A Crack in the Relationship - No Love For My Mountain Bike

I'm not quite sure how I let April slip away without really having played in the dirt.  I have a grand total of 23.5 miles on my mountain bike.  It's just so wrong.  I promise to show my mountain bike more love next month.

My first journey out was the Spring Fling put on by the WorsWomen.  While Lapham Peak doesn't really qualify as singletrack, it was fun to get out and socialize with everyone.  I'm not a runner so I pleased with the chill pace that was set on the run (more like jogging actually).  I was dicking around in the transition area because there was no hurry to get on the bike.  After all, the vibe of this event was totally relaxed.  Then a handful of faster ladies jumped on their bikes and left me behind holding my knee warmers.  Mountain bikes just bring out the competitive beast in many of us.  I jumped on my bike and chased everyone around as best as I could.  It was nice to have a little bit of a moderate bike effort to go with my socialization.  All in all, a very fun day that cost zero dinero.  I'm sure I'll hit it up again next year.

Photos by Velogrrl and Superfly

That's a wrap.

I'm wrapping up my final week of base training.  I don't recall ever being this far into "training" at the beginning of April.  I think my shoulder injury that resulted in me not racing cross last fall, put me on the early track.

I'm been working hard on my sciatica problem.  The PT seems to think I have the hip strength of an infant on my left side and abs that don't reflect months worth of Pilates classes that I've been attending.  It's both sad and embarrassing, really.  She actually performed the hip strength test twice.....because she thought I wasn't trying the first time.  Planks, Side Leg Lifts (or I like to call them Jane Fonda's) and Cowboy Walks have become a nightly ritual.  I definitely perform these exercises in the privacy of my own home as they are much too silly to tackle at the gym.  The people on treadmills don't need the show.


I'm sure most of my friends played in the dirt yesterday.  Being that I'm always a day late and a dollar short, I brought my bike into the shop last Wednesday to have a bunch of work done.  I'll apparently get it back in  3-5 business days.  I have yet to hear back.  I know, I'm lazy.  I should probably do all the work myself.  But with the 16 hour training week that I put in, plus work, plus weighing/prepping all my meals and finalizing sponsors for our team, I haven't even had time to properly sleep let alone fix any bikes (or even clean them for that matter).  I'll never say that riding on the road is better than mountain biking, but my western Dane county adventure yesterday was pretty fucking awesome.

I'm not sure how much climbing I did, but it felt like an excessive amount for 61.5 windy miles.  Once my Garmin Edge 500 arrives, I can track meaningless statistics like elevation gain and be able to numerically quantifying things instead of using terms like shit-ton and crap-load.

My maiden dirt voyage for 2010 is roughly scheduled for Sunday at the Kettle, weather permitting.  Hit me up through the proper email, twitter or facebook channels if you want to ride.