A call for money, creativity, and suggestions: Run me into the ground, please!

Six months have gone by since I moved to California, sobered up, and pulled my life together. I finally feel like the ground is solid under my feet again, but my head is swimming. Now that I'm here, what do I do now? I have set myself a few goals for the first half of 2011:

1. No big performance goals. I'm out of shape, and any performance goals are sure to end in frustration. I'm only allowed to do what looks like fun, and I'm not allowed to care about how I do in these events. I'm just here to collect stories, t-shirts, and fitness.
   
2. In direct contrast to goal number 1, I have some long-distance cycling goals to complete before July 1, 2011. I want to get the best female cumulative time in the California Triple Crown stage race -- three double centuries spread over spring and early summer. I also wanted to break the female course record at the Davis 12 hour Challenge, but as I wrote this I found out that it won't be held this year. Damn.
3. I will also be riding the AIDS LifeCycle again this year. This is my most ambitious goal, not because of the 545-mile week, but because I have set the goal of raising $7000 for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. In 2008 it was all about the bike. In 2011, it's all about the cause. There are more than 44,000 people in the Bay Area alone living with HIV (based on 2007 statistics), many of whom use the SF AIDS Foundation's help to get the medication, counseling, and social services that they need to continue to live healthy lives.
   

While goals 2 and 3 may seem challenging, let's be honest. I can ride faster over longer distances than most if not all girls I've ever met at such events. (Not that there aren't faster girls out there, but they're not into ultracycling). Given a decent state of fitness (which I plan to achieve by "having fun" over the next few months) I will probably have enough fitness and cockiness to keep me in the running at the Triple Crown. And it isn't the 545 miles over 7 days of the AIDS LifeCycle that will be the challenge, it will be reaching my $7K fundraising goal.

I don't know about you, but I need more than that to keep me fired up. I need something to do every day that will peel me out of bed and keep me motivated to be consistent. With my eternally morphing goals, consistency is my downfall. Last week I wanted to be a triathlete, but the week before that I was a cyclist, and the week before that I was pretty sure that I wanted to be an ultrarunner. A month ago I was thinking about lofty road running goals. Or finally digging out that Tour de France ass and six pack and making a body like a fitness model. Or maybe it was finally time to get off my ass and try Crossfit...

You see what I mean.

Goal no. 1 is about not taking the joy out of training, but I do need some kind of goals to keep training. Otherwise I'll have another week like this past week where the only training I did was my Spinning classes, and I took comatose naps for 2-3 hours every morning because I couldn't think of a good reason to move a muscle.

I think a streaking goal would be fun, but it needs to involve more lunacy and creativity than a "no zeros" campaign on my training log. I'd also like to somehow tie it in to my fund raising for a good cause to get other people involved in the cause as well as my progress (à la Eddie Izzard's marathons around the UK). Ideally, it will tie into a glut of entertaining blogs again, as with the race-a-week year in 2008 and the chronicle of my crawl back to sobriety a few months ago. I would like to do something truly extraordinary, but with my work schedule, it will have to be the everyman kind of extraordinary.

Another thing that has been gnawing away at me is that the sparkling gay men with their perfect hair cuts and perfect bodies under their spotless and impeckable clothes are not the only group that benefits from the SFAF's assistance. As unpleasant as it is to see, smell, hear, interact with, think about, and be a victim of the junkies that troll the urban piss bogs of San Francisco, they remind me every day of where addiction can take you if you're not lucky. In the neighborhood where I work, I see them every day. Some of them are addicts, some have gone beyond addiction and have just fried their brains past the point of recognition, and many of them aren't even addicts but a drug tripped a switch they didn't even know they had. You do really, really stupid shit when you need your fix: selling your ass on the street, sharing needles, who knows what other unsavory activities. You don't give a shit, even if it means getting sick. Then, if one day you start to give a shit again, you could still be sick. For the people who are crawling back up from nothing, free health services could give you your life back. I was lucky that when I cleaned up, I still had my health. Somehow I stumbled on the mindframe and hobbies that allowed me to come out the better for my addiction, and with my body still intact. I feel like I owe it to the world to use my body to do something extra for the unlucky. Just one week of riding almost seems like a cop-out.

Here are some ideas for how I can roll my fund raising goals, my sanity, and my hankering to get back into the blogosphere into one. I want to do something inspiring, but right now my mind just isn't coming up with anything creative. I welcome ideas, suggestions, and heckling. I also welcome suggestions for how I can get more people involved in the challenge.

1. Since my goal is to raise $7000, then I could shoot to swim 70 miles, bike 7000 miles, and run 700 miles before the beginning of the ride on June 5 (that's an average of 6800 yd, 411 biking miles--yikes! that may have to be ammended--, and 41 running miles per week).
   
2. Or perhaps more realistically, complete the distance of 7 Ironmans over the next 17 weeks. Folks could pledge a small sum for every ironman I finish, or place bets on whether I finish at all. Or I could just accumulate an Ironman a week for the next 17 weeks...
   
3. A reader-submitted workout challenge where each week people have to submit their most greuling swim, bike, run, and weightlifting workouts and I blog about completing them. The submitter also suggests "value" of the workout, and people can vote on how great they think the workout is by pledging a certain sum for the completion of each. (Get creative here: treadmill marathons, Crossfit torture, the worst hill repeat workout you can think of...) This could also serve as a bank to spice up your own routines with other people's favorite workouts.
4. Run the distance of the AIDS Lifecycle (545 miles) before the event begins (32 miles/wk... on top of bike training). Ask for pledges for every marathon completed. Demand a good story from each one (if I get toward the end of a 26.2 mile stretch without any good stories, then I'll have to run around downtown SF in a giant penis hat... no, wait, that wouldn't get me much attention around here...)
   
5. Burn at least 545 calories every day by some means or another. Hey, it's not creative, it's not challenging, but at least it's consistent.
6. Swim the English Channel, bike across America, run the length of California.
7. Lift 1 million pounds per week. This one could be fun. It would get me into the weight room and doing some Olympic style lifting. I have no idea how the breakdown would go, but it would be a complete change of pace and I'm sure it would change my body composition and give my updates a whole new flavor. People could pledge for every million pounds lifted.
   
8. People could just pledge a certain amount of money per mile run, biked, or swum (think a penny per mile run, a penny per 10 miles biked, and a nickel per mile swum), and cap it off themselves at whatever they are willing to pay as a maximum pledge. Then I have to swim, bike, and run as far as I can in the next 5 months.

I don't know guys, help me out here. I want to make it fun for people to support the foundation, and I want to make sure that the event is enough of a challenge. HELP!

Back in action

I've been... absent. From the whole blogger world. In fact, I've been absent from a lot of things that I care about lately. I was absent from Christmas, for example because I was told not to come. Now the family's mad because I've been so absent.

It's a long story about why I wasn't invited for Christmas, and it's not really something I want to shout all over the internet (the internet isn't nearly so big as I used to think... more on that later). But basically there's a rift in my family, and I'm alone on the wrong side of it. My asshole brother is a violent, two-faced, manipulative bastard who hits me when he feels I need to be put in my place. I don't feel that that's right. Mom just wants everyone to get along. Dad wants everything to go his way. Having a violent, two-faced, manipulative, possibly bipolar, definitely socially remiss narcissist in your family is... well, uncomfortable. Admitting that you have a violent, two-faced, manipulative, possibly bipolar, definitely socially remiss narcissist as a son is much harder than just dumping all the blame on the headstrong bitch daughter.

So I had no Christmas, and I'm beginning to feel like the whole world's out to get me.

I found a used tea bag in my shoe the other day. Dad put it there. Who does that? The whole world really is out to get me.

On top of all that, I wrote an article about the latest doping investigations of a certain pro cyclist. It was Christmas day and the article was meant to be a lighthearted piece. The image of anti-doping officials going through a team's trash just struck me as comical and vaguely like a cartoon storyline. I wrote the article using metaphors and imagery that I thought evoked the cartoon playing out in my head, and was actually kind of proud of it. The article was immediately picked up by a bike forum where the trolls were not amused. They didn't think that I was critical enough of a man they believed to be a clear scoundrel. Within 3 hours I had hundreds of page hits, dozens of snide comments about my character and integrity in both the comments section of my article (since deleted) and on the bike forum, and a severe anxiety attack (it was Christmas f'r crissake! Didn't these people have Christmas goose to carve?!). I do not take criticism well. Ever since then I've been getting insults posted on every article that I've ever written on the internet, not to mention all over this particular bike forum when I bother to check it. It's gotten to the point where I dread even checking my inbox, and don't want to write for anyone anymore. I have contemplated legally changing my name, because the world really is out to get me.

Add to that work stress, studying for the personal trainer exam, and about a million demands on my wallet, and I've just wanted to curl up and disappear from the world. Every time I sit down at my computer it feels like the world is going to crawl through my screen and start clawing at my face. I haven't much felt like blogging.

But I suppose I should update my personal blog from time to time. Because of all the things I do on the internet, this is the most important to me personally... even if I have been a bit of a prodigal son. There are a number of people out in cyberspace who I count among my very real friends. I miss you guys.

Boo hoo! Whatever. So what's in store for 2010?
In 2008 I raced nearly every weekend, and I had so much fun! (Right: Me, happy in 2008). Then, in 2009 I decided I was going to buckle down. I was going to focus on a few goals and really put all my efforts toward those goals. The problem was, I wanted to try to qualify for Boston, Kona, and RAAM all in one year. It was like trying to go to the moon, the bottom of the sea, and the top of Mt. Everest in one year... all while falling in love. In the end I burnt out on all, accomplished none, and became domesticated.

In 2010 I'm just going to simplify further. I'm going to ride my bike. I'm going to ride my bike a lot, I'm going to ride my bike hard, and when I don't want to ride my bike I'm going to sit around and drink lemonade and throw frisbees to the dog while my girlfriend rides her bike. I am going to be a bike racer. My only athletic goal for 2010 is to upgrade to Cat II by the end of the season, and by all accounts not even that may be that difficult.

All I have to do in 2010 is just race a lot, ride a lot, and rest a lot. I can do that! Well... except maybe the third one.

It's kind of scary stepping away from triathlon completely. I had The Call with my coach today; the one about what we're doing next season. I asked, "So I was wondering if I should still do some running... You know, to help lose those last 10 pounds (to finally excavate my six-pack and TdF ass) and maybe for some crosstraining... I can hit so much higher heartrates running and..."

"Nah, forget the running," he said. You would think that I would have been doing my happy dance (pictured at right) when he said that, but I was scared. I mean, I had just run a 22:44 5K... with sore legs. I was the first woman to cross the finish line that night. I was FINALLY, after so many years of trying, getting to be a fast runner! Now that I was finally getting the hang of running, I had to put my money where my mouth was and walk away. "Running is just going to take the snap out of your cycling legs. You can burn way more calories in a 2-hour endurance ride than you can in a 45-minute run. Anyway, all that heartrate stuff is sport-specific. Just because you can run at 190 bpm doesn't mean that you'll hit it any easier on the bike." It was exactly the advice I would have given... to someone else. Why was I so reluctant to give up running??? I couldn't tell you.
"So which workouts can I tack onto?" I asked. If there was one thing that I learned from working with Eric leading up to the Ironman, it was that if I sandbagged I'd be sorry for it later. Eventually I just broke down and accepted his limits. There were workouts I could tack onto, and there were workouts that were better left alone.
"You can tack on to any of them, as long as you get your hard work done at the beginning when you're fresh," he said.
"Really? But what about the day before a key workout?"
"No, you'll be fine. If you want to go out for a 3-hour easy ride rather than a 90-minute easy ride because it's a nice day, go ahead."
"Really?" That was scary. Freedom to ride my bike when and for however long I wanted? Where would I go? What would I do? I would see all those routes that I loved to explore before my strict triathlon workouts kept me doing the same loops week in and week out! I wouldn't be able to agonize about 1-minute fluctuations from day to day over a way-too-familiar course.

"One thing that we're going to have to be careful of with with you, though..." he warned. "I've seen so many guys (and gals) who get into the sport already strong and blow through the lower categories, and then when they start racing with the 1's and 2's, all their weaknesses are highlighted. Suddenly they get dropped so early they can't even finish the race..." (my pulse quickened, that would be horrible!). "Next thing I know, they've dropped out of cycling altogether." Gulp!

I am a cocky piece of shit. I've gotten a bit more humble this past season, but I don't take being humiliated much better than being criticized. I can't climb for shit. I can't sprint for shit. For once on the bike I'm going to have to get used to things not going my way. This is going to be scary. This is going to be humbling. This is going to hurt. It's going to be fun! But it's also going to be fun to blog about, because when girls beat me, I get mad. When I get mad, people seem to enjoy it.

Pictures and final thoughs

First off, the race in pictures:

This is my new favorite picture of myself ever. I had finally found a chair where I could sit down in the finishers' area, and this guy keeps bugging me to get up so he can take a picture. "No, man," I said. "I just want to sit." A few minutes he came back again. "No, leave me alone. I don't want to take a picture now." Finally, the third time I said, "FINE! But I'm not smiling." Once I stood in front of the back drop he kept telling me to smile. "Nope," I said. "I don't like smiling for the camera. This is all you're going to get." This face says, Alright, I'm here. Now what?

Here I am crawling out of the water like a giant sea slug.

... and getting to the top of the stairs before the other sea slugs.

There are like 5 pictures of me holding my goggles as I got out of the water. I don't know why I didn't just take them off.

What are they? Binoculars?

This is a picture of a very unhappy Claire riding about 5 mph into a coastal headwind.

Claire did her best not to draft. Other guys seemed all too happy to suck her wheel. One guy who would not let himself be chicked got a warning to back the fuck off from a race official.

Read this face: it says, "Poooooooooooor me!"

Man, are those guys still following me?

That's right, buddy, you got chicked. Deal with it.

Coming in for even more water.

What you can't see in this photo: I can't enjoy my surroundings because my rock-hard 140-PSI wheels are absorbing none of the impact of this chipseal, and my clit (that's right, I said it!) is being rubbed so raw by the seam of my chamois that it bled.

This was the one and only time I tried unscrewing my water before pouring it into my bottle. It wound up all over my legs and my bike, leaving the aero bottle empty.

No idea what's going through my mind in this picture...

Closer up: ... but anyone who can come up with a good caption gets kudos.

Passing another boy.

This doesn't even look like me! This is the only picture of me running, which is annoying. I really wanted to know what my running form looked like, but I think that this was coming over the timing mats out of T2, so it hardly counts.

But here is proof that my running form has improved. Note: Feet coming off the ground and no heel strike! I win!

Most of my finishing photos are of this guy. But notice the background: me! Do you notice anything else? No heel strike, and feet are still coming off the ground. Now the question is whether my feet were coming off the ground in the 26.2 miles in between?

This was the beginning of a triumphant fist pump. I got it about this high, and then realized I didn't feel all that triumphant. Just relieved. I let it drop. And then...

And it's probably a good thing that most of my finishing photos are of that other guy, because this was the face I was making. Believe it or not, that's not pain. It's Holy shit, oh fuck, oh my god, I made it! It's over! I'm done! I don't ever have to run another step in my life! I wasn't crying, I was just... relieved! More relieved than I've ever been in my life.

No catchers. I really just wanted a catcher to share the moment with. Oh well.

The other picture of me with my medal. I'm saying, Look. There it is. My Finisher's Medal. Can I go sit back down now please?

Coach Liz and I visit the ruins at San Gervasio the day after the race.


The giant salad I ate when I was no longer afraid to eat vegetables that had been washed in tap water.

The heat rash I got from being sweaty constantly in the 90% humidity. (If my neck looks funny, it's because I'm holding the phone on my shoulder.)

I had been satisfied with my effort (if not the results) until we found ourselves at the rolldown meeting waiting for the awards banquet. I knew that I wouldn't get a rolldown slot, and wouldn't have taken one if I had, but watching everybody claim their slots and trophies, I was green with envy. I started to think about which races would be better suited to my body, and how I would have changed my nutrition strategy to not have stomach problems on the run. I started doing the math to figure out what I thought I could realistically do at a cooler race. I was hardly sore anymore, and felt like I could have run much faster if my stomach hadn't held me back. Then I caught myself.

Would I do the race again? Yes. In a heartbeat. Will I do an Ironman again? No. In the end, I had a really, really fantastic time in Cozumel and when I looked back on it, I truly enjoyed the Ironman; even when my stomach was leaking out my anus. But for the first time in over two years I didn't have any events hanging over my head, and I didn't want to get myself involved in anything I would regret.

If I did another Ironman, or kept pursuing running and triathlon, then I would regret it when it came time to give up speed in favor of a long, grinding slog. From almost the beginning of my training, I was getting frustrating with the tepid speeds involved in Ironman training. I missed tearing girls' legs off. I missed riding fast. I missed heaving side-by-side with another girl, and then clicking into a harder gear and leaving her behind because my legs had a gear that hers didn't. Most of all, I missed racing every weekend.

This year my biggest barriers were the mental ones that kept me from giving it the old college try and mustering the chutzpah to stick it out to the end of long, long races. So next season is going to be all about short, fast, aggressive bike rides. I'm going to focus on road racing with a reach goal of upgrading to Cat II by the end of the season. Because I really do love the triathlon style of riding, I'm going to do some aquabikes for fun as well. I'm thinking of doing Rev 3 again, perhaps Timberman (does anyone know if that's still open), the Plymouth Rock Iron-distance race, and maybe Patriot again.

But for the next month, I am going to be doing some weightlifting. That's right. I'm putting the bike, running shoes, and swimsuit away, and I'm heading out to pump some iron. I'll see you in the gym!

Yes, Master

If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times. I'm not getting a coach. I know too much to be paying someone else to tell me what to do. I know my body better than anyone else. I like having the flexibility to make last minute changes to my training as opportunities come up. I don't need to waste $200/month to have some Joe who's read The Triathlete's Training Bible impose rigid periodization on me. Coaches are for those richer than me whose priorities lie in different places. Nope. Not me. No sir-ee, no coach for me.

Well, I hired a coach.

This season has been a huge disappointment for me. While I am riding way better than last year, indeed better than I would have thought possible, I haven't made any headway in any of the goals I set out for myself. I did one road race, and when I realized that my legs were strong enough, but I didn't understand how the tactics worked, I chickened out on any more races. I decided that I was going to do more ultraendurance riding, but without a game plan more detailed than "ride as long as you can," I kind of lost interest.

I'm so comfortable with triathlon now that I forget how long it took me to feel like I really understood how the sport worked. I needed someone to take me by the hand and show me how to race all over again.

The other thing that I realized is something that many of you have seen all along. I was washing my face in the morning, and suddenly it hit me. I had done too much! Last year I did four marathons, two 50K's, one ironman, two half ironmans, and a 12-hour ride. My body could handle it, and I don't think that I dug myself into a hole. I was proud of what I did in 2008 (and the first 2 weeks of 2009). The epiphany I had in my bathroom at 5:00 a.m. was that if I hadn't spent a week before each of those races resting up, and a week afterwards recovering, then I would have had twelve more weeks of quality training that might have made me faster. Clearly, I needed a mediator to remind me about the big picture when I found myself making another impulse buy in active.com.

After such an unsatisfactory season, whichever event I picked, the ADK 540 or Ironman Cozumel, I wanted to do it right.

So I started looking into coaches. But what kind of coach? A triathlon coach? I looked at some reputable triathlon coaches' web sites... and already I wanted to run and hide. Just looking at the images and credentials on these coaches' web sites made my skin crawl. I love doing triathlons, but I also love being a swimmer, a biker, and yes, even a runner (sometimes). There's just something about triathletes... they're so busy swimbikerunning that they forget that they have all these skills to get out there and do FUN stuff outside of swimbikerunning. I did not want a coach that was going to take the fun away from me.

So what then? A cycling coach? But I know how cyclists think. In some ways they are more rigid than triathletes. Cyclists take their rest as seriously as evangelical Southern Baptists take their Bibles. "Never take the stairs when you can take the elevator. Never stand when you can sit, never sit when you can lie down," the mantra goes. I have never been given such a stern talking to as cyclists give me when I ride rather than taking a rest day. How would I satisfy my urge to go out and smack myself from time to time when everything was so heavily regimented and quantified by heartrate zones and workouts that fit neatly onto a spreadsheet with columns for power, and heartrate, and elevation gain, and time in this interval, and time resting? How could someone who sees training as a math problem train me to ride for 24+ hours at a time when the only goal was to not get off my bike? How would it go over if I ever decided to go for a swim... or (god forbid) a run?! No, clearly a pure cycling coach wasn't for me.

Luckily, I know Big Red, and Red knows everybody. On a ride with Red's friends, the guy who she said I could never keep up with (and I later beat) mentioned that he knew a guy who had coached some guys to RAAM. Team Strong Heart wound up taking second (out of twelve) in the 4-person male under 50 division. So he knew long distance cycling. I looked at his web site: he trained people for road races with the options of: "Training will focus on key races or being strong for many races each week, what ever your goals are!" Hey, that sounded pretty good to me. Then I looked at the racing highlights of his clients: Ironmans, cycling category upgrades, stage races, wins, wins, wins. Big Red's Friend Who Is Not Quite as Fast as Me gave me a glowing review, so I knew that he would pay attention to what I had to say. Finally, I spoke to The Man himself, and when he told me I wouldn't be doing any 100-mi. bike/10-mi. run bricks, I was SOLD!

So I am now trying taking orders from Eric Kenney, Endurance Coach. A couple hundred dollars later, I got my first week's orders... a week early. His first order? STOP! He wanted me rested for my training. He made me sit still for a whole, entire week. ME! Take a WEEK off! Can you imagine? With only a few clandestine errands on my fixie, one secret 80-mile ride with PJ, and an illicit 28-mile guts-out drop ride, I got through my week completely OFF.

The Man now has me resting well for key workouts. Begrudgingly, I'm giving it a chance. I'm getting re-acquainted with my heartrate monitor. I've never been someone to put much stock in a HRM, but I understand that in the absence of power, it's the best way to get an idea of how hard I'm working to someone who lives thousands of miles away. On my first workout by zones (3x12:00@175-185 bpm) I had a BLAST! I've always thought of my heartrate as something that held me back. It seems like you always have to keep their heartrate UNDER a certain limit. Now I was having trouble getting it ABOVE 175, and flying around corners at 25 mph. It was great!

I'm sure that Claire taking orders will lead to hilarious hyjinx, so don't forget to check in often. Also, there will be some exciting new developments with the blog soon. If you enjoy the race reports and my pugnacious rambles about training philosophy, then this blog is about to get way more interesting. If you wish that I would adhere to a 500-word limit in my posts, you too might get a little relief. More to come.

Hubris

I am perfect.

Well, no, I'm not perfect. I'm far from perfect, and I know it. I could rattle off a list 4 hours long of my faults and shortcomings.

But still, I don't want to hear from anybody else that I'm not perfect.

I also know everything.

Okay, I know that's not true either. I'm pretty ignorant about a lot of things including math, science, politics, the names of famous actresses and what movies they're in, and most things that matter.

But God help you if you try and give me a tip, a pointer, or advice that I did not ask for.

I am always right.

I have very strong opinions about the things that interest me, although those opinions evolve. If I'm going to change my opinion later then my opinions, too, must be wrong. At least sometimes.

But if you disagree with me, you are most certainly wrong.

In reality, my ego isn't nearly as big as it seems. Most of the time I'm lampooning myself when I say (write) opinionated, arrogant, and even overzealous things. And the joke's on me. Sometimes I write like an asshole just to remind myself not to be an asshole. BUT, I have to admit that I have a big, fat ego when it comes to two things: my bicycle, and my endurance.

Look out, cycling world. Here comes Speed Racer!

I recognize that there are many, many people who are fast and can outlast me on my best day. I choose not to compare myself to those people, it makes me feel better to pretend that they don't exist (Karen Smyers who???). But when I rolled into Schuylerville, NY last year and rode 200 miles in 12 hours, without ever having ridden more than 115 miles in my life, I was pretty convinced that I was God. I had set a goal, achieved it, and now I felt like the ultimate after-school special; a living, breathing example that you can do anything you set your mind to (I do not, in fact, agree with this statement, but that's not the point). I had made cycling my bitch.

Since I've decided to close the book on running and set my gaze forward to the cycling season, it's taken a Herculean effort to keep my ego in check as I plan my goals for the upcoming season. I have forced myself, albeit begrudgingly, to ask others for advice. But here's the problem:

People are not giving my awe-inspiring superpowers the respect that they deserve!

The first blow came when I finally (after over a year) got up the nerve to write an email to an elite female cyclist who sometimes swims with my Masters group. I tried to hint at the fact that I already knew everything, but if there was someone who might know about a magic switch I could flip to become a cycling sensation overnight (or maybe just manage to get out of Category 4 – the beginners' category – by the end of this season without making an ass of myself), it was her.

And then she didn't write back... for a week.

I was furious. I WILL NOT BE IGNORED!!! She was going to rue the day that she ignored the likes of me. It wasn't until I had stalked her every measurable result on the internet, had a half-formed profile of her entire cycling career (strengths and weaknesses), and had planned her bloody demise (or at least to pee on her in the shower), that she responded to me. It turns out being a wife, mother, and human being takes priority over my planned hostile take-over of the cycling world. Her response was generous, helpful, and insightful. I am going to hell.

But still, it was clear from her response that she was not, in fact, quaking in her cycling shoes at the prospect of me tearing her legs off. In fact, her advice was the perfect advice for someone new to formal cycle racing, but not cycling. Her response was aimed at someone just like me, only without the colossal one-in-a-hundred-billion raw talent that my ego tells me I possess. I was still intent on proving her wrong. By the end of the season, I at least wanted her respect, even if I no longer wanted to see her kneeling in a gutter begging for mercy.

The next blow was slightly more subtle. Out of nothing more than boredom and frustration, I agreed to go back to Saratoga Springs, NY to do a century with John from Adirondack Ultracycling (the race organizer of the Saratoga 12/24 that I did last year, as well as the Adirondack 540 RAAM qualifier that I plan to do this year). Much to my relief, after a snow storm John decided to make the ride a 6-hour trainer ride, so I drove three and a half hours each way just to ride in someone else's living room. It was worth it just to pick his brain for 6 hours. I decided to keep the magnitude of my goals to myself, and pretend to be someone not yet blessed with amazing superpowers of strength and endurance to keep John talking more. In the course of my "playing dumb and just listening," I learned a lot from John about how ultracycling works and what to expect on the brevets that I plan on doing this summer. And then the conversation turned to the 24-hour race. "There are 3 women that are planning on turning up this year who are very good."

I gave John a long, stern look. "What do you mean by very good?!" The implication, of course, was that I am still green, and should not expect to win as easily as I did last year... or even win at all.

"I think that any one of them might be able to ride 350 miles."

Three hundred and fifty miles?! I thought. I'm expecting to break 400, and training to crack 440!

"Remember," he went on. "You slow down a lot after dark."

I have never ridden after dark. Not me! I thought. Only ordinary mortals slow down as time goes on. I am going to be the first person ever to never get tired! Because I have a secret weapon: TRAINING! Those women won't know what hit them!

Later, as I was leaving the house, the subject of the ADK 540 RAAM qualifier came up. "You should come do it. The one-lap record is only 11 hours (for 135 miles). You could beat that easily," John said.

"What are the 3- and 4-loop records?" his wife asked.

"Forty and a half hours for three, and forty-nine and a half for the RAAM qualifier," John spouted off.

"Well I'll be there," I said. "I can't say I'll be riding all 4 laps, but I'll be there." What was I talking about??? I had every intention of riding every inch of that course. Not because I'm in any hurry to qualify for RAAM, but because I don't want to leave anything half-done. But then again, if I opened my big, fat mouth (luckily, not as big and fat as my ego), then I ran the risk of failing in front of witnesses later. Better to keep my mouth shut.

Ever since she popped up and then disappeared on my blog this fall, Fellow Chick Biker has been the voice sitting in the back of my head.

"yeah, yeah, you are so talented, blah. enter a real road race and we'll see if you can hang."

The scariest part of setting expectations of myself is that I might not live up to them. Worse, the scariest part about sharing my goals to others is that their expectations of me are raised. If I don't tell anyone that I plan to do well, then no one will notice if I suck. Rationally, I know that I'm not the greatest thing to happen to cycling since Lance Armstrong. Rationally, I also know that I do have some talent to work with (not a ton, but enough). What people seem to forget is that when I rode that 12-hour race, I'd only ridden about 5 centuries in my life, and had never ridden more than 115 miles at one time. I remember lying there with my sore feet in the air for half an hour and groaning that I couldn't eat anything in this 95º heat and 90% humidity (I probably consumed less than 1000 calories in those 12 hours).

How much faster can I ride if I actually focus on my cycling all season? How much farther can I go if I have a crew to hand me up cold (non-curdling) drinks and food that isn't melted all over my bento box? How much fatigue will I be able to ward off if I have several night-time training rides, and rides of over 200 consecutive miles? How much better of a rider will I be if I actually TRAIN on my bike? How much longer will I be able to stay in my aero bars if race day isn't the first day I've ever used them?

My training on the bike has never been very organized. Last season when Mary asked me how to get faster on the bike I think I said, "Just be too cocky to let yourself get dropped. It worked for me." Mindy remembers me telling her that my only strategy was that, "I love riding my bike, so I ride a lot." This year I am being much more methodical about my training, and I'll be riding a lot more. That's got to count for something, right?!

But my goals are not quite as scientific as my training. They are based on the assumption that I'm too cool to get tired, and I'm too cool to slow down. I know that if I can just keep my mouth shut, I can surpass everyone else's expectations, if not my own. But the problem is, that every time someone underestimates me, it undercuts my self-confidence. How does one find balance between the two? If I knew the answer to that question, I wouldn't have such an abrupt end to this post.

Note: Be sure to vote on my poll at the right. I'll leave it up next to my "Bucket List" for the rest of the year, and we can see on January 1, 2010 whether opening my big, fat mouth about my dreams was a mistake. You may select multiple answers.

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Side note: I finally got to take out my fixed gear for the first time today!!! The big joke all the fixie geeks I know love to tell me is, "DON'T STOP PEDALING!" Man, they're not kidding! I kept forgetting that I couldn't coast around corners, over speed bumps, through puddles, and down hills. I only remembered to KEEP PEDALING when my pedals tried to pitch me over my handlebars. In the half hour or so I managed to squeeze in after coming home from Maine (another post on that coming soon), I managed to master slowing down, turning, small hills, and gradual descents all without stopping pedaling. The problem came when I got home. I started slowing down at the beginning of the block, continued to slow down as I passed my house, and was still going slower and slower when I reached the end of the block. Thank goodness I insisted that The Hott Bike Mechanic put an "Oh shit brake" on the bike, or I might still be out there right now, still pedaling and trying to figure out how to stop. It was so fun! I can't wait till it warms up so I can start using it for my commute!