Barriers, a barn and a sand pit.

Saturday we raced at Fair Hill - another race put on by the esteemed DCCoD gang.  It was a MAC race, which for me meant a stacked field of 3/4 women, if not a very big one.  But all the fast Cat 3's were there, ready and willing to beat up on us lowly Cat 4's.  This was our first dry weekend in a while, so it would be a good test for where my legs are.

I loved this course, actually.  A few rolling hills, some tight off camber turns, two sets of barriers (!!! yay! I like barriers!! except when I crash into one during warmups, oops!), a concert barrier with a fence next to it, a horse barn to snake through (seriously!), and oh yeah, some sand.  Not just a little bit of sand.  Nice, loose, beautiful footing for horses jumping - you know, the kind that is soft when a 1200 pound animal is landing in it on tiny little hooves.  It's also the kind that's really soft when 140lb bike racers try to pedal through it on tires barely over an inch wide.  Especially when we try to make the turns that FatMarc laid out for us.  Wow.  In pre-ride laps, I learned two things - there were no good lines but I could ride the whole sand section.  But it might be faster to run.  This became a moot point during the race as someone crashed in front of me on all but the last lap on our way in and again on the next turn, so I was off my bike a few extra times. 

With a race on Sunday and a light training load last week, I decided to go a bit off my normal pace and use Saturday as a fun opener.  The easiest way for me to do this is to force myself to go a bit slower off the start.  After a call-up (yay! thanks refs and promoters for rewarding those who register early and race the series!), I had a second row start behind Flying Penguins Jess.  She bobbled a little, but we got up the road and I was in about 8th onto the grass.  From there, I got passed a few times, but was riding well - trying to spin smoothly.  I eked the insides of a few corners and passed some riders who were taking outside lines... loving the way my bike and I are working together in the corners right now.

Did I say I love barriers?  On the concrete barrier, which was sorta through a hole in some chain link I managed to slam my front wheel down onto it one time and ran my crank/pedal into the fence on a different lap.  Dumb mistakes.  Luckily, no damage.

I wound up 11th on the day, out of 19, so it's actually my first 'bottom 50%' finish this year (a statistic that crossresults.com keeps track of for me).  Happily, Jess finished 2nd and LH got a few upgrade points herself even after laying it down in the sand on the last lap.  Good racing, ladies.

The only thing I'd change - podium's only went to 3 in all of the amateur categories - possibly the only race we'll do this year that doesn't at least recognize the top 5 with a chance to get their picture taken on the podium.  Congrats to Shea, anyway - he was 5th!

Some of the links lead to pics taken by awesome local photographers.  We forgot our camera both days this weekend.

How to make chocolate flavored "cheese"

Yesterday morning, as part of my attempt to limit caffeine leading up to a weekend full of races, I decided to have warm milk.  Often, I just sweeten it a bit with agave nectar and go.  Sometimes I splurge and make hot chocolate.  Yesterday, I split the difference and went for a warm hot chocolatey-protein drink.  Warm milk plus a couple scoops of the Luna Recovery Protein Smoothie (Chocolate!) that I like so much mixed with cold milk.  Like most powdered protein mixes, the Luna stuff is recalcitrant about going into solution and often leaves chunks of sugar/mix floating on the surface. 

So I thought nothing of it on my drive to work, during which I struggled to get a few drips of my concoction out of my travel mug.  A bit of extra swirling did the trick, clearly (in my head anyway) chunks of mix were just blocking access to the morning's treat.  Little did I know...  after getting to work, I whipped out a spoon to mix vigorously again.  Only to discover that what was in my mug resembled something more like a thick, brown cottage cheese than hot chocolate.  Something in the Luna drink plus warm milk catalyzes some kind of curdling reaction.  Trust me, I will not try that again. 

Mmmmm.... ski season is coming part 2...

Returning instructors' meeting.  Those of you out there who teach know, this is not always the best use of one's time.  But I've managed to teach for some 14 years and only gone to 1 of these prior to now.  A few years of being in college, a few times of moving, and a few well-timed weddings kept me away from the fun.  But seriously, it's not that bad.

Sunday was ours - led by a former educator, it's short and sweet and full of props for people who've been doing good stuff.  Last year I made the list because I'd taught 110+ hours.  That landed me in the top 5 of part time instructors.  As a testament to how busy we were last year, I logged some 118 or so hours of teaching and clinic leading and didn't make the top 10.  crazy stuff.  But I did get props for making the Dev Team at the end of the season on my first attempt.  Lots of fellow instructors already knew this - I spent most of the day receiving hugs, hearty handshakes and shoulder nudging/grabbing/shaking as well as some charges to "fix" their skiing.

The question... can I live up to their expectations?  What about my own expectations?  I'm coming into the season fitter than I've ever been so I've got no excuse.  There are some definite finesse-type improvements I'd like to incorporate into my movement patterns this year.  A challenging task when I spend most of my time on the hill teaching or leading clinics.  At the exam in March, I struggled with acheiving a round turn shape and mightily bombed the one footed skiing tasks - a testament to a lack of flow and finesse when my balance is altered a bit.  I'm also not thrilled with the quality of my average demo maneuver right now. 

There are some teaching goals I have as well, but as I'll be experimenting with a few of the people that might read this eventually, I'll keep those quiet for now. 

In less than a month, the ski season rolls...

Brisk days = brisk rides

I've been blog slackin' lately.  Chalk it up to having too many fun things to do. 

Fall has come and the leaves are about halfway blown off the trees.  Last weekend, I hedged about whether to race on Saturday, decided to do an epic mountain bike ride with some friends, hedged on that because of hunting season, decided to ride our local haunt Patapsco (the Superfly got excited - it's been sitting in the basement for a few weeks now awaiting a chance to go play), and then... you guessed it, got rained out.  We wound up on the road, slightly under-dressed, feeling chatty and social, and more than slightly under-motivated.  But it worked.  It was fun.  Not as good as exploring the hunting grounds, but arguably safer.  I think there was only one driver who earned a middle finger.