Race Report and so much more...

So I've been a bit of a slacker on the Blog side so here is a quick race report from last weekend.

Last Saturday I went to an all day women's bike clinic - it was AWESOME! Dawn, my sometimes trainer and in general great bike guru was our host and she had a number of people from the priority health team there and former pike pro Sarah Uhl (she was 24 - wouldn't it be great to be retired at the age of 24. We learned a little about bikes, got to meet a bunch of fun people, got to do some bike drills (including practicing falling - more about this later) and afterwards Dawn took us out for dinner at ABC and I got peer pressured into trying my first bike race on Sunday. Yeah free beer and dinner and peer pressure.

So I had to quickly run from dinner to go see Bobby McFerrin, Chic Corea, and Jack Dejohnette with my mom and Steve. It was amazing - the kind of awe that you get when you see something like Cirque du Soli - the awe of having something so amazing so amazing just seem to happen in front of your eyes and you can hardly believe it. When someone is such a master at something they can come out, and improvise for 90 minutes, no even speak a word to the audience, but hold them enthralled the whole time and get them to sing along, in tune. It was amazing. Afterwards they did a little Q&A which was also fun. Then we went out for a little ice cream (super yummy) and I was in bed by 11.

So with a whole 6 hours of sleep I wondered on off to the bike race. Mind you, I didn't actually know where it was at, so there was a bunch of driving around and a bit being late, but I figured it out and pulled in right behind one of the other ladies, which gave me a bit more confidence that I was at least in the right place. After removing my aero bars and getting yelled at for riding around without my helmet (more good advice I would use later) I registered, was given a relatively hard time my a normal bike jack ass, but so is life. While technically I had a number one, so I technically 'raced' it was not really a race. I had two lovely people - Joe and Darrell - coach me, teach me how to take some crazy corners, do a few intervals, and teach me how to draft (Joe was easier to draft behind than Darrell) and just had fun.

Afterwards Joe helped me fix my seat and I went out for a little ride with Dawn, which was fun. Dawn wanted to go back for the B race pre-talk so she told me to turn around, which did not go as well as planned. The whole time I was doing the turns with the gentlemen going 20+, no problem. The time I try to turn around in a big ole road going 2mph, I forget to bring my inside leg up and my pedal clips the ground and down I go - head hits ground, handle bars hit hand hits ground. Magically I unclip somehow and end up on my back in the middle of the road, not being crushed by the bike, thank goodness. After a second, I realize that OMG I'm laying on my back in the middle of a road (A corporate park, mind you) and I jump up and pick up my bike. By this time Dawn had realized I had fallen and came back to check on me and helped me fixed my shifter. Apart from a bike ole scrape on my elbow/forearm area (I will not include photos here cause that would be icky) and the fact that my legs looked like someone took a paint ball to me, I was okay. Mind, you, if I had not had the lovely session about falling, I might have done something stupid like stick my hand out and broken my collar bone or something. Not that I had enough time to even think about sticking my hand out, it was more of a pedal hit ground, oh I'm on the ground, OH I'M ON THE GROUND! The best part was that even though I had a big ole scrape, it wasn't actually bleeding - it was just one little skin layer away, so it LOOKED icky, but no blood. Great for the freak out value, and it still hurt, but not so messy.

Ok - Enough for now! Next I will write about my lovely cold (woot woot)