Little Black Dress

Sorry for delay in posting pics of the new ride. I could make up a bunch of BS excuses as to why it took so long, but really it comes down to me just not doing it. Oh well. Here it is. While I will say it lacks the Italian flash of the Pinarello, I'm really liking the simplicity of the looks of the Cervelo. As one person I train with said, it's the little black dress of cycling. :)





So far, it is great. It fits perfectly and is more comfortable than any other bike I've ridden. The ride is a bit harsh, but not nearly as harsh as I thought it would be after test riding a soloist carbon. It's not as forgiving as my Kestrel, but I'm still quite pleased with the ride. The responsiveness and handling are worth the trade off.

Decision Made

What did I decide?

You will have to wait until I get it built up and post some glorious bike porn. :)

Which Frame?

It may seem like 2.5 months since my last post, but really, it has only been 2.5 minutes. I had finally finished my whining and spec tossing and was just about to insert a link when somehow, I lost the entire freaking post. Damn.

Anyway, I have to buy a new frame and I am having a really difficult time making up my mind. After much extensive research (including some ridiculous road trips to see things in person), riding, and driving, I have it narrowed down to two frames - the Cervelo Soloist SLC-SL and the Pinarello Paris Carbon.

I have not ridden either one unfortunately. I did ride a Cervelo Soloist Carbon. It felt stupid fast, cornered like no one's business but the ride was so harsh, I thought I might lose all of the fillings in my teeth! I've been told that the SLC-SL is much less harsh. Everything that I have heard and read about the Paris is that it rides like a dream. Very comfortable but still very stiff and responsive. I have also heard some describe the handling of the Paris as a little "nervous." This makes me a little nervous.

Both bikes come in standard sizes that will accommodate my 5'7" legs and 5'3" torso. I guess that explains the 5'5" height. They both have a 51.5 top tube which is a welcomed 5 mm shorter than my current frame. Due to the seat tube angle and head tube angle differences, I would require a 90,maybe a 100 mm stem on the Cervelo and likely a 120 mm on the Pinarello. The Cervelo has a seat tube angle of 73 degrees and a head tube angle of 72.5 while the Pinarello has a seat tube angle of 74.4 degrees and a 71 degree head tube angle. Currently, I ride a 75 degree seat tube angle and 72.5 degree head tube angle. Both will work.

I'm somewhat drawn to the longer head tube on the Pinarello as it is 2 cm longer than the Cervelo. My position on the bike is not the most aerodynamic due to my super tight hamstrings. But, I'm turned off by the specialty seat post that the Pinarello requires. Both require their own posts, but at least there is a 2 position post available for the Cervelo..though that would drastically alter everything else. Whatever. I'm rambling now.

I just can't make up my mind. They're very different bikes with different strengths. I wish I found one of them aesthetically offensive, but alas, I do not. Both will look pretty slick with my new Campy Record Grouppo and Zipp 404s. Argh. Life could be a whole lot worse, I admit that. This is a pretty nice decision to have to make, I just wish that I could make it and move on to building it up!

Ant Farm

The dust. Oh, the dust. East/Central Africa at the end of the dry season... Dusty! The dust destroyed my cell phone. It did a number on my iBook as well. However, I think the dust damage to the iBook pales in comparison to the ant infestation. Ants. Lots of ants. I remembered seeing some ants around my laptop from time to time but didn't think too much about it. That is until I pulled it out of my pack during a 7+ hour layover on my way home. As I settled in to eat an airport breakfast and do some web surfing to catch up on world events, I opened my iBook and ants were crawling all over it. They were coming out from underneath the keyboard. It was quite the sight. One I could do without seeing again. And no, I didn't declare said ants when I went through customs.

I used this as an excuse to go to the Apple store and buy a new MacBook Pro. The sales person asked me why I was looking for a new laptop (presumably just trying to find out what my needs were) so I told him that my iBook was currently functioning as an ant farm. He said that he has been working for Apple for a long time and that was the first time he had heard of one becoming an ant farm. Leave it to me. :) I think that the ants are finally gone now.

Greetings from Amsterdam

Well, after lots of planning and research and running around like a crazy madwoman, I'm finally en route to Africa. I have a 4 hour layover in Amsterdam. This is not as long as the 7.5+ hour layover here on the way home.

It feels good to finally be travelling. I think it's less stressful than the anticipation of travelling. I've been busy trying to get everything that I needed for the trip, getting shots, etc. and it's nice to just relax. So, yes of course I did forget a couple of things, but I don't see any major problems acquiring the missing items.

For some strange reason, I forgot to pack my headlamp. Who needs it anyway... I'm only camping out for 18 of the nights that I will be away. But, I did get the important stuff done before the trip - like buying a new couch the afternoon before I left. Yep, it's important to have one's priorities straight.

I will sign off for now as this probably doesn't make much sense (I've been up for 22 hours now). It took me much longer than I care to report to figure out how to get all my blogger commands in English. I will update this when I can. I'm not too sure how often I will have internet access. Hopefully I will be able to post pictures of lions for you!

Canada (almost) to MA Ride

Way back last November, the Incline Training Team decided that we would do the length of the state (of VT) ride together in September. Well, here it is, September, and I hadn't done a ride longer than 4 - 4.5 hours and about 85 miles all season. No centuries for me. Hmmm.... perfect training for this endeavor. How hard can a near double century be anyway? My previous long ride was 145 +/- miles back in 2000 and I was not as strong a rider. Perfect. I was going to die. I envisioned a spectacular explosion of epic proportions. The USGS would even be able to pick up the seismic disturbance. Oh yes, it would be quite something. The weather forecast was perfect - south/southwest winds 10 mph with gusts of up to 25 mph. Oh, and possible t-storms. Woohoooo! a head wind and lightning! It doesn't get any better than that kids!

At last, the morning came after a night of dreaming that I missed the start time and Jay rolled out of the hotel parking lot without me. That wouldn't have been a bad thing except the van rolled away too. Alas, I woke up in plenty of time to roll out at 5:55 AM. We rode a mile or two down Route 5 to have breakfast at the Brown Cow Diner. If you're ever in Newport, VT, I recommend this place. Just go easy on the pancakes. They were the size of a dinner plate - I kid you not. They had to be at least a cm thick as well. Holy crap. After filling up on pancakes and various forms of greasy protein, we headed outside to begin our ride for real. Just to make it more interesting and to make for a better story, it began to rain. Really. I'm not sure how long it rained. After awhile I couldn't tell the difference between the rain and the road spray. The ride was a wet one for about 3 hours. Given that Matt Brewster was pulling, that was 60+ miles.

At mile 85, the roads were dry and the sun was out so at this point I was fantasizing about changing into a clean kit and drinking an ice cold Coke. Much to my delight, the Incline Training van was waiting for us at mile 90 and my dreams of a dry kit and a cold Coke came true. I felt great at that point. I was ready to take on the next part of the ride. We were about half way there and I felt the best I have felt on a bike since the beginning of August (basically before the 8 day wine and cheese diet I was on in Maine). Matt went to the front and just hammered for the next 20 miles. We had a 20 mph pace up to that point anyway and it just went up from there. Go Matt! At the next rest stop, I consumed another gloriously cold Coke and, sigh, some Clif Shot Bloks. I had trouble with the Cola flavored ones at Nats but I figured it was just that flavor since the strawberry ones had never bothered me. Never, until Saturday.

At mile 130, I went almost instantaneously from feeling great to wishing I could just die. By mile 135 my entire core was cramped up, I could barely breathe and I was burping up solid chunks of shot bloks. When we stopped at mile 145, I had to just stand over my bike for a few minutes until the parking lot stopped spinning. I felt awful. I think I looked awful too. After about 10 minutes, I forced down some goldfish crackers and drank what I could before getting back on the bike. By the next stop at mile 163, I felt pretty good again. I ate a banana, drank a Coke and was all ready to go. I felt a whole lot better and found that my HR could actually go up again. I was shocked and amazed at how well my body seemed to be recovering. This was a good thing since our next stop was the NH/MA state line.

We, I mean Matt and Jay, maintained a 20 mph pace all the way until we hit a couple of nasty climbs on Route 63. I am confident that if they weren't pulling the rest of us along and having to slow down, they would have kept it all the way to the line. On the last climb, my calves cramped up big time. Owie, owie, hurts hurts. As we neared the top of the hill, my quads started to cramp as well. Oh yes, the legs were in a world of hurt. After a couple of pushes from Jay, I reached the top. Just as I was about to breathe a sigh of something maybe resembling relief of some sort, Jay went flying by at 21+ mph and the pace did not let up. I was hanging on for dear life. My legs hurt so badly that tears were streaming from my eyes and I thought to myself, "Hey, cool, I must not be too dehydrated."

We hit Route 119 and I knew that the remaining 5 - 6 miles were flat with a few gentle rollers. My legs had stopped cramping and I had found my 124th wind. I was good to go. Jay did a monster pull to the state line where Tom took the sprint uncontested. At this point, Amy and I put our bikes on the van and joined Ross for a ride back to Greenfield. Matt initially was going to join us in the van but later decided to join Jay and Tom for what sounded like a hard rip back to Incline. At the end of the day, Amy and I had 186 miles and Matt, Jay and Tom logged 202. We hit the state line after 9 hours 24 minutes of riding with a 19.6 mph average. Not too bad thanks to Matt and Jay.

Would I do it again? Ask me once my stomach settles down and things start to move again. The legs feel pretty good. If it wasn't for the GI distress, I'd say that I just felt like I did after a hard week of training and racing. Tired, but good.

Kenyan Visa

OK, so I am filling out my application for a Tourist Visa for Kenya.

Question 9. : Are you returnable to your country of residence/domicile?

I'm not sure how to answer that one...

Thankfully the Tanzanian visa application doesn't ask if I'm returnable. I've never really thought about it. My mother might say yes. My students would probably say no. Oh, wait, I don't have students this year. Yay sabbatical!

Nationals...Panic, but Mostly Frustration

Day 2 of rest has not disappointed me. I knew it would be a tough day and it has been just that. The day day started well enough with a 1.5 hour ride. I have yet to find a road around here that is somewhat flattish. I long for some good high speed tempo riding. I cleaned up and had a phone meeting with Jay which seemed to help keep my nerves at ease. I approached the afternoon very casually and eventually decided to get ready for tomorrow. I had to switch out cassettes and clean the bike. I put the race wheels on and took the bike for a little spin around the parking lot. It was shifting horribly, if it would shift at all. Hmmmm. The wheel is in straight. I double check my work and the cassette is fine. I put the bike in the stand and I noticed that the wheel is not centered. I can't get it to center. I call Bob. I was hoping there was something simple I was missing or forgetting about. I put the other wheel back in and noticed that that one was also off center, but a little less so than the other one. Now I'm thinking that maybe the derailleur hanger is bent. I'm awful at seeing things like that unless it's pretty bad. So, I took it to the local bike shop only to find out that I was a better, more knowledgeable mechanic than the guy who was there. Damn. He looked at it and didn't even notice that the wheel was off center until I had him look at it from a different perspective. His "oh damn" response was not what I wanted to hear, but what was worse was that he had no solution to offer. I ended up trying to adjust the rear derailleur cable tension which was very loosy goosy and that seemed to help. It almost shifts fine. I finally gave up worrying about it and will ask the Shimano folks for some help in the morning.

I ended up putting my 404 on the rear instead of the 303 because the brake pads kept sticking to the 303. Sticking badly enough that I could not get the pedals to turn at all in the stand. I'm not sure what is up with that. There isn't any errant glue on the braking surface and I'm using the recommended Zipp brake pads. Screw it. I can't worry about that too. 404 rear and 303 front it is for tomorrow.

So, other than that, there is nothing to report. A pretty boring day, but I'm getting excited about leaving tomorrow. I'm excited to race, for sure, but I'm also really ready to be somewhere else. Until tomorrow...

Nationals...Rest and Freaking Out

I must admit that I'm not a big fan of having 2 days "off" between races. It gives me too much time to over think things and freak out. Of course, it does not help when fellow racers are freaking out around me. One of the things I learned at the TT last Friday was that I should warm up with my iPod more often. It prevented me from listening to everyone stress out around me. No one's anxieties could play with my head. It was a great barrier. I'm thinking that I should listen to my iPod when I'm outside here accessing the internet. Enough people have seen me out here enough times that they now come up and talk to me. Usually, that's a good thing. Many of the people here are nice and as normal as cyclists can be I guess. But, every once in awhile, if we talk for more than a couple of minutes, their anxieties come out. The conversation turns to the 19% grades on the road race course and trips to Pittsburgh to get a cassette with a 29 on it. Or the previous results of competitors come up. This happened big time today. One guy managed to freak me out enough about the road race that I had to call Bob and verify/hear that it was not in fact a good idea to spend ~$600 to get a 29 on my bike. Yes, $600 with new rear derailleur, cassette and chain. For one race? I don't think so. That's over the top, even for me. Besides, the only thing a 29 would do is get me home. Unless it's Mt. Washington or something, races aren't won in a 29. Even if you disagree, humor me for now and then feel free to argue all you want AFTER my race on Wednesday. :)

There's not much going on here in Somerset. My friend Curt tried to Google something for me to do today, but found nothing. The only thing listed under things to do in Somerset was to visit the Flight 93 memorial which at this point I think is merely an office space on Main Street. Yeah. The closest movie theater is a 40 minute drive which wouldn't be too bad, but none of them are playing Sicko. I watched Oceans 12 on my laptop today. Is Oceans 13 out yet? I had a nice ride this morning and the legs are feeling good. My hip seems to be OK. It was bothering me on the road race course on Saturday, but Sunday's crit hardly stressed it. In fact, I think it loosened it up. So, maybe there is a silver lining to that "race." Ah, who am I kidding, I'm still annoyed. I'm increasingly becoming annoyed with myself. If ever I find myself in that situation again, I'm just going to keep attacking until I win or I blow up. As Julie , the Terry team director, said, you can't win if you're not willing to lose.

So, tomorrow is another "day off" but I will go out and get a good ride in in the morning. I'm not sure what I will do to entertain myself tomorrow afternoon, but I'm thinking of taking the camera to document some of the oddities around here. Oh, and one sign that just really seems odd to me is the Speed Limit 14 sign. Why 14? It doesn't even work out to something normal in the metric system. 15 is too fast? I don't get it. See, like I said, too much time to think about things. Of course, it's never about things of relevance or importance. Just stupid things like 14 mph. Oh well. At least I'm on sabbatical so I can't feel guilty about not doing work. :)

Thanks for reading and thanks to everyone for all the kind words and well wishes. I will do my best to give you something to cheer about Wednesday evening.

Nationals...Criterium

Today's race is brought to you by the letter B. B is for BORING!! Ugh. There's not much to say about today's race, though I'm sure I'll ramble on about it. 25 miles. 73 minutes. Not exactly race pace. I've been in some slow, defensive races in New England, but this one takes the cake. I'm not sure why I even bothered warming up for 45 minutes. The first time I attacked, it was an 80% effort just to get my heart rate up a bit. We did 25 laps of a 1 mile loop. The first couple of laps were done around a 2:45 pace. Not exactly fast... I tried to tell myself to be patient. I was for a bit, but after 5 laps, I had to something. No one had tried anything at all. So, I took off to get the HR up and hopefully get the pace to pick up. No such luck. The field caught me and then slowed up without a counter attack. I go a couple of more laps at the front with another woman who seems equally frustrated so we plan an attack together. I take off with an 825W acceleration, she follows and comes around when I start to slow. We had a little gap, but the field reeled us in and then, the only counter attack of the day went off. She was reeled in less than half a mile and the field shut down again. I was bored. I spent a lot of time at or on the front. I didn't tire myself out, though i did try to raise the pace a few times and accelerated to see what would happen. There were strong women in the field, but no one had teammates so everyone was looking for someone else to do something. It was awful. It became quite clear that it would come down to a field sprint with everyone still there. I was going to attack again with 2 laps to go, but ended up on the front and I figured that the field would just follow my wheel so I nixed that idea. I had hoped that by staying at the front when we went into the last lap I would be able to keep a decent position going around the last corner but it didn't play out that way. The last corner was frightening. Now, remember, we haven't taken this corner at any real speed yet. So, we hit the corner which is 200m to go and someone in the middle can't hold their line and they swing wide. I find myself off the road riding in gravel. Game over. At least I kept the rubber side down. I was pissed. I sprinted back up to the group so that I could at least get a same time finish. We may as well have just been given an hour to warm up and then lined up for a 200m street sprint. It would have been more exciting. After venting with the woman that I attacked with, I walked back up to look at results and much to my dismay, but not surprise, none of the top 5 ever even went to the front. They sat in the entire time waiting for the field sprint.

As women, we get really pissed when promoters are continually combining our fields or worse, eliminating our fields at regional races. It sucks, but if we race like we did today, then we have no ground to stand on. I think that we've had some good aggressive racing in New England this season, in some races anyway. I felt like maybe we were making some progress. One of the things that appealed to me about Nationals was racing against people I didn't know. A new field. Instead of the aggressive dog eat dog crit that I fantasized about, it was by far the slowest and most boring race of the season. Exeter was exciting in comparison. I got off the bike, loaded it into the car and I just wanted to drive home to Massachusetts. Instead, I sit here outside my hotel room going back and forth with being frustrated with the field and angry with myself. I was definitely one of the few (there were only 3 people who attacked) aggressors in the race, but I should have been more so. I couldn't have done any worse. Ah yes, the beauty of hindsight. I go into the road race with some fire in the ole belly. That can only be a good thing. :)