering.

I hang on to her and on the next uphill, kick in and pass. Just over the top of the hill, she stretches her legs and flies by. I think: Maybe she's used it up. .2 miles. It's early, but OK, here we go: time to show what you've got. I pass her with increasing speed and don't hear her behind me again — but I feel her there, over my shoulder, and remember that flailing lost sprint to the finish at Draper against the fifteen-year-old...

Last turn. Uphill grassy sprint. Go. Go. Go. The voices and cheers of the crowd a blur of noise. Buried, buried, buried. Pain. Every last ounce. I double over, par usual, after the finisher medal and chip removal, and heave in and out. Seriously, one of these days I'm going to totally puke in the hair of the person who makes me stand still for chip removal right after I cross the line.

What a great race. Horrible swim. Great race.

Was so blitzed by the effort that I didn't want to stay and hang out and look for friends. I did see my run competition. "Great race, 43," I said, which made her laugh. "Back at you, 43," she said.

N. (who took fantastic photos, as always, will post later) waited while I picked up my finisher's shirt and results printout, changed clothes, and packed up my transition. We met Jen and Seth under a tree, where Seth poured the four of us a champagne toast and Jen and I basked in our newly displayed badassedness.

WINforKC women, here's to the effort and to racing you again. Next season, 'cause I'm done for 2010. Cheers!

Anniversary

2010-07-30T22:09:00.001-05:00

Tomorrow is the first anniversary of my first triathlon. This night last year I was getting ready to show myself that I could do the previously unthinkable.

Tomorrow I'll be racing WinforKC again. I'm getting ready to see, in hard numbers, how far I've progressed this year. Or not.

Anything can happen in a race. I can flat in the first 200 yards of the bike course. I can lose my goggles in the swim. Or the whole thing can get stormed out and cancelled. So nothing is sure and it is me being a silly little monkey to think I am going to show myself anything or prove anything.

The only thing I know is that barring storms and lightning, I will be on the start line. Do you know what a start line feels like — particularly a time trial start, where it is just you at the verge of experience, at the horizon of your own future, waiting for the Go?

I hope you do. I hope you know. If you don't know, I hope you find it. It's here for you as much as for anybody else. Whoever you are, whatever shape you are in, however much fear you have, however many people are in your life telling you that you cannot. THEY ARE WRONG.

They told me, and I had a million reasons to believe them. My age. The fat swishing and chugging around on my body. My history of eating disorders. My history of falling for no good reason. My fear of the bike. My out of breath wheezing on the run. My not having learned to swim until I was in my thirties. THEY WERE WRONG.

Last year I believed and worked and a year ago tomorrow I did a thing I once thought could never be for me. Tomorrow is a special day for me. This is a special race.

Tomorrow morning I will be standing in a crowd of almost 850 women. Each of those women has a story about getting to the start line. Many of those women will be nervous, even afraid. Many will be unsure that they can finish. Some, statistically, will be having a bad day, not feeling well, whatever, in less than perfect race conditions. But they will be lining up.

One at a time, they will walk up to the start line and stand poised to become something new: a triathlete, an athlete, a racer, a finisher. And what they have already become — a person willing to walk to the start line — will shine bright.

It's been an incredible year. Since that first start line, I've raced four duathlons, a cold-water triathlon, a half marathon and a couple of 10Ks (including conquering The Hill at last), and a handful of other races. I've seen myself get stronger and faster. I've completely changed how I feed myself and seen my emotions and thoughts clear and become positive. I'm more confident in everything I do. I stand up straighter. And every week I find something new to love about racing, using my body's athletic potential, and being with people at all skill levels from day one novice to expert, who love where they are and what they're doing.

Not everybody gets a year like this in life. I'm grateful, and I hope I never take this for granted, or the help and support that's been given so freely by so many at every turn.

To those who race tomorrow, great race; to those whose races in life take them elsewhere, go with power and grace... Are you ready to crush this thing with me?!

Yes you are. See you on the line.

Race Report: Prairie Punisher 2010

2010-07-25T17:57:00.008-05:00

Funny how things work. At the beginning of this season, the Prairie Punisher duathlon wasn't on my radar. Cumulative 10K of running, 21.4 miles on the bike, in late July. Long. Hot. Hilly. Painful. And a fast-freak field of the area's multisport badasses — you have to go about halfway down the field before you find people who aren't running sub-8 minute miles and clocking 20+ mph bike paces. Not for the likes of me.

But ha, maybe I didn't know back then what were the likes of me.

Over beers in OKC a couple of weeks ago, a long, torturous effort began to appeal to my sense of hyperbole. Draper's 15 mile bike was my longest, hardest effort at race pace yet, and had been capped by an additional day of work... and life's short. Why wait. Why not take it over the top right now.

Based on my bike pace at Draper and discounting run times for the heat, I predict a 2:20 race if I am having a reasonably good day.

I am still just half-awake when I tote my gear into transition. I have almost zero race anticipation. This is good because I have zero race doubt and am very relaxed. But it is interesting because I have no idea what effort I've brought to the race. At this point in the season, there doesn't appear to be any more ramp-up for one particular race; just wake up and race in the body you've put together so far for racing. Even packing for transition has gotten so routine that I no longer fret whether I've forgotten something incidental.

I've spent the last two weeks recovering from Du Draper Twice — a couple of long rides, but mostly spinning, easy runs, and short, fast swim sets. I've eaten and slept well, and thanks to last night's ice, my tight right calf appears to have calmed itself.

I park Gogo on the rack between Zoolander's and local multisport rock star Leslie Curley's bikes. A hard south wind spanks the bikes on the rack. Parked between those two beautiful TT bikes (and with Leslie on one side being her extremely friendly, sunny self and ZL on the other giving me endless grief like a bored third grader hopped up on malted milk balls), I am even happier than usual not to have tripped and fallen into the bike rack. (One close call and the prospect haunts.)

We line up. Still no jumping beans. No anticipation. But I start to feel ready to run. My legs want to start moving. I stand next to a curly-haired woman, who flashes me a gigantic smile. It's Megan, a friend of the Major MudBunny's, whom I'd met out at the Tuesday night crits. (What's a crit, you ask? Stay tuned.) Megan and her husband Jason were being Punished as a team; she'd run, he'd bike. "What's your pace?" she says. "10 minutes at the outside," I say. "Me too, or a little less," says Megan, and we agree to run together.

We take off with the field and according to Megan's equipment run an 8:05 pace for the first quarter mile. We back off, neither of us prepared to hold that as the sun is already starting to deliver a caning about the head and shoulders. I typically don't (a) like to know my pace when I'm racing (b) like to hear someone's voice on the run. Megan was such enthusiastic run company, everything out the window, and as we were pacing each other much faster and harder than the 10-minute mile I had expected, stay with what's working.

Especially as, right after the turnaround on the out-and-back course, I realize what I had forgotten to pack in my transition bag. I have not brought my legs to this race. Hamstrings, quads, shins, you name it, being plucked like harp strings. I'm working pretty hard, not holding anything back, and I feel finished running. My feelings are liars; now I get to ride hard on my bike; two big cold bottles of water are waiting for me on the bike; I am here to push, to fly, to freaking transmogrify from something strong and easy on two feet into something strong and fast on two wheels, and that is what is going to happen now.

No surprise, most of the bikes are gone from transition. Coming out of the park, I see a packed string of riders in the distance. A guy immediately passes me and I catch him on the first hill and don't see him again, which gives me confidence as I start working out of my smaller gears, get my legs moving comfortably hard, ratchet up to my top level of steady effort, then go an edge past it to uncomfortably hard. And hold on there.

Most of the field is long gone. I pass four people, then play tag with a big, strong guy, scooting past him on hills and racing hard to build whatever distance I can, then having him plummet past me on downhills and flats. A couple of riders rocket past about halfway through the ride, maybe teammates with walkers on the run leg? And a guy out for his Saturday spin, not part of the race, keeps passing me and tucking in right in front of me. So I pass him. "I can't draft you," I say. "But I can draft you," he jokes, and does, to the next intersection, where he peels off.

I am cornering really fast and gain some time on my mark up ahead in her red jersey, who is braking hard at the corners, but not enough to catch her once we get to the long uphill into the south wind. I just want that to stop. I flat out get tired. I don't even have a smile for realizing I am not easing up in the pain, digging into reserves to keep my effort steady, wanting to yowl. I finally hit tailwinds and rollers and throw it to the big gears in the downhills, still looking at red jersey up ahead, hammering as though it were remotely possible to catch her. On the home stretch big guy passes me easily and I have nothing to throw back at him, then as he recedes get really mad and throw everything I've got left at the wall.

Bike split: 1 hour 19 minutes, 16.25 average, about what I figured it would be if I was having a reasonably good day. I'd been racing now for almost an hour and fifty minutes. I get through transition as fast as I can, stopping for a big slug of water. I don't know it but about this time, ZL has just crossed the chip mat for his sixth-out-of-six duathlon podium finish this year.

I run out aggressively, high cadence, as always on the last run unable to tell how fast I'm going. We're in full sun. The heat index is over 100. Walking wounded straggle up and down the road. People look absolutely beaten. I kept my feet turning over. It feels like I'm hardly moving. My inner quad cramps and screams at me on the first hill, and oddly, this settles me down and into better form as I need to relieve the pain without stopping.

I top the hill and though I don't feel especially heatsick, fatigue sets in, and it feels like hot gasoline in my lower lungs. And I think I can deal with that, hell, my feet are still picking up and putting down, aren't they? but evidently my body, to handle the power demands, is pulling juice from my legs. Then the kicker: my skin goes cool. Yeah. This pretty much means my internal organs are not going to be getting the benefit of cooling. I am racing the clock now.

The thought is not, "I can't run anymore," but "This is how fast I can go now in good form." I walk up the next hill. And as soon as I think, "just a few more seconds," I run. Turn over the feet, think of walking, run more. Never walk a downhill. Say no to walking the flats. Don't slow down and pamper. Go the fastest I can in good form.

Another walking racer and I double-fist water cups at the turnaround. Interesting guy, loves racing; he's feeling punctured by the heat and is ready to spill his story, doesn't take much. Was a junior bike racer in Switzerland and just got back from a running vacation in Alaska where he did four races in five days, including a trail race. And came straight back to the Punisher. Did I mention he is at least three age groups past me, maybe four? Hard to tell — multisports is like Singapore, everybody looks at least a decade younger than their age.

I run. He runs. And with about a half mile left, I want to walk again, I really do, but I get tired of being tired and start to really run instead. I'm on a hill and don't care. Life is short, now or never, it's time to put my feet right down into the pain. Faster and faster. Everything hurts. It is the worst I have ever hurt in a race.

I couldn't talk afterward. I lay on the grass for a while as soon as I was past the danger of throwing up. Drank the first of five bottles of water. Changed clothes and hung out with ZL, watching him and his teammates get their awards for firsts in their divisions. My second run was still under an 11 minute pace... when I was running, I was running a lot faster than I thought, probably way too fast to hang onto. I've noticed this before, but am just now understanding how I might use it in a race. I finished in 2:24, which tells me that my expectations were far too low for a reasonably good day. So hell yeah!

I'd put this on a calendar again. Though it may not be the longest race I could do or the most interesting, it is just about the purest test of power, endurance, and tolerance you could find in these parts, and tests against the best racers in the area.

The WINforKC tri is up next. I haven't signed up for the Olathe Women's Triathlon even though it's a fantastic event (Michellie Jones is going to be there!) — and though I may regret it later when all my race buddies are talking about it, I don't think I will sign up for it this year.

My heart, legs, and physical intuition are telling me it is time to end multisport season and really run again. My ambition is telling me to get on the bike and stay there.

The next phase starts.

Du Draper Twice: Race Report

2010-07-12T18:08:00.021-05:00

Race report, short version: Day one, explosive, day two, implosive.

E-mails bounced around in January. There's this really cool duathlon in Oklahoma City in July. Day one is on-road; day two is off-road. Wanna go?

The Major MudBunny had raced the off-road duathlon and was in for both days, as was Zoolander. We had it in our sights for months. Through the spring and summer we scavenged whatever time we could in 95+ temperatures to run, bike, or put together bricks. We discussed race recovery and nutrition and the Major's course knowledge.

Du Draper Twice got me on a mountain bike this year. Just do the on-road? Pfffft. Why race one day when you can race two? So I have Draper to thank for the gorgeous savage bruises on my legs since March. Also for lots of endorphins.

Du Draper Twice would be a huge, ramped-up effort and would require a leap in my fitness. Sprint-distance duathlon is physically much harder than sprint-distance triathlon. Two days of hard racing demands an ability to recover that I did not possess when I signed up for this gig. And this would be mountain bike ride number ten out of all the MTB rides of my life.

But by race weekend, after miles of trail runs, a couple dozen falls from the mountain bike, and more than a few long hilly road rides, I was ready.

Pre-Race: The Week in OKC

I stayed with friends who did everything they could to help me get ready. Opened their house and kitchen to me, whatever I needed. Gave me a private bath and a cool, dark, quiet room to get 9 hours of sleep on 600-thread-count sheets for three days. Got me a last-minute appointment with a fantastic massage therapist. No pressure, come and go as I please, store bikes in the garage.

Thursday's falls on the tacky sand of the Draper green trail didn't do much for my nerves. (They painted, at last, a masterful bruise on my right thigh to match the one on the left. I usually fall left.) But the ability to visualize the trail obliterated the memory of the falls. I lay in the dark, in the 600 thread count, and imagined my body moving through the trail, fast and smooth, the bike easy under me and power moving through the pedals.

By the time I met Zoolander and the Major in downtown Oklahoma City on Friday, things that perpetually buzz in my brain had gone dead silent. Relaxed. Waiting. I drank more beer at the Bricktown Brewery than I have ever drunk the night before a race. This was easy to do since the bar was set at one beer, and I really like both the Bison and the Red Brick.

Race Day One: On-Road

None of us slept well. The bars started spewing patrons into the street around midnight. Screaming, car engines revving, booming bass in the streets — it finally got quiet around 4 AM. I lay in bed practicing Savasana — corpse pose — breathing deeply, eyes gently closed, understanding that the noise might rob me of sleep, but getting pissed off would rob me of rest. My week's bankroll of dead-to-the-world in 600 thread count would tide me over.

We drove out in thick, hot July fog. It would hang over transition and the first run, an out and back. We lined up for the shotgun start. It's Oklahoma. They fired a shotgun over us.

I tried to hold a little something back on the first run; the course was mostly flat with some discernable grades and a final run down a gravel slope. I didn't look at position or who was around me except for one age grouper, a blonde woman in a white cotton t-shirt, who creeped steadily and slowly further away. I concentrated on cadence, form, and wondered why I was passing the Major. Was I headed out too fast? I'd looked at my watch but hadn't started it.

Made the turn, the heat and humidity making me feel at home, like summer days from when I was a kid in the Cookson Hills river country of northeastern Oklahoma. Easy stride, feet picking up behind me. Didn't even feel like work. I really just wanted to run to my bike. I crossed the Major. "Cramping," she said. Yikes.

For the first time, I pushed myself on the bike to the point where I wasn't sure I could maintain the pace, then pushed myself to maintain and surpass the pace, feeling the slow burn building in legs and heart pumping. Up and down the rolling hills, up and down the gears, passing men who looked strong, accelerating past riders on hills and then maintaining the new speed. I even passed a semi that had been allowed onto the course and was creeping along with two feet of pavement on the right. Pushing, pushing. Got shellacked by a grandly chunky 39-year-old woman in a plain pink tank top on a beaten-up aluminum frame and toe clips. We traded places twice before she finally stopped playing around and simply rode away. Like a tiger shark swimming away from a cheddar goldfish. As the cheddar goldfish, this was annoying, but tiger sharks are beautiful to watch regardless.

The second run felt faster than the first but was slower. My form was warping in the humidity. In the race pics, I look like I'm race walking. An age grouper passed me and ripped steadily away into the distance. Oh well. I had something left after the gravel, I guess, because when I picked up my kick, I heard Zoolander screaming at me from the sideline to run run run and without looking knew I was being caught — the race's lone 15-year-old and I threw ourselves into a wild side by side sprint like grade school kids. Danielle took me by a tenth of a second.

I put some ice down my shirt and drank a lot of water and waited for the Major.

Who had more than cramped. Who was bona fide sick. Who had leaned off her bike twice to puke during the race. And had kept going to finish. If you haven't picked up on it by now, the Major is an unqualified badass.

We waited for awards. Zoolander and the Major both took third... I was awarded third but later results show 4th out of 6th, 55 seconds out of 3rd place. (Not sure what happened there. I am KEEPING the collapsible frisbee award.) I posted a 50:23 bike split for the 15 miles, which is faster than I had ever averaged on a bike, regardless of terrain, and was just as depleted and exhausted as after any other sprint distance race, and would do it again in less than twenty-four hours.

Time to recover. Beer. Food. Unsuccessful attempt at napping. Ice -- a garbage bag filled from the ice machine under my calves and another over the quads. Hot tub. I fell asleep poolside with a towel draped on me and my head on a table like a little kid in kindergarten nap time. Please put your heads on your desks and rest quietly. When I woke up, I joined the Major for a gentle spin on the hotel's exercise bikes.

By dinnertime, because it was time to make it happen, the next day's race energy started gathering inside the same way I'd watched gigantic blue thunderheads gather all week across the OKC metro area.

Race Day Two: Off-Road

Ice is a miracle. My legs were loose and recovered; I'd gotten some sleep since the hotel had switched me to a room overlooking the empty Bricktown ballpark. And I was excited to ride the trail again, falls notwithstanding. I'd spent three days visualizing fast and smooth, and now that was my reality. Sometimes on the mountain bike I get scared going faster than I would if I were thinking, and I have to stop and douse my hot nerves. But on day 2 my nerves were pleasantly cold and I felt loose and balanced for the run and ride.

A local MTBer who wasn't racing told me a good route to take for a warm-up run, with an unmarked bailout that would short-cut between the green trail and the powerline section of the course. I saw Zoolander and the Major returning from their warm-up ride. It was 7:05, and the race was scheduled to start at 7:30. Good half-mile warmup, time to head back.

Um. Where's the bailout? Is this it? Wait, this isn't right. Do I go through here? I didn't see this before. It's 7:15 and crap, I can hear the pre-race meeting, with Bret Sholar's friendly voice announcing the rules. Oh dear God. Am I gonna miss the race? No! It's right down that ridge through the scrub oaks, but how do I get there? Just then I came to the three-mile sign on the four-mile green loop. My fastest mile on trail to date was 10:15. I ran from the three mile marker to the start line in 8:45, flying through transition just after the horn sounded.

It was the best mile I have ever run and one of the most satisfying. Form as perfect as it could be. Breathing easily. Flying. Volunteers laughing and yelling, "Start is there! Go! Start over there!"

The pack pulled away from me. A lone runner and I jogged it out and I tried to catch my breath. My Harlot bike shorts and jersey were sopping wet. Up ahead I saw the lead runners twisting on the trail and felt a little less lonesome. I heard Zoolander laughing and talking. Seriously? That's awesome. If I weren't so busted from "mile one," I would so shout out at him to shut up and run. And there's the Major... uh-oh... about a minute ahead of me. I was already a little addled but knew this wasn't good.

The course would be a fun one to PR. Mostly flat and twisting with a few rooty sections and some uphill climbing; a wooden bridge with wooden up and down ramps. I could bike this, I thought. After Orange back home, I could bike this. It made me even more comfortable with the idea of getting on the easier green trail in a mere thirty minutes. But there would be no PR today. I was in big trouble. I was dehydrating. Lost on the trail, I hadn't eaten my pre-race yummies or drunk the half bottle of water that was sitting, waiting for me.

And because I'd missed the pre-race meeting, I didn't know that the run course was actually 3.5 miles long instead of the standard 3.1. So before I got on the bike I had run five miles... one of those at a lunatic pace. I stopped to walk. A lot. The race slipped farther and farther away into the trees.

From transition, I heard the recording of a bugled hunting call. Hounds away! The first bike must have gone onto the trail. After forty-five minutes of running and downing a full bottle of water from the aid station, I finally made it into transition, where the Major told me she'd had to pull. She was sick. Shaking, dizzy, ready to puke again. And holding together like a pro, level-headed. We talked for a minute while I slurped down some shot bloks. "I'll cheerlead for you two," she says. She's more of a badass than ever saying this. Because: "It was my big race of the year," she says. The Major had been planning to go for the win. And she had more than a good shot.

I wanted to hug her but (a) was soaked to the skin with sweat, (b) was in transition and supposed to be racing actually, and (c) she's sick. We exchange half-miserable, half-accepting looks and I hop on the bike and ride out, making room for a race leader who blasted by finishing his first of three, four-mile loops.

The ride is going well. The first section of the course climbs; my legs are tired and starting to hurt, but they can do this three times. I am riding fast, faster than I have ridden since the God's Country race. I'm racing. I don't stop to look. I just point my eyes at the trail ahead and ride as fast as I think I can manage for twelve miles. I corner well; I power through the loose sand from previous fall #1, at the fall #2 horseshoe I come off the pedal to avoid smacking a tree. When I land on the saddle, WHA! ERG! it bumps nose up between my legs. I dismount. Looks fine. Feels fine. Get back on. But it's not fine.

The bolt is coming loose. The saddle shimmies up and down, front to back. Zoolander rides up, greets me, tells me I'm fine where I am so I don't freak out about him needing to get around me. How you doing? he asks on his way past. We share a quick confidence that we are both basically feeling like poached eggs at this point. My saddle's messed up, I say. Oh, that sucks, he says. And whips past and off into the trees. I watch his line as he goes. Cool.

I dismount twice more to try to tighten the bolt. Riders passing all ask if I'm ok and give me a fly-by commiseration over my mechanical. It's impossible. I ride the last two miles of the loop slightly off the saddle, coming down only when I absolutely have to, and holding it between my upper thighs so it doesn't fly out of its rattling brackets and off the seat post entirely. At the powerline, a fast runner coming toward me says simply, "Mechanics at the bottom of the hill." This gives me a second wind.

Mechanic? I ask coasting into transition. Over there. What's the trouble? they yell. Saddle's loose! I yell back, and the mechanics grab their tools. You're doing great, they say, there's plenty of people behind you. That was my first lap, I say. Your first? Oh. Uh. OK. Well, get out there and race! Go! They were very cute and had great smiles and deep Oklahoma voices. I rode even faster into the second lap.

I think I might love racing with mountain bikers. Every person passing calls out their pass, then confirms their pass, then thanks me for the pass. Even the ones who are going sick fast. We're all out there together.

I rode fast and got to the twisty bit in a hurry. I cooked corners, pulled out of a skid, popped over roots and didn't stop pedaling for anything. Go go go go go go go. A super-fast guy passed me, taking a low and eroded line. I took the high and smooth side of the trail. One line off that side formed a little ramp down. Another line went off a drop, by a tree. I was watching the rider, missed the ramp, and OH SHIT I'm headed off the drop. Had no idea what I was doing, hoped my instincts were survival instincts, and sped up. I put my weight up, slightly back, and pressed into the pedals, pushed into them pedaling hard, pulled on the bars, and made it off the drop... but at the last second got nervy about passing the tree and gave a little twitch. Dropping and twitching: not so good. Both wheels took a big leaning bounce, the back wheel bit into some sand, I tried to shift my weight to stay up, trying to find traction and pedal, hands light on grips, and the bike sailed sideways under me, skidding and bouncing, slamming into the dirt gutter wall with me attached, the fork spinning completely around, my left foot clipped and trapped under the bike, toes pointed backward. It was a loud crash.

The guy who had passed me was far enough up in the woods that he looked the size of a GI Joe doll but he heard the crash and stopped and called back to make sure I was OK. I'm fine! I yell. Go!

I gingerly disentangled myself, trying not to break my foot in the process of lifting the bike off it. I was plastered red orange; my left cleat was caked with wet orange slop. My Harlot shorts, which ride a little low in the back anyway, were so heavy with sweat that they were falling off. I was fine. There would be new bruises, but I was ready to ride. And when I righted the bike, the bars were pointed at a twenty degree angle to the wheel. Dammit! I ran the bike to the right side of the trail and started using hands, arms, feet, whatever leverage I could find to get my bars twisted forward. I managed to move them enough so that when I rode my hands were only slightly angled to the wheel. Fine. As long as the wheel is pointed straight down the trail, nothing else matters. Brakes? Working. Tires? Fine. Something squeaking, not sounding right, but I'm not stopping.

It's a grudge match at this point. I don't care if it takes me until noon, I'm going to finish this race. I stop to clear my cleat of mud. I stop to pull up my pants and finally give up and ride with them plumber-cracking, occasionally reaching back for whatever modesty tug I can manage. Dammit! I don't even have time for the "n" in "dammit!" My legs have another loop and a run in them! It will be hard and painful but it is there!

I work the bike and myself around the trail, my lower back stiffening, the bike squealing. I feel like a circus bear on a unicycle. I get to the bunny hops on the powerline. And suddenly, not having drunk enough water from the camelbak, I start to shake. I take the turn shaky and fall over. No one is around. As I hit the ground, tears jump into my eyes and I let out an involuntary sob. Then I picture myself, a crazy 43 year old novice, half-stripped bike shorts dripping, orange dirt smeared from collarbone to ankle, sprawled motionless with bike sidelong across the trail, bawling to the Oklahoma sky. This strikes my funny bone pretty hard. I jump up, take a big slug of water, and ride the bike in. I'm done. The volunteers don't want me to pull. But I'm messed up. The bike is messed up. I don't want to ride another lap like that. My race is done.

I see the Major with Zoolander, who has finished a grueling, hellish, hallucenogic-level of punishment, pushing through levels of pain I will only have to imagine until next year. I head for the medics, who "x-ray" my lower back with their fingers and give me ice packs. I walk slow and stiff. I thrash back and forth between thinking I've done the right thing pulling the race and thinking I'm a big quitter who should have stayed in no matter what. I imagine what it would have been like to finish. This kind of imagination is a waste of time. I think about me spreadeagled with bike across the trail, shaking with thirst, looking up at the clouds, pants falling off. Reality is pretty damn funny.

If I could have managed to have finished, the one thing I am sure of is that it would have been an epic comedy. Next time, that may keep me going quite a bit longer. Oh my god, given my natural disinclination to be embarrassed, this could have ventured into truly unprecedented, deeply legendary ridiculousness.

Whatever. Done is done. I learned something about my quitting threshold and I will get to test it next time I have to make that decision. The Major knows something about making that hard decision, and she says you have to look at the bigger picture.

My bike looks like my spine feels. The back wheel won't spin, and the bars are glancing slyly to the right of the front wheel. But my back felt better after just a couple of hours of moving around, stretching, ice, and hot shower. Today it feels fine (and will feel even better after another massage later this week). The bruises are just now showing up.

Both days of the race were incredible. The course was clean and interesting and tough, the race director was friendly and funny and down-home and on top of his game; the volunteers knew what they were doing and were out there working hard. Oklahoma hospitality at its laid-back, comfortable, get-er-done best. The awards were cool too. In addition to the age-groupers' collapsible frisbees, overall winners got thick brown beach towels, and everyone who finished the race got a barbecue apron, complete with tools, emblazoned with the slogan, "Du Draper Twice: I do it both ways."

Zoolander podiumed again. The three of us took off for shower and checkout and one last lunch and beer at Tapwerks in Bricktown.

Oh! Hey! Chris, the cool, friendly ultra runner I'd met in the parking lot on my Thursday ride? Despite a fully clipped-in race-pace endo, he'd taken the overall win. Yeah. He's a trail running rock star. Get up here to KC, Chris, and let's go hang out on a trail!

Y'know, the week before a race, people always ask: "Are you ready?" I'm never sure if they are asking whether I am ready to finish, ready to do well, or what they mean. I wasn't anywhere near ready for this race when I signed up. I still can't say I was ready to finish.

But by race day, I was ready to line up. Moving from impossibility to unlikelihood to readiness is like crossing a finish line to get to a start line.

Getting to this start line was something special all by itself. Going as far as I did felt great, and watching so many fantastic racers pull everything out to finish was simply amazing... huge effort, huge payoff, great race. I have a big smile on my face today.

And plan full well to let Draper wipe it right off for about 4.5 hours next year.

Four days: The deal goes down

2010-07-06T20:42:00.003-05:00

Oklahoma City is much as I remember: a lot of really cool businesses scatter-shot through seedy streets under ridiculously overdramatic skies. An extravagant grid — you can drive straight across the metro on empty roads at the speed limit for hours.

Did I mention the sky? It's pretty much the main character. And today it filled with miles and miles of towering black thunderheads, which were approaching about the time I was in the corner of a Wal-Mart parking lot waiting for my dealer to show.

Not drugs. Meat.

Farm-raised, grass-fed and finished longhorn beef, to be exact. Race week not the week to eat a lot of sodium-pumped chicken or sugared restaurant dishes. And hey, it's vacation. Eating trash does not fit in with a quality vacation, never has. Vacation is the time to treat yourself incredibly well.

Here's the story. I'm staying with friends in OKC and want to keep my diet simple in race week — veggies, fruit, nuts, eggs, and lean meat. I also don't want to put my friends out (and they are friends who would totally let me). So my plan was to buy my own groceries and be relatively self-sufficient.

However, OKC is grocery-challenged. (The ground has been broken for a Whole Foods.) So last week I searched online for grass-fed beef and found Plum Rich Beef. The Plum Rich beef folks were delighted that a traveling triathlete looked them up.

But they don't ship or have a storefront outlet. We made arrangements to meet at their regular pickup spot, the northeast corner of a suburban Wal-Mart. And under the darkening skies, as rain began to spit, Jessica from Plum Rich Beef and I transacted and even bonded, a good half hour in the parking lot trading hunks of meat for money, talking Paleo and racing and cross-fit training and bikes. Do people usually hug their dealers?

The beef's frozen, so I won't be able to report on how delicious these meatballs are until tomorrow. So yeah, you read this whole post and don't even get food porn. Frankly, I'm mostly just taking my mind off how muddy the trails are and that I probably won't get on the MTB before the race.

More time to hang out with my friends; we're just about to dive into some White Russians right now.

Five: The animal

2010-07-04T23:53:00.005-05:00

Transformation into the animal has begun.

Forgetting, letting go, feeling time and place move around her, belonging where she is, no past, no future. Moving.

The animal who shows up to race does not recognize words. She assigns no meaning to the sounds "finishing strong," "having a good run," "happy with my time." These noises dissipate around the animal. Her focus grows sharp.

The animal only knows she has to run, has to move, has to stay completely animal, true to her nature, all her instincts, the whole time she is on the field.

Hunt down the prey; outrun the predator. Knowing she will enter the field soon, she conserves her energy, compresses it in muscles and nerves.

The animal does not know mirrors or media. The animal opens her senses. The heartbeats of the animals around her are the texture of the world. Their nerves' reactions are so vivid they are like a taste to her.

Everything in her body tells her to run — and also to wait for the time to run — so that the animal leans into desire, an exquisite knife-edge of opportunity. Desire begins to consume her name.

When she moves at last it will be like shouting.

For now she waits and listens. She watches her pack moving, bristling, flexing, positioning. She watches the experienced hunters — the one who grows stronger season upon season, ranging into distant territories to hone the skills that let him anticipate power and the taste of the kill — the one who has practiced and perfected the fine techniques and intimate knowledge of the race so that her musculature and will respond decisively, without question, unstoppable.

The animal draws strength from the strengths of all competitors, from pack, predator, and prey. The second they enter the field, they are all bound together and are all completely alone.

The blood surging through the heart as it transforms to animal heart washes away feelings for the power of sensation. Aloneness, ferocity, acceptance: the animal begins to emerge.

Going Dark

2010-07-04T22:11:00.007-05:00

In six days I'll race at Draper Lake in Oklahoma City. Saturday is on-road duathlon — run 3 miles, bike 15, run 3. Sunday is off-road — run 3, bike 12, run 3.

The time for talking about race readiness is over. The time for strategy and tips and analysis and tweaks is done. It's time to withdraw, stop thinking, and finish transforming into the animal who's going to show up Saturday.

I'll keep you posted through race week — this is a big race for me in the sense that I'm investing actual vacation time and dollars to do this. This is a big race in the sense that it's a hard physical effort and twice as much racing as I've ever done. Of course I'll write about it.

But in another sense, after tonight, I'm going dark. Whatever I have to say about me racing, the animal has already begun to devour. Whatever can be said, will be said on the course.

But tonight, here is a timeline. Make of it what you will; or skip it — it's really long and mostly for my benefit. These are the months since deciding to do my first triathlon, a little over a year ago.

March 2009. I may not get to run Hospital Hill. I want another challenge. I sign up for the WinforKC triathlon. I can barely swim 100 yards. I am not ever sure of actually finishing a 5K. I don't have a bike.

April - June 2009. I run to get ready for Hospital Hill. The big question in my mind is whether I will finish it running. Also, N. and I buy me a bike, the Trek Hybrid. I tell myself, "Don't be silly. You are not afraid to ride in traffic." I believe me. I swim a couple of times a week.

June 2009. I run Hospital Hill. Until I almost black out, then walk a bit. I am running 11:15 minute miles. The day after the run, I sit at Denny's and finesse my training calendar. I chart milestones to get myself to finish each of the triathlon legs, with big-effort workouts — bricks, longer runs, longer bikes, progressing through the weeks.

June-July 2009. I execute the plan. I also have decided to maintain weight, preferring to race in the body I'm in, focusing instead on endurance.

August-September 2009. I finish WinforKC, slow on the swim, stronger on the bike than I expected, able to endure the run. Immediately sign up for triathlon #2. Recover, put together another calendar, keep preparing. Again, slow swim, good bike, painful run. The hooks are in deep.

September 2009. I start trail running. I also start talking to Zoolander a lot, about racing, trail running, cycling, and nutrition. I start weaning myself off corn, because it doesn't appear to give me any actual fuel. I learn to ride in clipless pedals.

October 2009 - February 2010. The focus for the winter is changing power to weight ratio. I am in the gym 3-4 times a week; on the bike trainer once a week; running 4 times a week; swimming twice a week. I decide not to diet. I won't restrict calories. Instead, I'll focus on the best possible fuel for the activity I'm doing. I start cutting out things that don't provide that fuel — processed foods, refined flour, sugar. I start eating more meat, more eggs, more nuts and fruit, even more vegetables (not many more, given that I was almost vegetarian before). Real butter, real mayo, real cheese, when I have them. Great chocolate once in a while.

November 2010. I stop using my stopwatch when running. I run by endorphins — I run to keep my endorphin levels high. If I need hills, I run hills; whenever I can I run trails; I run as long as I feel like running; I have no idea how fast I'm going. I will run through the winter, in the 4-degree morning and a couple of times in snow. No matter what, I run. I'm not moving to train for anything — I'm moving because it's what I do. And I want more.

December 2010. I avoid bread. It's the 80-20 rule (as Zoolander says and others have said before him). 80% of the time, I don't eat what doesn't serve me. 20% of the time, I eat whatever sounds good and don't worry about it. Strength sessions in the gym continue — Trainer Kevin has me do lots of single-leg work, some explosive strength work, and always core, core, more core.

January 2010. Groundhog 5K. 9:34-minute miles. I sign up for a whole bunch of races.

February 2010. Decide to run a half-marathon. Start making one run a week longer. I avoid rice and other whole grains. The Paleo Diet and the book "Good Calories Bad Calories" round out my understanding of the nutritional changes that ZL started talking to me about way back when and that I had begun testing my way into months ago. The power-to-weight period is ending; my focus now is endurance on the run. I have taken about 15 pounds off the bike. I start shopping for a better road bike.

March 2010. Run the half marathon. Endurance on the run period ends. Triathlon focus begins, but without a calendar. I am on the hybrid bike now, commuting to work. Running trails as I can, though it rains so much we will be off the trails for a few months. My swim stroke is awful.

April 2010. Ready to race. My mindset has shifted from "participant" to "competitor." I want to RACE. N. and I buy Gogo, the dreamy road bike, and I learn to ride her. I also obtain (thank you forever, Seth and Jen) the GT Saddleback, which I name "The Comfort Zone" after the cushy saddle that she comes with. I run the Trolley Run and feel like I am going slow and later see how close I was to a 9-minute mile. Then, my first MTB ride is at the heat-stroking God's Country duathlon in Lawrence. I come home with a 2nd place plaque. I'm in for Du Draper Twice.

April - May 2010. I get on the MTB at the fast, barely-obstacled Lawrence River Trail as much as I can, even though I get more nervous with every ride. I ride Gogo and run afterward. I run the Shawnee Mission Park trail loop. I swim open water. The Heritage Park duathlon (2nd Place, sub-9 minute miles on run 2!) and the KC Tri (happy to finish on my feet) come and go. I am hardly home as I am running or cycling all the time. Trainer Kevin leaves my gym; I slack off strength work and stay sports-specific. Oceans of Mercy 10K; longest run at a sub-10 pace. I start running trails with the Major MudBunny, who knows ZL; the Major and I become race pals.

May-June 2010. These months are all about power punches and high-quality effort. Run in the heat whenever I can to get ready for Draper. Daunted by the task of this race, I make a new calendar. What will I have to do to get ready for a two-day race, with one day off-road? I work forward with two-a-days, bricks, rides on Gogo, trail runs, road runs. Everything is focused on quality; no trash miles. The Major teaches me some cool things about riding the MTB. We do open water swim together. It's enough to stay convinced that I can finish the later sprint triathlons. My swim stroke FINALLY returns. I miss the strength work but don't do more than the occasional core session. Over the summer, my run gets slower and slower. I don't know why. It bothers me. The standard run is 4-6 miles now. I decide, hell with it, I am not running to race prep anymore. I am running again because it feels amazing. Oh, and I acquire bike gear. And I learn to ride clipped in on the MTB.

July 2010. I ride the Orange loop at Shawnee Mission Park, with its rocks and roots, walking what I need to. To me, this is like saying I walked on the moon. I didn't think it was possible until I saw myself do it. Which is why I did it. I fall, I get back up, I learn how to deep-freeze my nerves, I ride. I have taken 35 pounds off the bike since the start of this timeline. It is the least important change.

Which brings us right up to this week. And now it's time to go dark.

"I have to be enough for me"

2010-07-01T15:24:00.002-05:00

Last year, shortly after I started trail running, I took a day off work and ran the 13-mile trail system in Smithville.

I didn't know what I'd find out about running, trails, or the clammy recesses of my brain.

I only knew that my heart needed me to go run for a long time in the woods. And running, that's the phrase that blossomed like a big white thunderhead. I ran and turned this phrase over in my mind.

Today, my heart needs me to go run for a long time in the woods. And that is the phrase that has billowed up like a blister around a thorn. It's not a comfort exactly. It's a North Star.

I have to be enough for me.

I've been looking forward to a number of races in late summer. The next and most aggressive one is on top of me now — Du Draper Twice in Oklahoma City. I've had doubts this week about my readiness for this effort. What if I'm not strong enough? What if I haven't been running enough? What if I suck on the bike? What if what if what if what if.

That is the mental equivalent of hacksawing into my bike frame.

When I signed up for it, I wasn't even living in a body that could do this race. Point A to Point B has involved running, cycling, and more often than not doing both in the same session. Am I ready?

It doesn't matter and I don't care. I'm doing this because it's beautiful and I can. Because racing sends a rush through me like nothing else, connects me to other humans like nothing else, connects me to something so pure and fundamental about life that I can't even name it.

What is doubt in the face of that? What relevance? I do this because it makes doubt irrelevant.

I have to be enough for me.

I've done less swimming and less strength work than through the winter. Consequently my swim is slow and I don't have that plumped, powerful feeling in my muscles that comes with dedicated strength work.

I have to be enough for me.

It doesn't matter whether anyone knows where I am, whether anyone wants to come along with me, whether anyone approves of the run or the ride, whether anyone gets how wonderful it is to run alone on a trail in the woods. At the end of things, you are all you've got. You have to be enough.

So as much as is in your power, do what your heart asks you to do.

I'm not doing running today because I have to get ready for anything. I'm not doing it in reference to a goal. I'm not doing it because the race effort needs me to be doing it.

Today the race doesn't even exist. My heart needs me to go for a long run in the woods today. I'll see you on the exit from the trail.

Commitment makes you quick

2010-06-29T09:26:00.002-05:00

Please go read this post about rally car racing in India.

If your heart is not beating faster after this, you have the nervous system of a potted ficus.

p.s. Nikhil is N.'s brother. He lives in Hyderabad. I am going to buy him, like, 20 beers this fall and we are talking about racing.

Titanium Spine Award

2010-06-27T21:59:00.012-05:00

Something I learned today: Don't open a gel pack just before a fast downhill if you can only commit to one of them.

And here's another: Sooner or later, I may have a race that makes me want to cry and throw things. And when I do, I want to handle it like Noah.

Noah is eight. It's his birthday. And on his birthday, he rode the bike leg for a triathlon team in a Midwest Kids Triathlon Series event. His younger sister ran the mile. A friend of theirs did the swim. Noah had never done an organized race.

As a volunteer, I was posted at the horseshoe turn of the bike course, ticking off lap numbers next to riders' names. The kids were staggered by age. Elites did four 1.5-mile bike laps, older kids three, younger kids two.

Noah was in the last pack of riders making his first lap. He motored up the hill steadily and with aggressive power into the turn. He was completely into his ride; his face was the picture of focus. As the cyclists from his group made their second lap, I started to wonder where he was.

I found out later. He'd mistakenly headed into transition instead of starting his second lap (and, I might point out, no volunteer stopped him or was there yelling "Finish all your laps!" the way they do for adults' events). He'd gotten off the bike, then realized the problem. It dawned on him that he'd done something wrong by coming across the chip mat. He was devastated. All he could think was that he had messed up, that he had let down the team when they were doing well. What do you do when you are eight, standing in transition, bearing up under the mounting senses of panic and failure?

Noah got back on his bike. And rode his second lap.

With a look of utter misery on his sunburned face, knowing the race was gone, Noah rode his second lap just as hard as the first one.

The team was last in their division — even harder, they were fourth. Their chip times were a mess, with an insanely long first transition, however that managed to happen. And when the race was finished and Noah went home, after he'd let out his frustration and heartsickness, he asked for one thing.

He asked his dad to take him on a three-mile bike ride. He knew he could do it. He wanted to go do it. So his dad took him.

Crazy stuff happens in races: seasoned triathletes run or swim the wrong direction, lose where they put their bikes, fall down, you name it. When I make a race mistake, I want to be the kind of racer that Noah was today.

Indomitable toughness. No excuses. The job gets done.

Well done, Noah. Happy birthday.

Twenty Questions

2010-06-22T22:19:00.011-05:00

What did you start your day doing? Out of saddle hill repeats.
How many unplanned miles did you drive later to retrieve your bike and go to the trail? 15.
How many trees did you make contact with today? 2.
Did either of them knock you down? No.
Did you knock either of them down? Yes.
How many noticeably rocky sections did you ride instead of walking? I'll have to ask the Major, but I think 3.
Why did you almost throw up? Caught off guard by rock + adrenaline jolt + heat = sudden crazy heart rate.
How loudly were you whimpering on that one downhill? ~60dB.
What did the whimpering most resemble? 2-day-old puppy.
What was going through your mind? "Laughing right now, bad idea."
What did you like best? Roots! And moving off the saddle! And endorphins!
What must you embrace? Rocks a tire-width apart.
When you woke up this morning, did you think you would ride over rocks and roots today? No.
One month ago, did you think it would happen this year? No.
Does it hurt to fall? No. Sometimes it hurts to land.
Did you fall today? Yes. Lost all notion of line through rocks and didn't get clipped out of my pedal.
Is it hard to get clipped out? No.
Is it hard to get clipped in? For some of us, evidently.
What are you looking forward to? Reliable forward momentum.
Who's the badass having the time of her life? Why, I think it's me.

Hat tip and a beer of choice to the Major MudBunny, who went slow so I could watch her lines around the Orange loop, left me behind sometimes to work it out on my own, stopped whenever I did, and called out helpful things like "Mud, gear down," and "Just roll over these," and "Take a drink of water!"

I walked (and fell) a lot less than I would have. New world opened like a cold bottle. Good job all around, Major.

Crappiest brick ever

2010-06-10T22:11:00.006-05:00

My plans for this June, with six weeks to my next race, include enough warped play dates to make me feel absolutely spoiled, starting with this week's medium-effort triple brick: Bike 5 miles. Run 10-15 minutes at race pace. Bike 5 miles hard. Run 10-15 minutes at race pace. Bike 5 miles. Run 10-15 minutes at endurance pace.

Do you even KNOW how much fun it is to hang out in your body while it's doing that? I could hardly wait! Since the previous night's thunderstorms with their heavy rains had rolled away, nothing would keep me from getting on the bike, with running shoes and cap tucked in a light backpack, before 6 AM yesterday.

The five miles to Zip's house starts with three-quarters of a mile of 3-4% grade. I don't ride this very fast. (Every time I don't ride this very fast, I remind my legs that this time next year they are going to ride 20 miles of continual 6% grade. This makes them realize they have no time to waste, and they work harder. Good legs.)

The rest of the way to Zip's is flat, and the bike trips most of the traffic lights. "Here, I'll give you my garage code," says Zip. "Pop in, leave your bike where we won't run over it, good to go." I made a fast transition into the Pumas and jetted out for a hard run around Zip's neighborhood.

By my original math, the full triple brick should have taken me less than two hours. My math presumed I'd be much faster on the bike and hit zero traffic lights. I cut my run to 10 minutes and looked for hillier streets to make up some of the effort.

Back on the bike and punching in Zip's code, and the drizzle started, then rain. I went up the rollers on Lee, not hammering as hard as I'd hoped to as the roads got slicker and the sky got darker. In my mind, I cut back the second and third runs to 10 minutes, with a blink of disappointment that the morning wasn't going to tax me as fully as it might have. I didn't really feel the rain; I felt elated, like a kid.

Don't you remember hating to be called in out of the rain when you were playing? Did you see a good reason for it then?

I was almost to Leawood Park when I saw the barricade ahead, across the two lanes of the neighborhood street: Road Closed, High Water. "Whatever," I said. If there really was high water from last night still standing, I could turn around. Likely it had all drained off. I rode over the bridge and down to the park.

See? No high water. Pffft. Stupid sign. But friends? That "High Water" sign was only there because they don't make signs that say: "DO NOT DRIVE THROUGH FECAL MATTER."

I ripped around the corner and smelled the mud just before my front wheel hit it. My brain registered three observations: Police tape. Wastewater treatment plant. Flash flooding. Then a fourth: Shiiiiiiiiiiit.

Which was spread thinly, curb to curb, across about thirty feet of road in a shiny sludge frosting. I didn't relish the thought of stopping and dismounting in it. It was perfectly rideable shit.

As a fine spray of brown gritty goop spattered off my wheel and up my calves, shoes, socks, bike, I told myself, "It's mostly mud it's mostly mud it's mostly mud. But man, I'm not taking another drink out of those bottles until they're boiled."

Smelling more than faintly of sewer water, I headed for the long curvy flat of Mission Road, where I could pop into my big ring and throw myself into the ride. Endorphins were pumping, the rain was abating, my heart rate was up, and I couldn't have been happier. (... as a pig in shit. Don't tell me you weren't thinking it.)

I also couldn't have been more wrong about where I thought the bike rack was in the office park. So I tooled around there wasting valuable running minutes trying to find it. I apologized to my Pumas for putting them on over the befouled socks. I shoved my wet bike shoes into the backpack (now officially a bag o crap that I was going to wear again in ten minutes) and with shoulders back ran gleefully wild for five minutes, then a little more measured back to the bike.

And checked my watch. With wet roads and traffic picking up, thirsty and with no potable water, I decided to bag the third run. Just as well, as I hit all the lights from that point on, including one at a busy intersection that would not trip with the bike, had no cars going my direction, and had no walk button to press, forcing a detour to a turnaround. So I got to ride even more! And the ride was feeling really good! Bonus!

Finally home and realizing I had just enough time to shower and dress, barely time to pack breakfast to take with me, I took my smelly bike to the basement and left her there, shit-sprayed and sadly neglected until I could rush home at five to clean her. Poor Gogo. She stood it well, and, I am happy to report, is now sludge-free, as is my wardrobe.

As for the brick: it worked me pretty well for a morning wake-up, but not nearly as hard as it might have... which means play dates are about to get even more fun. Can't wait to do it again, HARDER.

And hopefully under drier conditions involving less organic matter, but whatever.

I'll still stay out and play.

Four Hills, Three Shirts

2010-06-08T21:39:00.004-05:00

Hospital Hill 2008. I'd made it through the Couch to 5K program, struggled through a respiratory illness. The 5K distance was the farthest I'd run. Could I make it up that first big hill? No. Halfway up and I walked. Clock time, 42:46. Pace, 13:46. I got the shirt that said, "I conquered the hill!" I didn't wear it.

Hospital Hill 2009. I'd been running a few times a week, never farther than 5K. I'd been running on hills, but as the spring grew hot and muggy, needed to walk more frequently. I had no idea how to feed myself to fuel a run. Would I make it up that hill? (I even ran the hill the weekend before to show myself I could.) Race day: Yes. But in the heat I almost blacked out at the top and walked the next 200 yards hallucinatory. Chip time, 39:05, pace 12:35. I got another shirt that said, "I conquered the hill!"

As by this time I was starting to work toward my first triathlon and needed all the tech shirts I could get, I wore both of them fraudulently.

"The hill's beaten me twice," I told Troy. "My only goal this year is not to walk, and then I won't have to do this damn race again."

But in the start area I was hopping up and down like a kid on a pogo stick, laughing at myself for burning that much energy, and knowing I'd do this race again. It's just too much fun.

With 4,500 runners unleashed from the starting gate through the streets of downtown Kansas City, we looked like a colorful swarm of bees, or maybe a stampeding rainbow herd of extremely skinny wildebeest.

It's the only run I've done where the sound of footsteps is like a rainstorm, for the entire distance.

Pre-race. Groovy running in a skirt

And the hills! Doesn't matter if they've beaten me. Doesn't matter if they hurt. I love hills. Something to warrant recovery from. I love how much I can feel my whole body generating power. I love hills in races; love passing people, love having just a little more grit than the next runner; love running with people who eat hills whole, storming by me when I'm giving all I have, be next to that strength for a few seconds and see what's possible.

The elevation profile shows only the one big, first hill and a second gentle-looking roller. But there were four distinct and gorgeous hill events on this course in addition to a couple of more minor steady grades.

The first is the hill that Hospital Hill is named for, a half-mile climb with a steep grade. The hill that had beaten me. Not this year. I held back on the first mile and was ready for a steady six-minute climb. Danced up, plenty of breath, didn't black out. Two thumbs up. If I were doing the 5K, I thought, I would PR. Wow. But I am not, and it is very humid out here. We shall see.

I kept pace with a couple of marks, two friends in headphones who were chatting about boyfriends, hysterectomies, and cocktail recipes.

Because I believed the elevation profile, I thought once I was past this hill the run would be routine — or as routine as a run in 80% humidity can be. We hit a long grade then and runners started complaining about the hills, wondering aloud to each other when they were going to end. Inside my head, I grinned.

A woman's D-chip flew off onto the course. I stopped and went back for it and tried to catch her. "Hey! Your chip!" Then looked down and saw I was holding the throwaway instruction piece of the laminated chip, which had probably been stuck to her bib. Crap. I lost my marks. And I really wanted to hear about the hysterectomy, too. Oh well, good citizen points.

At the bottom of the grade, two happy surprises. First: Kelly Grace and our pal Sarah course marshalling. They yelled their fool heads off for me, cracked me up. Whenever that happens on a course all the other runners look at you to see if they should know who you are. Kelly and Sarah, thank you for yelling my full name ("Ann Pai! Ann Pai!") so it would be more Google-able.

Second surprise: We runners would make two sharp rights, and could see the steep, demoralizing hill that was waiting for us on the other side of the horseshoe. I wanted to laugh. Steak with a fried egg on top and coconut cream pie, that is what that hill is. By the time I got to the top of it I had no doubt that I was working at capacity. My legs didn't want to run. The W word popped into my head. I was drenched in sweat that wouldn't evaporate.

"If you tell your legs they have to keep moving, they'll keep moving," I said. And the hill was behind me.

Between hill 2 and hill 3, my toes and fingers started to tingle and go a little numb. This really isn't supposed to happen. But given my history of heat exhaustion and how little problem I was having in the heat and humidity that day — no heat-related nausea, no dizziness — I wondered if for once my blood was working to cool my internal organs rather than my skin; if my circulation weren't being for once appropriately diverted. I wondered how different this would be if the sky weren't overcast. I wondered if the numb sensation would go away. It did. (Before you all start yelling at me, yes, I'll mention it to my doctor.)

Hill 3 was tougher than all the others. I was pushing myself. My obliques and lower abs started to squeeze. My legs felt strafed. "Ahhhh," I breathed out hard. Then: "Aaaagh," I said out loud. "Ooaaah." I sounded, felt, and am pretty sure I looked, like I was trying to birth something.

"You can do it, almost to the top," said a man I was passing. It sounded more like he was reassuring himself that this beet-faced woman would not really explode and roll in little beet-colored fragments backward down the hill. I thought I might throw up. I thought how comical that would have been if it happened right after the man had warded off my noises with his encouraging voodoo.

After hill 3, hill 4 was a relief. Plain Jane hill and almost at the end of the run! I can even skip the water station now, so close! I didn't even realize how close — could have started my finishing sprint further out! Oops! Guess I'll just have to run this bit extra-hard! Look, I can pass a couple of people now!

The fast half-marathon runners were steaming past us. I crossed the finish in typical near-puke state and stood with my hands on my knees for a couple of minutes before scooting through the chute to get my medal and a banana and head over for a beer.

That's right, beer. At 8:30 in the morning. 32 ounces of free Boulevard stout and pale ale, plus a barbecue sandwich, with a great live band in the background and a free massage waiting as well. What could be better?

With Kelly Grace and second beer

Clock time, 1:05:13, pace 10:30. Middle of the pack. I'm already curious to see what happens next year when I try to run a fast 10K on these hills. One of these days I really will throw up or birth something. Good chance it'll be this race.

Goodwill Unlimited

2010-06-02T22:34:00.008-05:00

You might remember meeting Kelly Grace a few weeks ago. Since her first running steps, Kelly has consistently increased her running time over half-hour workouts. And she's cleared hurdles that would stun many another soul: she's happily run in public, in urban neighborhoods — and she got her mom to try running with her. She's been on the road lately and running wherever she goes, from NYC to LA. Kelly rocks my world. With her permission, here's her latest Facebook note.

If you have some runner's encouragement to share with her, drop it in the comments!

As has been well documented on my Facebook page, my newest passion is running. I've gone from 0:00 to 5:30 to 9:30 of running in 44 days. The changes this new habit has engendered have been mostly internal: increased stamina and energy and a heightened awareness of my heretofore unacknowledged physical capabilities.

My new passion collided with my mother's -- Goodwill hunting -- over the Memorial Day Weekend. I come by my penchant for a full closet of clothes genetically: it has been passed down from my grandmother to my mother to me. During the 5 days I spent with them in Los Angeles we visited the Goodwill store near USC and the Bell Thrift Store near Huntington Park. Between my mother, father, grandmother and aunt we spent about $200 and got about 75 items: dresses, tops, skirts, pants, shoes, jewelry and books.

Treasure hunting in secondhand shops requires a full armor of patience, a letting go of rhyme and reason and a dash of serendipity. You don't so much search for clothes as you let them find you. This is triply true when you are a plus-size girl.

So this pair of pants caught my eye. Sizing them up, I had a pretty good feeling they'd fit. (I've gotten to know my body pretty well over the last 6 weeks now that I'm paying more attention to it than ever before.) That they were made of a fabric that moves with me rather than against me was promising.

I was right -- they slid on like perfection. Don't you just love that frisson of victory that washes over you when something you love fits like it was made for you?

When I checked to see the price I was doubly stunned: (1) the pants only cost $2.99 and (2) the label announced they were a size small! From The Limited, a store I have not even a passing acquaintance with as they don't carry my (usual) size. Women's clothing sizes are apparently bizarre and nonsensical. Maybe S should stand for "So What?", M for "Mine", L for "Love" and XL for "eXceLlent." Would do wonders for self-esteem, I'd bet.

Let me make this clear: my self-worth is not wrapped up in the number -- or letter, which is usually X preceded by a 2 or a 3 and sometimes 4 -- emblazoned on the hang tag. I don't consider myself (or anyone else) better or prettier or more valuable based on a clothing size, whatever it may be. That way lies ridiculousness.

I can wear one pair of size small pants. However, I am not a small person. I don't want to be a small person (not that there's anything wrong with that) or even a smaller person, necessarily. The goal of my running, now and always, is to do something new and challenging and see what good things result.

The truth is I'd love my new pants even if they were stamped S for Super Duper Gigantic.

Kelly G., runner, looking S for Splendid

Marked woman

2010-05-26T08:07:00.008-05:00

One of the coolest things about the KC Tri was getting to wear these very sharp numbers and the TriTats logo — a fun departure from sleepily scrawled magic marker numbers.

Sean Jackson of TriTats got me my temporary tattoo numbers, gave me a short history of the company, and applied his own KC Tri race number to show me how it's done. (He warned me about forgetting to peel off the plastic, which makes the tattoo unusable after water hits it. He did not suppose he needed to warn me about knocking the tattoo into a nearby open standing body of water, aka the toilet, which also renders the tat unusable. Thanks for setting me up with the replacement age group tat, Sean; you rock.)

Anyway, if you manage not to defile your TriTat, there's nothing to it: peel, make sure you don't have it reversed or upside down, stick, hold with a moistened paper towel, and you're marked like a pro. They come off in a fast scrub-down with baby oil (I took off the numbers but left my TriTats logo on for an extra day. It made me happy).

You'll see these on athletes at the Hy-Vee Triathlon in Des Moines, and I hope, in a lot of other races as sponsors pick up on how great this is: (a) athletes get an awesome-looking number; (b) photographers get a clean identifier even if the bib is torn off or turned backward, (c) athletes are willing human billboards for the sponsor.

Also, even though I would gladly wear my actual age, I think it's smart that this tat uses the lowest number from the age group:

Race Report: KC Tri 2010

2010-05-23T21:15:00.010-05:00

Five-fifteen AM. 800 triathletes filter into the park through the dark and dawn. As people arrive and set up transitions, the mellow morning buzz tightens to E string frequency. Wow, there are a lot of people here. Loving triathlon #1: being in the thick of so many people who have trained to be triathletes. This is going to be FUN!

I hit my high-voltage pre-race current at about 6:45. Thought: "Huh. Maybe the sleep deficit from this week isn't going to affect me."

Perhaps this was the voice of sleepless, race-juiced delirium. Anyway, it was wrong. Loving triathlon #2: How much I want to show up and race no matter what.

7 AM. We popped into the cold, choppy water. For some, this was warmup — the rest of us were just showing a little tough love to our lungs and extremities.

I breast-stroked out into the lake, ducking and diving. There is a kind of cold that gets colder the longer you stay in it. This wasn't that kind of cold. This cold would never feel warmer but wouldn't turn moving arms into ice. However, a sadist's south wind was push-brooming white-capped waves across the surface of the lake, rolling conveyor belts of currents below.

The sprint-distance partipants watched the Olympic waves run through the sharp crests. The murmur went across the athletes: "Oh my God. They're in trouble out there." Heads were popping up everywhere, fast age groupers were thrashing, swimmers were tacking left and right.

We got a second shot at warmup as our heats were held while the Olympic waves cleared the buoys. Back to the beach to wait. Loving triathlon #3: The unpredictable, beast nature of open water.

We gasped watching the elite sprint wave pushed north by the current, toward the wrong buoy. They wrestled directly into the waves to correct. Then the Olympic elites returned to shore. No one swam in. Everyone stood waist deep and walked. No one ran out of the water. The second murmur went through the Sprint groups: "Oh my God. They look exhausted."

You might think this would raise anxiety in the waiting swimmers, but it seemed instead to heighten resolve and preparation. We women in the green caps could see what we were in for, shift and refine swim strategy. We lined up, tensed and set to run, one foot in sand, one in water: Air horn! Off we go.

My swim strategy: "Don't stop swimming." Basic. No way around the reality of fatigue. Concentrated on staying calm and responsive, focused on aggressive body roll in the smacking facefuls of rough chop. My kick in the wetsuit felt nonexistent. "That's odd," I thought. "Why am I not kicking?" I tacked wide of the buoy line once. There were fewer and fewer green caps around me. Hey, as long as I can still see swimmers, I am still racing somebody.

The swim heats were arranged to have greater numbers of swimmers bunched and finishing at the same time. This makes more sense to me than the pattern of starting the slowest waves last, which would stretch a race and thin out the bike and run courses. But with this scheme the fast men overtake and jostle past the slow women. Being knocked around a little was great, as it meant I was going to catch a draft from the stronger swimmer passing.

Rounding the fourth buoy I got caught in a current and fought to head south toward the run-out mat. Suddenly I was so tired that I could barely believe I was going to hop on a bike. I swam in to the shallows, stood abruptly, tweaked my left calf muscle, and fell precipitously forward into the water.

"Oh my God," said a woman next to me, "are you all right?" I grinned. We ran up the mat together. I stripped the suit on the run. Swim: 27:03. Vast room for improvement but I was pleased with my ability to stay focused and keep a steady pace even as I tired.

T1. After the previous week's comedy routine, I'd practiced putting on my bike shoes and had rehearsed my transition order many times: Cap Goggles Strap Flap Strip Stop Glasses Helmet Drop Strip Drink Sock Shoe Sock Shoe Straps Straps Up BIKE!

Loving triathlon #4: THE BIKE. And I love the bike loop at Longview Lake. Some short hills, a long hill, some flats, some neighborhood sections with 90-degree turns in rapid succession. Every challenge has its own reward and a quick consecutive challenge. But I felt too good on the bike. I rode more aggressively and faster than I have to date — on the fast flat headed into the long hill I was actually involuntarily growling with exhalation like a dog ripping apart a rabbit — but I never got to that delicious place of pain that I'd found at Heritage. "What's up, legs," I asked. "I've got a full tank here, come on, let's use it up." Legs said, "This is everything." I tried. I got down, rode in the drops, which I hadn't really done before. Pushed all the gear I could at all the cadence I could on the last flat and passed a bunch of people. And I leaned the bike into corners and shot out of them, shut down any hesitation. First time I'd really done that, or even, y'know, approximated a line. Bike: 47:02, 15.8 pace, about 67th percentile of the 200-person field.

T2: Clockwork. Helmet Cap Shoe Shoe Shoe Shoe Belt RUN.

Wow. We ran smothered in the wet press-cloth of 85% humidity, and it felt long. Seeing the two-mile marker was incredibly demoralizing. It felt like I'd been running forever. No wonder, since I was at a minute and twenty five seconds slower than race pace. I was thankful clouds had pulled overhead; had the sun been beating down I'm not sure what I would have done to myself to finish. My legs were about as responsive as stacked Legos. I asked them to go faster and they would actually slow down. "Legs! Why aren't you moving!" They blew me a giant raspberry and started cramping, then recruited what seemed like every muscle from my smallest rib down to join them. "I love you, legs," I said. "Sorry about the sleep. Come on, let's run it in."

Loving triathlon #5: Laughing in the face of the insanity of running after the swim and bike. Loving triathlon #6: How much encouragement triathletes give each other on the run course. A marine doing KC as a training race jogged with me, chatting. I had plenty of energy to chat, and could manage to funnel exactly zero of it into my legs. So I decided I might as well encourage other runners, be good for something out there!

My race strategy became much like the swim: Just keep running. I had so much fuel left in the tank that I gave The Major a big yell of encouragement as we crossed, she on the first lap of the 10K. "Crap," I thought, "no way should I have that much left to yell with." Run: 31:59, 10:20 pace.

I crossed the finish without racing to core fatigue. My rule of thumb is that I ought to be almost throwing up when I cross the finish line. So to finish without core fatigue might have left me disappointed and feeling like I'd thrown away a race. I considered it. Didn't have time for it. Hooray legs for not stopping! Hooray brain for not doubting! Hooray 800 racers seeing it through, whatever that meant for you!

The take-away: do not build a sleep deficit. I thought I'd dodged the bullet since my endurance and cardio felt great pre-race. But I didn't have fast twitch; I didn't have slow twitch. I had no twitch. My legs just couldn't give what the rest of my body could have given. But they raced. Loving triathlon #7: But they raced.

I can't say enough good things about the race organization. Great course, fantastic support, dedicated field, clear communication throughout pre-race and race day. Surprisingly hefty goodie bag.

Oh. My time? 1:50:02. This was about five minutes slower than I thought I would be and ten minutes slower than what a great race would have been. I didn't bring a great race with me. I just brought me. Scavenged scraps of effort on the fly, and finished the work, feeling every minute of it.

It's not enough to rest with. But it's more than enough to keep going with.

Bike Week Lesson

2010-05-20T23:19:00.014-05:00

Between the rain, taper week, and a stupidly managed sleep deficit, I didn't coordinate a single commute for National Bike Week. I plan to make this up in June with lots of sleep, no tapers, and hundreds of bike miles.

My bike week consists of a trainer session, a pre-ride spin around the KC Tri Course with N. and The Major, and this post about cycling goals.

As I have a new one.

I want to be light and aware on the bike the way Rob is. Now, Rob is not the only cyclist I know who is light and aware on a bike. (I live with one of these creatures, so have a tutor at hand. I just didn't realize it fully.)

Rob and The Major MudBunny are each other's people. Both are cyclists and both race. I'd met Rob a couple of times but knew him most directly as the calm, kind, and matter-of-fact person who helped me get past my near wipe-out at God's Country.

Out at Heritage Park one afternoon, I saw two daubs of green and black jersey in the distance, the unmistakable LiveStrong Army team kit. The riders went around a curve and I hoped they were riding slowly.

"Rob said that was you back there," said The Major when I finally caught up. "He said it was you on your red and black bike."

I am not light and aware on my bike. I am still much constrained by gravity and a lack of experience. On the bike, I'm doing well to remember to process the road in front of me, what's to my sides, and what I can see in my mirror. I look down to find my water bottle cage. To think of looking way back and identifying a rider and bike?

I paid attention to Rob as we rode a gentle warmup loop through the park before he left us to do hard hill repeats. The three of us rode together only a few minutes, so I had to confirm what I thought I'd noticed with The Major later. (I hardly know how to interpret any phenomenon on a bike; I'm never sure what I'm seeing. I could be making it all up.)

"I'm not sure," I said, "but it's like he sees EVERYTHING. It's like the bike isn't even under him, he's so able to take everything in. And it was the same in transition at BikeSource... without, y'know, staring, he was getting every detail. Am I right? Really? 'Cause that's an odd thing to be able to notice about somebody else."

The Major told me this was correct. "Oh yeah," she said. "Rob is completely observant." She said a lot of other nice things about his cycling prowess and general demeanor, but I don't remember them verbatim. Rob, you'll have to ask The Major.

So, light and aware. That's a kind of rider I want to be more like. To be so natural on a bike that you can absorb as much of your environment as you would just walking around. To be able to stand, twist, look around. To have such light balance that you give the impression you could change clothes while riding, complete with windsor knot, tiepin, and full shoelaces, without losing a bit of stroke efficiency or the thread of the conversation.

Fast is not the only progress. Strong is not the only measure. There is also awareness.

Most people stand around and look and don't notice much. At the BikeSource race, Rob seemed still and quiet, yet was taking in what seemed to be a 270 degree field of vision. Very cool. I didn't know a person could actually radiate observation. I mean, if your job was to pick the one person who could immediately rank everyone else in a surrounding crowd by height, age, and shoe size, you'd pick Rob. Or someone like him. You wouldn't even think twice.

And he seems to observe this comprehensively WHILE MOVING ON A BIKE. Now that I've recognized this skill, I can see how little I possess it. Feels like I've been given a gift, the information needed to study every cyclist I see for this quality, so I can learn and mimic. It's just about the coolest thing I've seen all Bike Month. Something to emulate. And a new way of thinking about progress on the bike.

Return to Open Water

2010-05-19T12:08:00.010-05:00

Yesterday was perfect. Mock-summer: green trees, blue sky, unhampered sunshine, and nothing blooming to the point of allergy. And since neither the Major MudBunny nor I had swum in open water in our wetsuits (I had not swum in the wetsuit at all; she had never swum in open water), we jumped at the chance to meet a few other triathletes at Hillsdale.

Open water! The Major hoped for open-water bearings before Sunday's KC Tri; I hoped I could hang on for the distance. We were both hoping to love it — she for the first time, me hoping my memory hadn't tricked me. I think we both got what we wanted.

We greeted The Major MudBunny's teammate Sean, who had finished his swim, and watched a couple other triathletes slice across the lake. The Major and I snaked into our wetsuits, waded in, and immediately started laughing. We'd expected needles of icy water; it was only cool, the sort of water you anticipate on a hot summer day. In fact, now I'm not at all concerned about this week's rain cooling the water at Longview Lake; with a sunny, warm week, I would have been more concerned that the race might not be wetsuit-legal. And I am going to need that wetsuit, it seems.

We swam out to the heavy, curving yellow pipe that separates the family swim beach from the jet skis and motorboats. The Major watched me while I ducked under to make sure I didn't bash my head on the pipe; I did the same for her. (Really, it's advisable to go over the pipe. My upper arms felt like ramen noodles, so I opted for the less awkward but riskier pass.)

Why do I love open water? Wow. Open water is intimate. Something happens between you and the water.

It feels like living silk wrapped on my skin. Senses uncoupled from the trivia of gravity, aware of the immense and detailed texture of water and air, a massively diluted atmosphere of earth and plant, lifting me. When I'm tired, there's nothing to cling to, and I have to find the swim in my body; I have to know what my arms and head and upper back and legs and core can do, all the small variations in how they can work together. I like to feel the wind chop and test the water. I like to roll against the water and feel it roll around me. I like the feeling of skimming over the planet, immersed in fresh nature, braiding my body into the weather system itself, sun and wind and the amazing soft water.

After open water, the pool is astringent and small and hard. Yet I'll go to the pool as the swim has its own rewards.

The Major swam ahead of me, long, even strokes, sighting beautifully away from the sun, straight on toward the tall buoys. My stroke was all over the place, not much stretch, not clicking. Still loved it. We'd pick a buoy and The Major would swim on, wait for me there. (No wonder she liked it so much; she's The Major MudBunny, and what's a lake but dramatically thinned-out mud.) We're not sure how far we swam. Maybe 850 meters? We hit some cold currents, and that's always interesting, feeling that ribbon of water wrap around your forearm.

And on the way back (swimmers be warned), we swam across a rock ledge covered by about a foot of water. This freaked me out enough that I grabbed a mouthful of lake and had to stop and tread. I couldn't see the rock, didn't know where my hand was going to hit it, didn't know where it would stop and the water drop away again, didn't know whether it would pop up below unexpectedly. But other triathlete swimmers had navigated it, so knew it could be done, no big deal. The moment simulated pretty well the fear-potential of swimming in a pack, not knowing where the kicking feet and flailing arms are around you. I pretended it was merely a chance to practice nerves of steel rather than a chance to smack the fine bones of my hand against a big rock.

The swim back to shore, toward the sun, felt atrociously long. My stroke fell apart and got fat against the water. I couldn't even see the marker pipe in the glare. Getting tired, was glad for the wetsuit and its buoyancy. The real test of swim endurance comes in a couple of weeks, minus the neoprene crutch, when open water season officially starts. I have no idea what to expect in Sunday's tri except that I need to focus on head position, body roll, relaxed stroke, and length, length, length.

I stopped to tread three or four times to make sure I was still pointed the right direction. Sometimes I was. The Major was posted at the yellow pipe with a dazzling smile. "This was perfect!"

We dolphined in over the sand, then set up transition areas on the grass above the beach and practiced running in, stripping the wetsuits, pulling on socks and shoes, troubleshooting helmet straps and shoe velcro. (I plan to sit on the floor like a two year old tonight and practice changing shoes.)

Then a recovery run in the mock-summer evening, followed by stretching and sitting around on the grass trading favorite yoga poses, laughing like a couple of high school kids, and gazing out at the beautiful open water where we had so recently submerged and left our doubts.

Race Report: BikeSource 2010

2010-05-17T22:39:00.005-05:00

Race day never dawned. It just sort of crawled out of the cold and mist and sat in the parking lot in its clammy skin. And 330 of us, duathletes and triathletes donning the duathlete mantle, rubbed its amphibian head for luck and set up our transition areas.

"Huh," I thought, "I haven't given a thought to transition. How hard can it be; I've done this before." Ah, blithe dismissal, so often an element of tragicomedy.

Many questions had buzzed in my head the weeks before this race. How different was my body, really, from last fall? Was all the work I'd done over the winter real, or was it a mirage, with little actual effect? Had I been doing enough running lately? Was I going to be any good on my new bike? How hard could I push?

And the one that haunts me: Am I strong yet?

On race morning, my legs felt like all the questions had been hollowed out of them. My legs felt like a much readier person's legs. Sorry, readier person, I am not giving them back.

For some reason, cat had my tongue both before and after the race. Often when I'm in a good space, I can't do much but grin stupidly at my friends and talk the ears off random strangers. Such was the case. When Zoolander and his teammate (and my new friend) The Major MudBunny rode off on their time machines, aka TT bikes, to warm up, I took off for a slow delightful jog in my warmups. "Good taper," I said to myself.

Nutrition. Lunch the day before, roasted chicken, vegetables, fruit. The night before was party food: barbecue. One bratwurst and a miniscule flutter of salad; a bottle of Boulevard Wheat; and nothing after 6:30 PM. At five in the morning, a Larabar. A couple of Shot Bloks before the race. I wouldn't recommend taking a chance on a bratwurst, but this worked out fine. I didn't feel hungry all morning (even after the race) and never felt that scary mid-race bottomed-out feeling. Fueled and able to burn it all.

The duathletes rocketed off 10 minutes before the larger triathlete pack. Seventy-five percent of the field was men. Since both of last year's tris were all-women, this was a new experience for me. I missed the women. Where were all the women who did the all-women tris? Why weren't they here getting in on the fun?

The Major and I hung out together in the pack. When the horn went off, she jetted forward; her voice still clinging to my short-term memory: "On the first run, hold back three to five percent. Don't worry, you'll use it all up by the end."

So the first run felt slow and measured. A lot of people passed me because I had lined up farther toward the front than usual. I liked this. I liked seeing the field, even if it passed me. When you line up at the back, all you see are the people at the back. Run split: 18:06, 9:03 pace. If you're keeping track, that was my fastest measured pace up to that point.

T1: aka Annie is a circus clown. My feet were wet from running through puddles. I took off my shoes and tried not to get my feet wetter, which was of course impossible in the steady mist. I had no real idea where I'd put anything down on my transition towel. I considered a sock change, decided that was silly. I picked up my glasses. Wear them? It's too foggy on the bike. Put them down. Put one bike shoe on. Then what? Where's my helmet? Oh yeah, I put it here under the towel. Do I want my glasses? No, I guess not. Other shoe. Really? I don't want my glasses? Jeez, I've spent so much time in transition, at this point might as well take a drink of water too.

Typically this uncoordinated effort would leave me frustrated and a little panicky. But once I realized coordination was hopeless, I became very patient with myself, like I was a little kid. The main thing was just getting me onto the bike with all my gear fastened.

Bike: I had fretted a bit about my graceless nature saddling up and clipping in. I needn't have worried. I ran my bike around three people who were having as hard a time as I'd imagined for myself. Then maneuvered out of the mount area past some weaving people. All good, hope they all had amazing rides. My bike split was 43:05, 13.9mph. Yeah, the course was wet and hillier than any I'd ridden in a race, but this was a lot slower than I hoped to be. Time to put some miles on my legs, on this bike. What went right on the bike: I got faster and rode stronger with every lap; I handled the one fast downhill really well and passed people on the uphill after it on every lap; was comfortable on the wet corners. I did as well as I knew how and didn't feel like I'd left anything out. I pushed until my legs were doing all they could and then kept them working there.

Where The Major MudBunny's voice had clung to my memory on the run, Zoolander's voice was more like a rock hammer. "You should be working harder on the bike. You should be so deep in the pain tunnel that you can't think." I didn't go deep in the pain tunnel, but I did get far enough inside the entrance that I couldn't hear ZL's voice. The only thing I could hear was my own Inner Ass-Kicker. "DO NOT GEAR DOWN NOW. GO CATCH HER. TAKE THIS GUY ON THE HILL. DO NOT SLOW DOWN." My IAK curses a lot, so imagine all of that chili-peppered with expletives, counterpointed with my own moaned impolite vocabulary the third time I went up the hard hill, hard.

Also, I was lucky. The bike course was littered with flats, dropped chains, at least on exploded chain, and numerous fatalistic racers walking back to the gate.

I hoped to see The Major on her bike, but we were spaced apart on the course. ZL was off the bike and on his second run, ahead of the field in what must have been a weirdly quiet, wet chill. I loved seeing the super-fast people lapping me on their TT bikes. Those bikes make an odd smooth sound when they approach from behind. It sounds like something that should have claws and a sharp beak.

T2 was unremarkable. I still wasn't sharp, but didn't dither. My legs felt weird now — as I told ZL later, prosthetic yet as though two random animals had been attached where my legs were supposed to be. I definitely wasn't in control, and these crazy things just bolted out of transition. "Are you freaking kidding me?" I was asking my legs at about the time I heard ZL yelling at me that now is when the fun starts. "What are you DOING down there? We can't keep this up."

Yet we did. Around the course, up the hill (God, I love hills) where my legs finally felt like legs again, around the bend and across the dam. The Major had also warned me about the dam, how it would look like it was never going to end. So before I ran up on it I looked across and cut the distance into pieces mentally, choosing the points where I'd pick up speed. And then went into a blind zone down that long white alley where there was no end, only me running as fast as I could, then faster, until my sides hurt and I whimpered aloud and begged for mercy from the distance.

And then stayed there until I crossed the finish. Second run: 26:41, 8:54 pace. This is a number I wouldn't have imagined for myself, particularly after the bike, and makes me sad I won't be working with Trainer Kevin anymore. Am I strong? Everything's relative, but yeah. Let's go ahead and say I am.

I so want more women to race. I would just as soon with my best effort be 350th in a field of 500 incredible athletes as second in a field of ten. The distance, the terrain, and our own bodies are the test, but the field is the energy.

Having said that, placing second was enormous fun and cracked me up because it was so unexpected. And I am proud of myself. That feels good. I stared at the results for a long time, not believing my eyes.

What is as good as a podium spot? Getting bumped up in the ranks because one of the overall winners was from the 40-44 group. That's fantastic. Beautiful work.

What is even better: hanging with the kind of people who will wait shivering and miserable in the rain and cold until your name is called. ZL, first in duathlon Master's, 6th overall and second on the bike, and The Major, second in her tri age group and ready to rip into her first Olympic distance next week. I feel incredibly lucky that I got to learn so much from these two around this race.

I think I should mention Rob, too, because though he might not believe it he taught me something really cool in the 5 minutes or so that he rode with me and The Major out at Heritage Park, which was reinforced on race day. But since I learned it on a bike and this is Bike Week, I am going to save it for another post.

Presto Change-o

2010-05-15T21:29:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow is the start of the local multisport season. Notice I do not say triathlon season. The race directors sent out an e-mail today saying that the swim leg had been canceled because of inclement weather. As we are not expecting lightning, I suppose this means the water temperature has plummeted beyond what is reasonable. All 450 participants will run the duathlon.

Well. Good thing I do not think of myself as Annie Pai the Triathlete, because this might have been very disappointing. My whole identity might have been called into question.

I might be sitting here tonight, sobbing fitfully into my neoprene. Neoprene does not make a good snot rag, so good thing the race change doesn't rock my boat.

That water was gonna be REALLY cold. The first triathlon is now a week away, so I get to experience the season-opener anticipation all over again. AND I get some fantastic duathlon experience as opposed to an atypical triathlon experience.

I have no idea if my legs are ready to do that much running. I haven't run as much lately and it feels funny. After the KC Tri, I want some longer runs. (Good thing I want that, as Hospital Hill 10K is just two deep breaths away.) It is strange and wonderful to have your body tell you what it wants you to do next, and have that thing not be to fall asleep in front of the TV.

I understand there are some hills on tomorrow's run. That's the part I'm looking forward to the most. The roads will be wet, so the bike leg will demand I stay alert. I asked N. for advice on riding wet roads. Watch out for manhole covers, he says. I wonder if he learned that one the hard way.

It's odd. Race day doesn't feel like Christmas morning the way it did last year. It's starting to become a little more routine.

It feels like homecoming.

Cycling: A love letter

2010-05-08T21:44:00.014-05:00

What with the season's first back-to-back triathlons coming up, me still barrelling around a learning curve on the swim, losing Trainer Kevin as my trainer, dry trails lending themselves to beautiful runs, my first time helping build trail, and lots of thoughts on recent physical changes in this body, you'd think I could find something besides cycling to talk about.

Sorry. As for anyone in love, every conversation returns to the object of affection. If you try to change the subject, I will merely flit to yet another starry-eyed anecdote.

I was ready to write a post about recent rides. Then I realized I first want to tell you something fundamental about my history with cycling.

I want to tell you that there is not a space in my heart untouched by the man who at this minute sleeps beside me, unaware that I write about him. That I look back at the prints he has left across the last sixteen years of my life and see now that they are all shaped like bicycles. I want to tell you about N.

The first time I saw him, he was coasting up to our graduate school building on his Trek 820 Antelope, the same bike he rides now on our around-town rides together. He rode in the afternoons and on the weekends, long hitches out to the lake, down rural Oklahoma roads where rednecks and fraternity brothers threw empty cans and bottles at him.

Our first friend-date was a kidnapping. He couldn't find cycling shorts. It was 1992. Nobody stocked them. Nobody wore them for casual rides. It wasn't done. I didn't even know what they looked like. But he wanted them very badly. So I knocked on his door and announced the kidnapping. He got in my car. We drove twenty miles to another town to look for cycling shorts. I don't remember whether we found them. I remember being impressed at his commitment to the details of this thing he loved. I didn't get cycling. But I got that.

The first day I knew he loved me was incidentally the day he rode in the Redbud Classic. I went to the start/finish and hung out and read a book. I had no concept of riding forty, fifty, sixty miles. I didn't get cycling. But I saw how pumped he was to be riding, how hungry to test and push, how he and his bicycle were like a lock and key. And I got that.

He bought me my first bicycle and taught me to ride. I was hesitant and slow. I was afraid to ride alone in traffic, so he rode with me. A lot. I rode behind him, mimicking whatever he did. Up in the pedals? I'll try. No hands? If he can do it, then it's possible, so here goes. We rode bike paths all over town, longer and longer rides, and rails-to-trails rides, including one 50-mile ride in which he patiently stopped and massaged my calves every 20 minutes for the last 20 miles, talking as he worked out the knots, as to a novice peer rather than a nuisance wife, about gearing and spinning.

I still didn't get cycling, but I loved riding. Bike path cycling was the first time I enjoyed moving around in my adult body. And saw I might be good at something I had always thought was for other people. Why did I stop? Partly because compulsive eating behaviors began to wreck and blot out my life. Partly because when my sister, then the beloved friend who had been like my brother died within a few years, I was sleepwalking in a daze of loss. And then I was writing a book about all of the foregoing; less-ingrained pursuits wilted away.

And partly because I was still afraid of riding alone in traffic, and N., after more than a decade and thousands of miles on the 820, had gotten his first really great road bike. He was flying, at last. Free, alone, and so excited and joyous and proud that he could hardly contain it. He loves that bike. He babies it and cleans it and knows it and touches it as though it were alive and exquisitely sensitive to him. And it is. N.'s bike is the rest of him.

He rides in the heat and cold. He rides hilly long road routes; he rides calm bike paths. He rides with a group; he rides alone. In the winter, he rides hours on the trainer. Cycling is his constant. He calls himself a beginner, but this classification is meaningless to a passion so deeply etched with detail over years.

Though he has had his phases of obsession with pricy gear (and is reeling with my rapid onslaught of same), his cycling passion has never been an excuse for the acquisition of trappings. Though he can talk cycling endlessly, he has no empty talk. For every word he says about riding, his feet have spun the pedals twenty thousand times. Beginner or not, a person could do worse than be that kind of cyclist.

He's ridden over the Rocky Mountains twice. I hope to ride there with him. And you know, it's not about proving I can do this thing. I want more than anything to see his face when he's at the top of Independence Pass. I want him to see mine. I want us to know this about each other, in a way no one else ever could — our faces at that moment.

I want him to know that whatever glows in my face then — as it does when I race — lit slowly over time from a spark first thrown by his life.

Last year, when I signed up for my first triathlon, having not ridden in two years, we bought the hybrid for my birthday. And I told myself, "You are no longer afraid to ride with traffic. It is simply not acceptable. You will ride the way N. rides." And I did, and left my hobbling fear behind.

This year, we purchased my beautiful Gogo — far more bike than I am rider and more bike, more quickly and expensively, than N. has ever had. We disagree on several particulars and priorities about this bike, and I'll own my mistakes. But I tell myself, "You will treat this bike with the respect and care that N. treats his. You will ride with the dedication and attention that he does. You will research your gear decisions the way he has. You will be as self-sufficient on your bike as he is his." I'll develop into my own cyclist, but I'm still improving by watching him.

I'm starting to love cycling in a big way, however johnny-come-lately, ignorant, and unpracticed. I want more, more. I don't want to say no to any of it. When I climb hard hills, when I decide to ride though it's cold or windy, when I grit out a faster spin or find a larger gear as I crest a hill though my legs are tired, I want these things on my own. But it's easier because N. has shown me these things being done. He's wanted more, and I've watched him. I don't know what comes next for him in cycling. Whatever it is, he will own it as he has every scrap of experience. That's a kind of cyclist, and a kind of person, I want to be more like.

Today I pre-rode the BikeSource triathlon course. I felt so good on the bike that I didn't want the ride to end. I pedaled around the park. I practiced making tighter turns. I practiced staying lighter on my handlebars. Then I remembered something from long ago. I held back a laugh. I balanced until my fingers were barely touching the bars, then lifted them and rode.

And wham, fell so hard in love with N. that it shook me through.

I got cycling. I got him. I couldn't have told you whether I loved the bike or him more right then. Bicycle prints all over my heart.

It was suddenly all the same thing.