Tucson on My Mind

On Christmas Eve I went on a tirade about the culture of false immediacy and importance and the demise of improvisational time for music/ art/ outdoors/ dialog/ sports/ inspiration that stems from the world of email and cell phone, one that led to a small quest for mindfulness (if I can learn to knit I can learn to be mindful), and the blog appears a small casualty. Update:

• I miss training when I am racing so much cross! Back on the bike with all the optimism of a new year. After FREEZING on Sunday to the point that my heart rate and power both maxed out at 100, I have been getting extremely zen on the trainer this week, a cadence junkie as I try to both build power and learn to spin.
  
• Hammering out my thesis project, scheming in general. Academic work generally addresses land use and health, but I am hoping too to do something to further the connection between sports, environmental quality, and public health. We all have a lot invested, even if we won’t be choking our way through the Bejing Olympics. Energy, the new plastics.
  
• Watching movies and reading books – ideas can make you fast too.
• GOOD LUCK to everyone at CROSS WORLDS!

I took this photo of the bike path in Tucson a few years ago. Teleport me...

Goal-setting, Perseverance, and Patience...

and you too can have a Connecticut driver's license (and maybe even get elected president)! In and out in just 4hrs! I feel somewhat for my skier friends with this impending January thaw, but given that I have forgotten how to ski, I am secretly happy. Thanks to the blog guardian angel for the photo modification - I do suppose blind trust is ill-advised.

Boxing Day

Someone I taught with at Putney got a job teaching in Kazakstan. As he prepared to move, he started giving away everything he owned. I was worried, wondered if he were preparing to leave this world. Years later I understand his wisdom. I am charging once again on "less is more." But prods out of narrowness such as The Places In Between, about trekking across Afghanistan, not to mention Colbert's I am America - are still appreciated. Note eco-wrapping: napkin cinched with bulk food baggy tie.

Follow these Adventures!

I decided not to enter a life-long funk as a result of a few flat tires. Instead I got sick while cramming for my last exam, forcing some rest and eventually apartment-cleaning, postcard-shopping, and card-writing. I once coached rowing with someone who would go off speaking only in cliches - she was incredible and hilarious in her repertoire - I think of her now to say "it's about the journey," and "it could have been worse," and "c'est la vie," and "don't see the forest for the trees," and "there is always next year." Indeed! Next year, I plan to do my absolute best attempt at cross, building on this season and skipping the pitfalls. For now, even as I follow Rebecca's Euro cross adventures with some longing and sense of how close I came to joining her, I am quite enjoying the chance to tend to the rest of life. (World Cup or DMV? DMV any time!) My most excellent friend Celeste (we met at day camp where the story is that I told her "if I were a boy my parents were going to name me Babar") was trying to tempt me to do a cross-country ski race today but I am wisely opting out. Instead I might venture out on the bike after a record FIVE days off, mainly to say goodbye to Curtis, godfather of Yale Cycling, who is moving back to California on the cusp of wrapping up a dissertation on ancient Greek warfare. But quickly and with uncertainty of how to steer clear of cliche, one consequence of looking back on this season has been recognizing real gratitude. To take part in and share this big bicycling adventure with friendly rivals, teammates from across the country, officials, strangers who open their homes, sleepless promoters, cross mentors, a coach of tremendous dedication and knowledge, my bike mechanic in New Haven, mechanics bailing me out at races, my enthusiastic family, blog-readers, photographers, journalists, my team director, and loyal sponsors, well, I am lucky lucky. Now to point you towards better reading: besides Rebecca's blog, Katie Lambden is writing about a road race in Hong Kong and Velo Bella rider Kathy Sherwin (who did have a near miss at Nationals, flatting on the last lap while riding in 6th) has a great Nationals account. And if you ever get cold, you can read up on my brother in Fairbanks. Here is a Gloucester photo from my mom. Happy new year everyone!

Know your Valves and Lube your Skewers

The return of the digital camera means I don't have to write much. I am embracing the view of this all as a failure to take responsibility for my bikes rather than a confluence of bad luck, which doesn't make the situation any less hollow but is in the end empowering. Did not start fast enough Sunday to avoid getting T-boned at the hole shot and the double flat on lap one probably could have been avoided with proper detective work on Friday's valve extender problem. Cold weather combined with moisture and super low pressure can I guess cause valves that have held air all season to suddenly leak (this is probably not mysterious to those who truly know). As far as lube your skewers, evidently when the cam gets jammed with grit it gives resistance upon closing that does not translate to resistance against the hub, thus the flying wheels Friday. Non-greasy Teflon lube is supposedly what to use. That smiling man is Tom Stevens, who taught me cross and showed me how to ride those icy ruts on Sunday, with characteristic infectious exuberance. So you can see one of the many reasons why self-sabotage by equipment oversight does not go over so well. Tim Johnson is my hero.

This or something better is manifesting itself for the good of all concerned…or maybe not.

I had been having a happy week of flow, flow as in green lights while bike commuting, finding unlikely parking spaces, happening upon the best songs pressing seek on the car radio, not having to pay to fly my bike, and coincidental meetings, like having a favorite professor stop into the bike shop Wednesday night to offer me a good TA job and running into the Olympic Track and Field coach I met in the Newark airport two weeks ago at Bradley on Thursday. I had been doing my athletic homework too – visualizing how I want to ride these races, because good start vs. bad start smooth technically vs. spastic, these are 99% mental with me. Visualizing for sports does work, setting those neural pathways so they are tuned when you get to race day. My legs had come around at just the right time, and I wanted my mind to be ready too. When I mentioned the “flow” concept to Sue MacLean here in Kansas, she asserted somewhat cynically, “This or something better is manifesting itself for the good of all concerned,” a phrase that represents the idea of creating one’s reality stemming from the near-cult book The Secret. We buy it – sort of. Move ahead now to yesterday’s masters 30 race, which I believed was possible to win if I put it all together. Everything was seemingly set for my best attempt: good legs, good warm-up, good friends, Tom Stevens in the pit. Then: Rear flat off the line, bike change, racing, moving up, freak hard crash into the gully before the stairs where my front wheel flew out of the fork, racing, bike change, moving up, freak hard crash into the same gully, losing the front wheel a second time, ripping three spokes out, running the whole paved section, etc. As I was running I was asking myself, when do you throw in the towel? The first supportive words I heard went something like “At least you still have Sunday, which was more important to you anyway,” and “at least it wasn’t a near miss,” and the dependable “that’s racing.” But ultimately all these mechanicals, even the fluke ones, were my responsibility. We got back to the hotel and Sue said to me “This or something better is manifesting itself for the good of all concerned,” and then the laughing started. Sue recounted her wish for a fully-attended podium for her masters 50 race then they messed up the results and they had a podium of six. And then Sara had me read this aloud, http://www.slate.com/id/2165746, an account by a Slate columnist attempting to use the power of The Secret to procure a new kitchen floor and desk, and get rid of clogged sinuses. We were all just laughing and laughing. Sara is manifesting tons of nice snow for Sunday so we are not racing in a death trap of frozen icy ruts, Sue manifested the windshield clean, and me, watch out Katie and Georgia, here I come!

In terms of the actual racing: Go New England... and Velo Bella! Kathy Savary became a 4-time champ with her win in masters 50, followed by teammate Sue MacLean. Cris Rothfus battled with my Velo Bella teammate and former pro ballerina Shannon Gibson, ending up second. Marci Titus-Hall and Pauline Franscone rode great for 4th and 5th in masters 35. Mo Bruno rode superbly in the mud to win the Masters 30, followed by Josi, then - wow - Sally Annis. Kristi Berg, also an excellent mudder and technical rider, was psyched with a strong ride for fourth. She and her husband Chad adopted me once four years ago at a weekend of Northwest racing and they remain great race friends - Chad LOVES his job as a fireman and has taught me all sorts of useful lessons like not to leave the dishwasher or dryer running when you leave the house. And hot off the press, Amy Dombrowski roared to victory in what sounds like a hair-raising ice bike in the U-23 race this morning! Here I am outside the laundromat.

Yowsas: Blog Long Overdue

Wowsas, so much to catch up on...

Portland 1: Two laps in and I was racing in a part of the race I've never seen before (up front). Then I ate it, jammed the brake under the rim and made my way to the pit. Still 12th but something else maybe could have been. But taking away from it some self-belief. Amy rocked. 7th. Rest of the VBs too. City is way too rainy, for all its hip progressiveness.
Portland 2: Resourceful teammates charmed Clif Bar into lending us trainer space in a deluge. Good temperature management, decent start but just not good legs. Think I am really become a granny with this recovery stuff. No messing around.
Last Week: Actually I had a lot of fun at school, fodder for thought on relative risk, CT scans, mercury in tuna, and smoky coal use in rural China for heating and cooking. In my other life, I aspire to be a pundit, a la Colbert. And then the brother comes in to visit from Alaska.
Steadman: New venue, but still a power course. If I can only stop crashing, I might let good legs carry me to a win. Brother in the pit. 5 minutes of fame. Thanks super fans! Oh and I evidently have become a maniac in the car or my brother has fallen victim to Alaskan pace of life, because I was scaring him (and I was getting impatient with him driving). Bike carnage: one bent hanger, one irreparably bent hanger.
Castor's: Bad start and course so technical it was super hard to move up. Ride of the year by Amy. Mel on a great ride but flatted. 3rd for New England Series. 10-year-old xc-ski gloves are going in THE TRASH. Cry for jubilation or sadness, not cold fingers.
This week: BE A PRO. Someone has got to finish top 5 in nationals. Someone has got to win masters 30. Someone has got to go to bed. Photos by Sarah and Dave McElwaine. Thanks!

Sterling: Victory over Doubt and the Burning Tights

The rest of life roared for attention this week - endgame on clearing out the beloved house I grew up in - resulting in a fairly draining past few days. Plowed through the training out of stubbornness but questioned the merits of VO2 intervals that felt like flogging a dead horse. Dead warming up, wondering if I should even be there, and hid the heart rate monitor so I wouldn't get discouraged by numbers stuck in the cellar. We all try to be "pro," to keep our legs up, stretch, recover, and sleep, but we train and race in the context of the rest of our lives - hosting epic Thanksgivings or chronically getting the flu while teaching first grade or taking care of others or whatever - so my own busy spells are hardly unique, and hardly prohibitive of good bike racing. But believing this is sometimes a mental battle. Warming up I kept saying to myself "I am so strong, I am so smooth," something I do when I need to shut negativity out. This race was wide open in Lyne's (and Mo's) European absence. I thought coming in (at least prior to warming up), that if I rode well I could win and didn't want to squander this rare chance. In the end, I had the horsepower to make up for a few technical gaffs. I guess you could say I was racing against my friend Rebecca, not on her best day, but more I was racing my own self-doubt. My race was nothing spectacular - sluggish legs and lacking in grace on several of Tom's course features (at one point Richard Fries exclaimed "very clumsy dismount by Milkowski on the run-up!") but I got it done. Last year this race marked the end of an ill-contrived decision to go cold turkey on caffeine for the week, and I rode around in a coma, so revenge taken on this front. After the race I was yakking away with Kathi Riggert in front of a portable heater when she yelled "you're smoking!" and my tights caught on fire. There was a pretty big hole so I threw them away right there - they were old and pilly anyway so it's no great loss, and Kurt might have a replacement.

USGP Sunday: Be Careful What You Wish For

All that Dewey talk, and I got it - the divorce from results-based assessment. The course was slick due to rain, with horsepower sections replaced by corners. It was going to be challenging. My goal heading in was to have a better start - top 10 - then ride a race of as few mistakes as possible, apply power when possible. The start was somewhat better than Saturday, still not top 10. I decided to run the whole sandpit - the sand was carnage for the drivetrain. On lap one on the corner just out of the sandpit, I was taking a wide line to ride on grass rather than mud and hooked the tape and went down. Someone ran over my bike and caused the brake shoe to fold under the rim, preventing the wheel from turning. I ran the bike to the pit, a bit further away than I would have liked. I think I moved to last place, and after that the race was about moving up. I guess I can be satisfied that I felt better running the sandpit compared to Saturday, when Mo sprinted past me as though I had cement boots on. Sure she's excellent at running, but that was embarrassing! I guess it's similar to the "I can't sprint" statement lacking some truth if you've been attacking all day in a road race to avoid the sprint - that gassing oneself riding the sandpit to the point of standstill does not bode well for the running legs. (Of course, proper dismounting and conservation of the magic M momentum might have avoided this too.) And I resolved some of my issues with the Green Monster remount, namely just didn't care if I had clipped in or not. Not to mention that I got some practice with bike changes. Amy had another great day, finishing 7th, Barb and Kathy Sherwin worked together for solid rides, Jen had trouble breathing due to a barrier crash the previous day, and Mel we all know can be faster, but I am sure was super smooth in those corners. Stephanie and Melody are finding their legs. I am holding off on riding the trainer today but it's 31 and raining...

USGP 3: Close

Legs were good but lots of near misses and tactical naivitee yesterday. Somehow the non-blow-up start strategy rendered me about 25th off the line - pretty impressive feat given a front-row start. But worked my way up in spite of early corner chaos. Following Kelli Emmitt up, but jumped her because I thought I had more power, then she made the group racing for 9th and I didn't, just came painfully close to making that group but just did not seal the deal. Instead dragged Mo and Natasha Elliot through windy power sections only to have them kill me at the end, Mo launching an assault in the sandpit and Natasha capitalizing on my chronically weak remount at the top of this Green Monster flyover. So I ended up 16th, with a quite a lot of "just missed the next group" plus "last in my group" sentiment. But better than last GP, that's for sure, and I'm excited for today, though I need to improve on the monster and in the sand. Could be interesting as weather calls for rain and temps in the 40s. All those tacky corners could get fun, not to mention a lakeside off-camber.

Calling John Dewey

Setting aside the fact that John Dewey was against competitive sports, since my mini-implosion of a few weeks ago, I have been applying some of his educational philosophy to bike racing. Because racing is about the challenge of learning by doing on all sorts of scales - from year to year, race to race, lap to lap. The dead fact is useless. Past experience must be incorporated into the present to adapt and grow. As far as the limited utility of grades and prizes and the resultant striving for the wrong reasons, those apply too. Grades and results are probably better than nothing when it comes to assessment, but they are shortcuts that rarely tell the whole story. How many excellent races have yielded no results? How many great results have only ho-hum rides behind them? A results focus seems limiting in several ways: as a distraction from focal points like smooth cornering that actually improve one’s race and as a way to box oneself in, pose an acceptable house for oneself, judging basement to ceiling by the performance of others. If Katie Compton considered a win in the U.S. the be-all-end all, do you think she would have won a World Cup last week? Expectations can drive good performance – people believe in you, you believe in yourself, you deliver – but more often than not they are a weight on the back and have a pigeon-holing effect. Plus, given that almost everyone I race against is a friend, it’s better to keep it internal. So on to the sailing phase of the season, the “be a seal” phase as one friend puts it. Time to get zen, embrace that concept of “you run what you brung,” that the best race is the best performance given a day’s legs. This quest to maximize, more than any result, is the real challenge and intrigue. I got the rest I needed and the word of the day is balance: the start that makes the selection but does not blow me up, digging deep but with motor-control retaining composure, reading the course for sections of “burst and float,” and recognizing the race is 40 minutes long – that there’s time to move up (and that moving up is better than moving backwards). Recent racing news: Mo has found her legs; Rebecca continues the great riding (with me the latest victim of her sprint), Mel Swartz gets faster and faster, especially in sandy corners, Amy Dombrowski is flying (when she avoids crashing), and Chris Jones survived a mudbath in Holland. Velo Bella mechanic Morgan saved me with a hanger replacement at Beacon, plus pitting both days, and New Haven Bob continues to enable this season with his constant overtime schedule of tire gluing and replacing cables. I think a respirator is in order, or at least a nice dinner. Bike is tricked out – pink is fast - and I am psyched for New Jersey. Wind and horsepower sections and sandpits are all favorites of mine. The strength and depth of the field can only add to the experience. And oddly, because I try to avoid distraction, excitement about next year's road season is fueling excitement for cross. Go figure. As I head to Trenton, photos from the salmon-fishing brother in Alaska allow for vicarious living of a different sort of outdoor life.

This Horse Ate Clover during the Derby

Caught once again as fair weather blogger... I had a rough weekend in Kentucky. I won't explore the entire metaphor of bike racing as cross course, but the big M momentum of cross certainly applies to racing, and I didn't have it last weekend. DOA - dragging on arrival - in spite of the most excellent hosting of former New Haven friends Gordon and Elizabeth and top company of Barb and Rebecca. But if bike racing is "you run what you brung" (even if you didn't bring much), I didn't even do this. A few setbacks (Saturday's lap one included crashing, getting caught behind a crash, then flatting on a mysterious thorn) but then I just gave up. And what is this? Just not acceptable. And Sunday was even worse, I was just going backwards all day. So I've been trying to get my swing back this week, to turn frustration into something positive, reinvest in some of those neglected areas of life, and regain some perspective. Because joy in bike racing is for sure the biggest propellant. Tomorrow's predicted hurricane has me pretty psyched! I really need to get the digital camera repaired. Photos by Elizabeth Daniell.