A Silent Night
Late last night I logged onto facebook to get status updates before heading to bed. As I was scrolling through the posts I saw this picture with a link to this story Lees-McRae cyclist Megan Baab killed in training accident | eNews.lmc.edu. I had to read the headline twice before it sunk in. The words didn’t seem right poised next to such a happy, smiling photo. I couldn’t believe it. I was in complete shock.
It’s always difficult when the cycling community looses one of their own. It’s a harsh reminder that what we do is dangerous. In some way, I think we always hope that the accident was caused by the cyclist so we can pretend that we have control over our fate on the roads. For Megan, this was not the case. Another college student fell asleep at the wheel and crossed the center line. There was nothing she could do.
I wasn’t close with Megan but we raced together my first year, before she cat’d up. That was when she was only 16 and looked even younger. She had the confidence of somebody years her senior and a personality to match. She was never nervous about lining up with the big girls and she held her own. She was a strong racer and was always one of our marks. Her dad was her coach and her biggest cheering section. He was at every race with her.
Last night was completely restless. I felt sick to my stomach and could not stop thinking about her dad and how big a part of his life she was. When I did sleep, it was in fits, with dreams about people close to me dying.
Now I’m sitting at work unable to concentrate on anything. I can’t find it in myself to cry about it so I just sit here feeling sick. I’ll start working on some code only to find myself feeling as if I’d forgotten something very important that I was supposed to be doing. There is great sadness in me because Megan is gone but the real pain comes from the realization that we really have very little control over these things. I can’t give up riding because of this accident or any other. I can change the way I ride, I can use my trainer more but accidents still happen and they don’t require a bike. I feel completely vulnerable right now and I don’t know how to move passed that feeling.
The Mystery of Lost Things
I am completely loosing it. I realize that the last 6-months of my life have been completely dominated but work but only in the last two months do I really think I’ve lost my mind. Well I might not have officially lost my mind yet but I did manage to lose 3 different important things in my life. This may seem really silly but I never lose things. Everything in my life has a place and my days are as regimented as possible.
It started in early November when I noticed the 6-bottle bag that I use when I buy wine was gone. This thing seriously only comes out of my car when I buy wine and take it into the house. The possibilities here are very limited and yet, it’s gone.
This was followed up by the loss of my favorite sweatshirt. My frost your fanny sweatshirt has been with me for 4-years. This thing was rock solid and would have lasted forever if I hadn’t lost it. Again, I only wear it at home, at work, and in the car. I have searched everywhere and it’s just gone.
Finally, my brand new armwarmers, that I owned less than a month are gone. No if there is anything that had a routine in my life, it’s the bike. The clothes come off and go into the dirty laundry bag. There is little room for error here.
The thing about losing things, especially multiple loses in a short time, is that it makes you feel helpless. Like anything at anytime could be lost. I have been torn apart in side over the loss of my Frosty. I tore apart the house, my office, and my car. I was so sure it had to be somewhere silly that I just overlooked. I scrutinized my calendar looking for a clue, something that could have broken my routine.
I know that I’ll eventually get over all of these losses, but right now there is a hole in my life and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t still searching.
Audra does Dallas – Part 1
Last weekend, my friends and I went to Dallas for the White Rock Marathon. Our friend Audra was running it as her first marathon and we thought it would be a great excuse for a girl’s weekend in Dallas. As if a girl’s weekend ever needed an excuse. Even given my crazy work schedule, I was in for my first trip to D-town.
We had so many plans for the weekend. None of which will be discussed here because 3-days before the trip the weather forecast took a turn for the worst and most of our plans went out the window. The weekend was really about Audra and with the race taking place in 30-degree rain, she was going to need all the help she could get.
Bonnie was awesome and booked us a room in the brand new Omni before it got booked up with race participants. We rolled up to a hotel with rainbow lights all around the outside. We should not have been surprised when we found the TV in the bathroom mirror but we still had fun watching it.
In the morning, we ordered breakfast to our rooms (posh right!) and looked out our window to find a parade forming just down the street. It was awesome watching huge blimps of Elmo and nutcrackers being pulled along buy groups of people. We were meeting Audra at Onyx Nail Salon for maini’s and pedi’s. This place was fantastic and I left wishing it had a twin in Austin. The chairs offered one of the best massages I’ve had and they had 4 big-screen TV’s. We sipped mimosas (complementary with service), watched TV and had our nails done.
We had grand plans for the day that included, shopping at the mall (yes, 21 days before Christmas), going to the mega half-price books, dinner, and dancing!! By lunch it was raining pretty hard. We headed to the mall and drove around the parking lot for a good 20-minutes before we found a spot. We hit H&M and BR and burned 3-hours before leaving the mall. We figured it would be best to ditch half-price and head back to the hotel to get ready for a night of dinner and dancing.
We had dinner at La Duni, a great restaurant Jessica wanted to try. The food was fantastic and we didn’t have to wait long to be seated either. By the time dinner was done, so were we. The weather was miserable, we were tired, and we had hatched a scheme to help Audra by running portions of the marathon with her. We were looking at a good 6 to 8-miles of running and the hotel beds sounded really good.
Stay tuned for part 2!
Week in Review – 10/30/2011
Everything that’s been going on that just doesn’t fit into it’s own post. I’ll use this space to include links to interesting reads, miscellaneous photos, puppy stories, and anything going on that just didn’t fit anywhere else. I might even include some of the more interesting Google searches that brought people to my site.
This Weeks Posts:
Saturday: Zebras, Hot Air Balloons, and Hippos. Ohh My!
Sunday: Pinterest
Interesting Reads
- A battle with my brian – For any athlete who’s ever been injured you know what this feels like.
Other Happenings:
Stuff that just didn’t fit anywhere else. AKA, the kitchen-sink section.
What is this latest internet social network? Picture it like an idea board, or a few idea boards with different topics on each. My first impression was that it would take the pace of tearing photos out of magazines. When I first started using it I wanted to go track down “stuff†on the internet that I could “pin†to my “board’. While this seems intuitive it will actually leave you disappointed. Keep pinterest in your back pocket (or web browser bookmark bar) for when you do find internet awesomeness, but don’t go searching!
Pinterests power lies in the fact that all of the users are adding things as they find them. Pinterest evaluates your interests when you first join through a short survey and matches you to other boards based on the results. The boards you are subscribed to automatically show up on your pinterest page every time you log on. The result? Internet awesome comes to you!
Because pinterest can only show you so many things at a time, you want to be particular about the boards you are subscribed to. Be proactive about subscribing to boards you like and unsubscribing from ones you don’t. I somehow ended up on a board about vintage dresses. At one point my entire pinterest page was littered with vintage dresses from the 1800’s; corsets and all! Once I unsubscribed from one, pinterest unsubscribed me from the others. It learns as you go so take the time to teach it!
Finally, the most powerful thing about pinterest is that the information behind the “pin†is typically only one or two clicks away. See a recipe for real cornbread? Clicking on it takes you to the person who originally pinned it. Clicking on that should take you to the source; hopefully a recipe page. In this way, pinterest also acts as a notebook, wedding scrapbook, and recipe box.
Give it a try and let me know what you think.
Zebras, Hot Air Balloons, and Hippos. Ohh My
I made it out on a long ride for the first time in months. Now that I know I’m not going to stop breathing I’m willing to push myself a little more. This morning was the first 40F day we’ve had this fall and, as is always the case with the first couple cold rides, we all spent the first 15 minutes before the ride comparing wardrobe choices. We always seem to go from 65F mornings to 42F mornings in about a week. But highs will still be in the 70’s. Depending on how long the ride it, we could see 25F temperature change. We had all dressed slightly differently; base layers vs wind vests, long sleeved jersey vs arm warmers, and knee warmers vs bare knees.
Six of us took off at 8:00am for a perfect ride. The wind topped out at 4mph and the sky was bright and sunny from the time the sun came up. We headed north for a more scenic ride. The first 15 miles were very shady leaving us all with frozen fingers and toes. It felt like we didn’t pass any cars once we made it to the country. The ride offered so many beautiful sites I wish I could have stopped and photographed. We passed the bottle fence with the sun just rising on the other side of them; lighting them like little lights. As we got toward Hutto, we saw a half-dozen or so hot-air balloons just getting back from their flight. We then passed a small herd of zebras just off the road in a penned up area. At the gas station we pointed out the two hippo statues wearing bikinis to the two new Flyers. They seemed like a huge disappointment after seeing real zebras! On the way back, we passed a huge group of monks who stopped what they were doing and started taking photos of us.
In the end it was only 50-miles, which was shorter than I’d expected. It was a beautiful ride with some wonderful women. and it made me feel totally pro again (or at least like a legitimate amateur).
Week in Review – 10/23/2011
Everything that’s been going on that just doesn’t fit into it’s own post. I’ll use this space to include links to interesting reads, miscellaneous photos, puppy stories, and anything going on that just didn’t fit anywhere else. I might even include some of the more interesting Google searches that brought people to my site.
This Weeks Posts:
Thursday: The Close to Another Season
Saturday: Hills or Hills
Sunday: Sarah’s Key – Tatiana De Rosnay
Interesting Reads
- A good TrainingPeaks article about the affects of over training – Sometimes it feels like this topic is overdone but every time the off-season rolls around I find I need a refresher again.
- Really cute ideas for picnic food in mason jars – I love this idea right now. The weather is beautiful and I’m overworked so this is what
I’m thinking about.
Other Happenings:
Stuff that just didn’t fit anywhere else. AKA, the kitchen-sink section.
Sarah’s Key – Tatiana De Rosnay
This book was better than I expected and I ended up finishing it in about 3-days. I wasn’t sure what to expect from a fictional Holocaust story, it seemed like an odd subject to write a fictional story about. What I loved about this book is that it addressed a horrific historical event with fictional characters and kept you interested in the characters themselves. I find the tendency is to try to bludgeon the reader with the horrific details of the events making the characters secondary and removed. The holocaust story is told through the eyes of the little girl and it’s only through the reader’s connection to her, and her innocence, that the horror is perceived. Rather than bombarding the reader with horrifying events, she allows you to imagine based on history we all know.
I was also surprised that the holocaust story only lasted through half the book. The rest of the book is spent investigating the aftermath of this girl’s story. Again, this was an interesting, and unique, take on the impact of the holocaust. It turns the spotlight on those who turned their heads and ignored what they knew has happening. I found myself gripped by the guilt that remained for generations.
Now, the book is by no means perfect. There quite a few conveniences that were difficult to believe. I also never understood the purpose of Julia’s relationship with her husband. I kept expecting some catharsis that never came. After finishing the book, I still feel this entire storyline was a distraction.
Overall, I enjoyed the book. It was a quick read that I will not pick up again. I recommend it as a half-price books buy.
Hills or Hills?
I struggled with whether or not to do “the ride” this morning. While I’m interested in really getting back to riding, I know that my fitness is low right now. The route was very hilly, which I don’t really mind, and the pace was going to be a fast “tempo” pace, which I’m not comfortable with. I’m also torn between the thinking that riding alot and riding hard will make you stronger and the thinking that training should be quality over quantity. While I know every coach out there, including my old coach, will tell you quality over quantity and yet all of the fast people I know ride hard alot! I ended up not doing the ride because my leg was hurting and it was just enough of an extra excuse. In the spirit of the ride, I did hill sprints instead.
The workout is one that I’ve done plenty of times before 20-min warmup, then 2-sets of 6 15-20 set sprints up a steep hill with 2-min between sprints and 10-min between sets. This workout is pretty key for races here because so many of them end on steep hills. While it helps to build those muscle fibers, it helps more because it gets you used to gauging the sprint. I still struggle with estimating the affect of the wind in a sprint.
I tried this workout on a few hills looking for the “right” one. The first one I picked was into a headwind so I only did that one once. The second hill (top right) I used for the next 5 sprints. I wasn’t really happy with the runway of this hill. To get to the steep part of the hill I had to go up a mild incline which put me in an awkward gear. For the second set I moved down the road a little and finally found the right hill.
My legs were definitely feeling this workout and I found myself having to focus on keeping my heels down during the sprint to prevent cramping. It’s been so long since I’ve done sprint drills that I still feel like it was a success. I do this in a nearby neighborhood and it’s always funny when I’m sprinting passed kids and their parents on bikes. I’m sure I look ridiculous to them. Sometimes little kids will “try to go fast” like me too.
The Close to Another Season
Yesterday was the last Driveway race of the season. As removed as I was this year, it was still sad knowing it would be the list time I’d see some of these folks for a few months. It also meant I had to fess up that I had not really done my part to help out this year. It’s been easy to say I’ve been too tied up with work but I also know alot of it was feeling so removed after my accident. It also seemed like many of the old regulars were not longer coming out; especially from my own team. I miss feeling a part of this sub-culture that is so strong and yet so natural and at ease on their bikes.Still, even as the driveway shuts down this year, I am excited to come back to it next year.
The weather brought people out in droves with highs in the lower 80’s. After a year of record highs it was a racing opportunity many were not willing to pass up. Even most of the Trek Junior pro team came out. It doesn’t take much of an excuse for me to bring bubbly to an event and another successful year seemed as good a reason as any. So as the night wound down, Holly, Suzi, and I sipped on some fabulous bubbly rose and mused about another great year.
The view from registration; after the huge line died down
As I was registering people, I saw a racer I hadn’t seen in a while. He started racing last year and quickly moved up to a Cat3. He doesn’t race with a team and isn’t your “typical” racer. At the beginning of the year, I got on him a few times because his helmet didn’t fit right. It was an older helmet and the tightener on the back had broken. For some reason he also had the straps adjusted really low. The end result was that his helmet moved around freely and wasn’t doing him any good. I helped him adjust it a few times. While he might have found it annoying, I knew it could make a difference. When I saw him yesterday, he was wearing a new helmet that fit! I immediately told him I liked his helmet. Turns out we hadn’t seen him for a while because he had crashed and landed on his head. He had only started adjusting his helmet because we got on him so badly. His helmet cracked in the crash and if he hadn’t been wearing it correctly, he could have been seriously injured. He actually told us we might have saved his life. It really makes you think.