Where have all the callouses gone?

I've been meaning to write a post for some time about these grips. LOVE THEM!!!

I had a new experience after Cohutta. Not only could I open and close my hands, but I didn't have any open wounds. In fact, I barely have any callouses. 

My middle sister and I always get into callous competitions over the summer and I'm definitely going to lose now. 

And btw...how messed up is that? 

We never had the normal kind of sibling rivalry, we just would get competitive over who had the toughest looking hands or the highest Vo2 numbers :-) She's a rower and almost always beat me in the callous department, unless it was right after I competed in a 100 miler or 24 hour race. Now I think she will always have the upper hand. Ha ha, get it? Hand? Sorry. I absolutely can't help myself.....

My palms actually look soft now. Well, relatively speaking. And that's not such a bad thing!  

I know a ton of people who love these, or these, but I personally prefer this style. I'm also getting some of these, which I'm really, really excited about. I see a ton of endurance racers running with the wider styles, but personally I like being able to do my "Danielle death grip" at times. And don't get me started about bar ends, unless you want to hear many stories about me dragging entire branches/mini trees along for the ride. 

Besides feeling better on the trail, I noticed a huge difference on the road too. Before I could almost feel the road through my grips, but now I don't feel like I'm receiving direct shocks straight through my hand every time I hit a pothole or crack. And if you live in Michigan that's like every 5 seconds. 

Cohutta 100 part 2

Race day: I arrived at the start pretty early, which was nice. It gave me time to get everything ready without feeling rushed. I knew that the women's field was going to be extremely competitive, and I went into the race with the mentality that I was going to use that competition to my favor. Racing against fast people only makes you faster, right?

I had talked with Lynda about my race strategy earlier on in the week and she told me that I should get as near to the front as possible. As you can see from this picture, I followed her instructions pretty closely :-) And just in case you are wondering what I was looking at, it was the curb. I felt a tiny bit boxed in!

To tell you the truth I don't even really remember the start. All I remember was looking around at who I was riding next to and being like, "OMG...OMG." I was in the lead group. My legs felt great and I decided to see how long I could hang. As the road began to steepen, so did the pace. The group strung out and I found myself alone in the wind, a place I did not want to be when everyone else was working together. 

Luckily Eddie came and rescued me and I was able to draft off of him. He bridged back up to a few other guy's but then had a flat, which was a total bummer. I entered the singletrack in first place and was really happy with how great my legs felt. Thanks coach! Once again I was super impressed with my Carbide (a.k.a Tom #1). Gosh, I love that bike. After the first bit of singletrack I came upon the bridge that took me out last year. I hit it without slowing and had a private moment of victory. Ha ha! I actually pumped my arm up and down and said "yessssss!" I'm sure the guy behind me was wondering what I was celebrating since we still had about 90 more miles to go. 

Lynda had warned me that I would start to hurt later on in the race since I haven't done a lot of long rides yet and she was right. But it was the heat that got to me first. Holy moly, it was hot out. I think temps peaked at 88 degrees, but it felt more like 108 to me. 

Carey and Betsy bridged up to me about 18-ish miles in and Carey dropped me on a dirt road downhill. Those roads are freaking crazy! Tons of gravel, steep and crazy turns. I'm not sure how fast I was going, but I actually passed a few cars during the race. Thank goodness for Kenda Karmas and Stroker brakes. It was nice to feel in control.

The middle of the race was a whole lot o' climbing. There were a few times where I could barely see out of my eyes because I had so much salty sweat streaming into them. I started to feel sick from the heat and fell behind on my nutrition. Not good at all!

After what seemed like an eternity I hit the final singletrack. I have a love/hate relationship with the last 10 miles. I love the downhills but absolutely hate any part of the singletrack that goes up. I'm wondering if the promoters can rework it so that the last 10 miles are all downhill? 

Despite serious cramping I finished in 3rd place with a time of 8:33. I am SO excited about the NUE series this year. I can tell that I've gotten stronger from training with Lynda and I can't wait to see what I can do this summer!

I have to send a huge thanks to all of my awesome sponsors for their support.  I am one lucky racer. Also, special thanks to Jason for getting all of my muscles in working order. I had strained a glute muscle 2 weeks before the race and was freaking out (internally) about it. Jason stretched everything out and showed me a few workouts to do to relax my muscles and VOILA...no pain during the race!

Last but not least I need to thank my mechanic Jeremy and everyone else at Velo City Cycles. I swear, I am in that bike shop every other day and I could not make it to races without their support. And speaking of Velo City, the first group ride starts next week Monday at Bass River at 6:30 p.m.  I will post more details but mark it on your calendars!

P.S. Congrats to Carey and Laura for awesome races. Carey took the big "W" and is having a great season. She clearly needs to give me lessons on how to descend on long, gravel roads next spring. I was also really proud of Laura for finishing her first hundie on a SS. Of course I was already trying to persuade her over to the full suspension/geared side the moment she crossed the finish line :-)

Cohutta 100 part 1

After a loooong drive on Thursday, I met up with Laura (a former Michigan racer) in Tennessee for a late dinner at a local Mexican restaurant. Then it was bedtime. I had NO problem sleeping as I was dead tired. 

On Friday morning Laura and I met up with Carey to ride the singletrack that we would hit first in the race. We all rode at our own pace, and I suffered in silence for the most part. My legs felt stiff from my 12 hour drive the day before and it was HOT out. Ok, I know you are all probably saying, "we had to read your complaints all winter long about the cold, so don't you dare start talking about it being to hot out," and I'm not going to. I like hot weather, but it takes me a while to acclimate. During our pre-ride I felt absolutely sluggish and my legs didn't want to move. I just kept telling myself that my coach wanted me to take it easy anyways!

Laura, Carey and I with our bikes. Carey and I were riding full suspension, Laura was on a SS hardtail.
Afterwards we cooled off and caught up on our plans for the summer....
Then it was time for dinner. It's amazing how fast the day before a race goes. One minute you think you have all the time in the world, the next minute it's time to start preparing drop bags. 

Zeke (Carey's training partner and one of the nicest guy's I've ever met) treated us all to Goodfella's. He was definitely outnumbered at the dinner table but managed to hold his own! And on a side note, be sure to stop at Goodfella's if you are ever in the area. From the outside it looks like a small diner, but the food is AMAZING! And it's owned by the former chef to the Detroit Pistons!

Zeke and Carey telling us to "come on in." Actually, Zeke was telling me to put away my camera because I looked like a tourist :-)

After dinner Laura and I headed back to our room to get our drop bags ready. This is easily my least favorite part about hundred milers as I always start worrying that I'm forgetting something. I was in bed by 10:00 p.m. and willed myself to sleep. I always have a hard time falling asleep the night before a race, and we were planning on waking up at 4:50 a.m. so that we could eat, pack up the car and get to the race venue with plenty of time to get ready for the 7 a.m. start. I understand why the races start early, but it always feels absolutely brutal when the alarm is going off at what seems like the middle of the night. Ugh!

To be continued...

Watch out World

There's a new blogger in town....

And judging by these photo's, he's out to conquer the blogosphere!

I really am going to post a race report tomorrow. Not tonight though, I'm too busy staring at these pictures of Scott and laughing my butt off. 

P.S. Scott, if you are reading this, quit referring to me as "the little lady!"

Cohutta 100- Quick recap

Well, that was a hot one!!! I finished in 3rd place with a time of 8:33. I bounced around quite a bit in this race. I started out in 1st for the first 20 miles, dropped to 3rd, moved back up to 2nd, had a bit of a mishap and dropped to 4th, back up to 2nd, and then back down to 3rd. 

The heat was absolutely brutal in this race. I'm sure in a month it wouldn't feel that bad, but my body was not even close to being acclimated. Half-way through the race both of my hands and feet went numb and I got a really bad headache. And my cheek actually started cramping. 

I just need to repeat that sentence. My cheek started cramping. What the?????

Congrats to Carey (single-track superstar) for taking the BIG WIN! There were some really, really strong women in this field and Carey stormed her way to the finish. I'm really happy for her as she definitely deserved it!

Now it's time to do the long drive home...boo! I'm driving alone and I can guarantee you that I will be doing A LOT of coffee stops today. It's the only way that I will make it. 

Full race report and pictures later!

Blogosphere, meet my new bike!

Finally, some pictures of my new bike. The narrow window of having a bike that was all clean, new and shiny has passed. It's in full race mode now!

This is the first time that I've actually named my bike. In the past, we've always labeled my bikes as bike #1 or bike #2 for races, just so that we could keep track of parts, mileage etc. And I always figured that if I ever did name a bike, it would be a feminine name. 

Not the case with this bike. Meet Tom #1. I'm not quite sure where the name came from....somewhere totally out of the blue! 

For the last couple of weeks Tom #1 has been getting a lot of love from Jeremy at Velo City. We had some major bike tweaking to do to get the bike fit right. As a result, I'm still getting to know the bike. And I ask you, what better way to get to know a bike then to race it???

Tom #1 officially made his race debut today at the Yankee Springs TT. It was 2 laps, which ended up being 23 miles. My brilliant coach wanted me to race at 90% so that I wouldn't completely waste myself for next weekend. My legs were feeling pretty good. Not great, but good enough that I could push the pace a bit. And while I was pushing the pace, I noticed a few things about this bike....

1. The bike floats up climbs. Seriously, I felt like I was taking an elevator up!

2. It is super, super, super responsive. Holy moly, all I had to do was lean a bit and this bike was flying around corners. 

3. It's snappy. This kind of reiterates #2, but I just need to say it again. I've never had a bike so ready to race. 

4. It's bad-a$$ looking (in my own humble opinion!) 

5. It's freaking awesome on the downhills. Roots, rocks, sand....this bike takes it all in stride. 

Needless to say, I'm really psyched to race Tom #1 this year. I still have to play around with the suspension a bit, and I'm hoping to get it figured out before Cohutta. 

The gold chain is bling, bling!

Anyways, back to the race. There were some REALLY strong women racing today. We were sent out one at a time and I was trying to catch other people without getting caught. I started catching some of the expert men towards the end of the first lap, and two guy's went down right in front of me on that horrible, steep plastic hill. As a result I had to get off of my bike and run up. Ouch!!! Even so, I finished my first lap in 52 minutes and some seconds. 

My second lap was done in about 54 minutes. I'm a bit bummed because I wanted my laps to be even, and I let myself rest WAY too long behind one of the guys that I caught. I knew that I should pass but it just felt "oh so good" to sit behind him for a little bit. I ended up in second place, about 30 seconds behind first. 

I'm so glad that I did this race. 50 degree weather and rain doesn't feel that bad when you are doing a time trial. Scott's back is finally on the mend and he's started racing again. I have some major cheering and water bottle handoffs to do to make up for all of the support that he does at my races!

He won his division (Expert 30-39) too! I was hoping to have faster laps then him but he pretty much smoked me. I'll get him next time.....(insert evil laugh here)!

P.S. I can't wait to get Tom #2 :-)

Coming soon to a race near you

Without further ado, my 2009 schedule. I'm pretty darn excited about it. I guess I'm throwing my hat (er, helmet) into the NUE series ring. Initially I wasn't planning on doing the series, but now that 24 hour Nationals moved to October, my whole season opened up. 

Lots of traveling means lots of money but that's OK. I'm just going to have to travel very, very cheaply. If you see me eating straight out of a peanut butter jar you will know why :-)

April 19th- Yankee Springs TT

April 25th- Cohutta 100

May 9th- Dirt, Sweat, and Gears 

May 30th- Mohican 100

June 20th- Cowbell Challenge Marathon

June 27th- Stonycreek Marathon Race

July 18th- Breckenridge 100

August 8th- Ore to Shore

August 15th- Fool's Gold 100

Sept 6th- Shenandoah 100

Oct 10th-11th- 24 hours of Moab

Nov 7th- Iceman Cometh Challenge

I'm hoping to fit a few more cross-country races in, but those will just be for training. Looking far ahead, if anyone wants to car pool to Fool's Gold or Shenandoah let me know. I'm not too worried about it now since it's at the end of the summer, but I don't want to drive down alone. And I'm a really easy person to travel with (kind of). You just have to like stopping for coffee along the way! Oh, and I like to listen to cheesy music from the 80's on car trips. But rest assured, when I'm not singing I'm sleeping for hours on end. 

But other then those three things....I'm a great person to travel with!

Recovery time

These last 2 days have been really easy. I tallied up my ride hours last week and I think I got about 23 hours in. Not too shabby. I feel pretty tired. And really, really hungry. 

Today I hung out with my friend/trainer Jason. For some reason he chose to travel around Europe with the U.S. Bobsled team this winter, and I'm really glad he's back. He's a very important sponsor because he keeps me injury free. Lynda has me working on upper body strength this summer and I'm going to start doing those workouts with Jason. I can ride all day alone, but it's much more motivating for me to workout with someone when it comes to strength training. If I'm doing core stuff at home alone I get distracted really easily. One moment I'll be doing a plank, and the next minute I'll be looking in the fridge, just to see if some new food magically appeared since the last time that I looked in. I can't do that if someone is calling out reps for me. 

Tomorrow the sun is returning, and I'm going to hit the trails for 2 very easy hours. Or the road depending on how muddy the trails are. Whatever...I'm just excited to get out in warmer weather. 

And speaking of riding, Velo City is going to start having weekly mountain bike rides led by yours truly. They are going to be super fun, no drop, super fun, no drop rides. Got it? I'll be posting those dates shortly!

Easter Weekend

This past weekend was pretty busy for me. On Friday I packed up my new bike to get some mileage in at Yankee. I ended up doing 5 big laps and 2 little ones, which equaled out to be 61 miles. I definitely rode on the conservative side, as the bike took some getting used to. It rides slightly different then my Racer-X. More on that later though, when I actually upload pictures!

When I got home it was time to eat dinner and go to bed. Scott and I had to wake up really early so that we could drive to Ann Arbor with my parents to watch my middle sister Michela race. We had fun cheering her on and I documented every move that she made with my camera. So much so that the battery went dead :-) After she was done racing she told me that one of her teammates asked if I was her mother!!!! I knew that all of those rides I did last month in the wind, rain and hail had aged me! Ha Ha! BTW...inside I'm not laughing :-)

My sister is the one looking up at me, like "enough with the pictures!" I was 9 when she was born and she basically was my doll. I would dress her up constantly and when she was old enough to talk we would fight because she never wanted her socks to match. I see that she still likes to mix and match!

After her race we watched the Red Wings play against Chicago. The people that we were with asked if we wanted to come early to watch them warm up and my dad was all about it. He loves, loves, loves the Red Wings. 

Before I knew it we were signing lots of release papers and getting a "behind the scene" tour. The guy showing us around told us to be careful walking on the ice and then started talking about superstitious things the Red Wings do each time they warm up. I didn't hear a word past "be careful walking on the ice." The stadium was still only about half full, but the thought of going down in front of everyone was not pleasant. 

Luckily I made it to the penalty box without incident and got to be a target for the warm-up. One of the players flipped my dad a puck, and he was in Heaven. Total Red Wing Heaven. 

Me in the Penalty box

Sunday I was scheduled for another long ride. I rode my mountain bike for 6 hours on the road and was witness to a lot of families doing Easter egg hunts, pictures, and BBQ's. Gels are great and all, but real food started to sound a lot better. By the time I got home I was starving!

The next couple of days are really easy and I'm ready to rest, recover, and do lots of stretching. I can't even begin to tell you how tight my muscles are right now. My bike makes it's race debut this coming weekend. Right now the race day forecast is for rain (of course) but hopefully things will change. I haven't done the Yankee Springs TT in years, and this year will be slightly different as I will have to do 2 laps (22 miles) instead of 1. After doing 5 laps, 2 laps won't seem that long. It will still seem really, really tough because I will be going "all out puke hard!"

Yes!!!

Spring has officially sprung!

I don't know exactly when it happened, but yesterday I spotted this on the trail...I think it happened overnight!

Do you want to know what else was a welcome sight yesterday? My brand new bike!!! 

I met up with my bike shop sponsor (Mike), mechanic (Jeremy), and friends (JD and Kelly) for an early morning ride yesterday and Jeremy had my new bike with him! For those of you don't know, Jeremy is the new head mechanic at Velo City and being my mechanic is a perk that comes along with the job. Lucky, lucky him :-) 

Actually it's lucky, lucky me. He's a super nice guy and we are already on a first name basis. And I have no problem calling him multiple times during the day...hee, hee! I'm just going to have to make him a book of "Danielle bike terms"  to reference when I'm talking about my bike. The other day I kept talking about the nozzle on my bike and finally he was like, "um, I'm not sure what part you are referring to." Ha! Any guesses???

My bike was working perfectly and I think I'm going to get used to Shimano quickly. Anytime I wanted to shift it was instantaneous! All it would take it a little touch to the trigger and my bike was all "ping, ping, ping!" It's pretty sweet! 

After riding with the guy's I headed out for another ride with Scott. My legs were pretty tired from doing intervals the last 2 days, but I couldn't stay off of my new bike. 

Scott wearing some twin six goodness....

My best self-portrait pic to date :-) These are the glasses (Autovaughn) that I wore during the Spa City Race and I love them. They never fog up! It's too bad that I only managed to capture half of them...

Right now I'm heading back to the trail. I want to get as much time getting to know my bike as possible seeing that I have to race a hundie on it in 2 weeks. We still have to cut a few things down, and my bike fit needs to be tweaked too. I plan on getting all of that done early next week, and then I'll be able to give my bike a test run in the Yankee Springs TT next week. 

P.S. I can't believe that I don't have pictures of my bike yet, but I plan to take some today. I wish I would have taken some before riding it because now it's already muddy...

The hours are slowly building

Yesterday I was able to ride my bike outside for about 3 hours, but today it was back to the trainer for 2.5 hours. To be honest, I didn't mind spinning inside today. Yesterday I was so cold that it took about 2 hours before I could feel my feet. And there's something to be said about cranking out intervals without having to worry about cars and potholes. Seriously, the potholes here are so bad that they will swallow you and your bike alive if you aren't paying attention!

Over the winter I did a lot of strength work, so now my coach has me focusing on getting some serious hours on the bike. With Cohutta 100 coming up, I really need to work on my endurance. Lynda the wonder coach arranged my schedule this week so that I could swap days based on the weather and I've become slightly neurotic about planning out my days. I swear, I check the weather and my workout plans so much it's like I'm going off to battle or something. 

So besides working and riding...I've been doing a whole lot of nothing.  My days have been going something like this-wake up, walk dog, work, walk dog, workout, eat, sleep and repeat. I'm lucky to have a hubby that cooks amazing meals every night, or I would be eating PB&J's every day. Not that there's anything wrong with that :-)

Tomorrow I'm hoping to get a 6 hour ride in. Temps are supposed to climb to the lower 40's. You know what that is? Almost balmy!!!

All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey

It's time for some green I think!

The good news is that I got my fill of mountain biking in this weekend. Saturday I did 5 hours on the trail followed by an hour on the rollers and yesterday I woke up super early to get in another 2.5 hours. 

Saturday was great. The first part was sunny and my legs felt pretty good for the most part. Sunday...I think I might have still been asleep. It was only in the high 20's when I started out and I had so many layers on that it was hard to move. Basically I was a big trail-riding-blob. 

I'm really nervous about this week. It's my heaviest week yet regarding training hours and the weather isn't looking good. As of now, the forecast is calling for up to 8 inches of snow. That's just wrong! Right now it looks dry out, but that's all that I'm saying. I don't want to jinx anything!

My hammer order came in and I'm trying out some new stuff. I never had their bars before, but I like them. They seem really easy to digest. 

I also ordered some of these holders. They should work out well during races, I think. It will be nice to just pop it open to get out my endurolytes without having to fumble around with a plastic baggie. 

Time to pick a new sport

I'm trying to figure out a new sport that doesn't involve being outside. Because as of now, Michigan is not cooperating with riding bikes. 

Water ballet, bowling, basketball...there has to be something. Indoor kickball, maybe? I would say track racing, but I'm pretty sure that my coach would say that I'm not a good candidate :-) 

Today I was scheduled to do a 4.5 hour ride. All week the weather forecast seemed decent enough. Mid 40's and partly sunny. I waited until 11 a.m. for it to warm up, but that never happened. Eventually I put on enough layers to keep me warm and headed out. And what happened 5 minutes later? It started hailing. And raining. Did you hear someone screaming today around 11:30 a.m today? That would have been me!

I decided that riding in hail was preferable to riding on the trainer and stuck it out. It ended up being OK for the most part. The hail would come and go, along with a little snow and rain, but mostly it was just really windy. There were a few wind gusts where my bike was almost sideways. I swear, wind is my enemy.

Anyways, I ended up getting about 4 hours outside in and did the last half hour on my rollers. I never thought that I would be saying this, but riding the rollers in my warm house felt amazing!

After my workout I had to leave almost immediately for work, and I was incredibly whacked out. Not only were my eyes completely bloodshot from the wind, but I had a hard time keeping them open. I'm pretty sure people thought that I had been "hitting the bottle." 

Well, time for some serious zzzzzzzz's. I finally nailed down my race schedule and it's a lot different from what I initially thought it would be. Moving 24 Hour Nationals to October opened up my whole summer and I am SO excited about some of the races that I'm doing. I'll be adding my upcoming races shortly.