Jul 22, 02:05 PM by Kimberly | San Luis Obispo Cat 4 Pictures
Posted in Cycling & Pictures
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Jul 22, 01:11 PM by Steve | Redemption
Posted in Cycling & Race-Report | Comments [1]Redemption is a dish best served cold. Or was it revenge? I always get those confused. Anyway, I had been looking forward to this racing weekend all year, as this pair of relatively local races didn’t go so well for me last year in cat 5. I got dropped on the final climb at Sisquoc, and dropped after only a few laps in San Luis Obispo, and pulled after only about 20 minutes. This year, as a cat 4, was going to be different. Depsite nearly being taken out in the accident on Saturday (see report above), I was very happy with my performance. I was able to move up when I wanted to, be on front when I needed to be, and was in a great position coming into the finish. Apparently the pace of the race blew apart the field too, which was pretty cool because I didn’t think we were working very hard at all. After the race Kim and I went across the freeway for some smoothies, met Seth and his girlfriend Elisa at Subway, headed out to Oceano for a show (The Great American Melodrama), and later dinner at California Pizza Kitchen in downtown San Luis Obispo.
In the morning I got ready, had some breakfast and then rolled out to the race, conveniently having picked a motel that was close by. I found John at registration and we pinned each other’s numbers while watching the cat 5 race. There were a few Echelon guys...
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Jul 21, 03:41 PM by Steve | Rubber Side Down
Posted in Cycling & Race-Report | CommentsI felt really good in the race and was right up in the front coming into the finish, but a Fast Friday rider pulled a bonehead move and took out Chester right in front of me. Tom and Bill bounced off the melée but none of us went down.
The morning started out well enough, we got a really easy start beacause I misjudged the time it would take to get there, but it was good because it gave lots of time to register, take a leak, etc. However, when I started getting dressed I realized that I forgot my jersey… I rembered that I had my skinsuit for tomorrow’s crit. It felt kinda funny wearing a skinsuit for a road race, but it made me really glad I picked the one with a pocket.
Race time, and we line up near the front. Jason was also there, as was Bill, but he was in the porta-potty when we lined up and had to start from the back. There were 5 of us (Chester, Tom, Mark, Doug, and I) there and we were going to try to help Chester get a win. We didn’t really have a plan, and Tom rode off the front about 1 mile into the first lap. It gave me and Mark a chance to do some classic blocking and patrolling the front. There were a few guys up there who clearly didn’t know what was going on. One guy in red kept going up to the...
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Jul 20, 05:28 AM by Kimberly | Sisquoc Road Race Pictures
Posted in Cycling & Pictures
Seth finishing second in a 4-man break of the 6-lap, 65 mile 3’s race
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Jul 8, 03:53 PM by Kimberly | Vote! Part 2
Posted in Miscellanea | CommentsEek! My dad has slipped to 4th, only 2 votes ahead of 5th, and being out of it. Big Karma points to you if you vote.
Could you all vote for my dad Doug? Send him on a 70+ mile 12,000+ foot climbing adventure with a 30+ lb mountain bike hell ride!
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Jul 8, 03:12 PM by Steve | Gravity is a fickle bitch
Posted in Cycling | Comments [1]Went out to meet the tuesday “hammerfest” ride, but Cathedral Oaks was closed at Los Carneros due to the Gap Fire. So we rode out to Old San Marcos instead. That 3 mile fight against gravity that we willing subject ourselves to time and time again. A group of 4 of us were a little ahead because of the light, and I ended up riding away from them about a minute in. I wasn’t really pushing very hard for the first mile, but when I was at just over 4 minutes to my “5 minute” interval driveway, I decided maybe I had some juice today. At that point I picked up my pace and drove my effort over LT.
Marco in the group behind caught up but held station a little behind me. He could have easily passed me if he wanted, but I guess he was taking it easy. Rounding the corner after the first mile I got a really clear view of the devestation from the fire. I had spent the first half or so paying more attention to the surrounding burned hills than to the actual climb and didn’t really ramp up the effort to the max until around the ranch, when I lost the view.
I knew I was doing really well when I hit the mailboxes in about 10:45. Unfortunately, I really faded in the steeper sections in the last mile in part because my front derailer cage is out of alignment, and I can’t get into...
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Jul 5, 07:48 PM by Steve | We Can Go Home
Posted in Miscellanea | CommentsI just got the call from my Mom, that her and my neigborhoods have been reopened. The information online still indicated that it was closed, but 10 minutes later she called me again, from home. I hit the Independent again and they had edited their article to reflect what I was told. So Kim and I are packing back up and will head back home shortly.
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Jul 3, 10:49 PM by Steve | Burn Baby Burn
Posted in Miscellanea | Comments [7]We’ve been evacuated
The fire looks crazy close to our house. Smoke and ash all over the place, and you can’t see shit. We crammed as much stuff as we could in the Mini and drove over to a friend’s house for the night. We saved the important, irreplaceable stuff, like wedding pictures, my old negatives, Kim’s cross-stitches, our hard drives, and our bikes of course!
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Jun 23, 11:17 AM by Kimberly | Idaho here I come!
Posted in Triathlon | Comments [1]Yours truly is signed up for an Ironman- Coeur d’Alene! I’m so excited. Registration opened today at 12:00PM, and there were a few tense minutes when I kept getting a message that Active.com was too busy. I called Steve and he tried to register me over on his end. There was some marital discord when he said he didn’t think I’d get in, but we worked it out :). And then I got in, and paid, and have my confirmation!
I didn’t do much run training for IMAZ, but I’m convinced that’s not why I didn’t finish. In retrospect, I had a migraine. IMAZ was before I knew what my headache/stomach problem was. But now that I know, I recognize that the same things that gives me migraines now were in full force that day: Heat, heat & heat. My stomach felt the same way that it feels now during a migraine: I can only think of eating happy carbs. I felt a lot better after I sat behind one of the boxes of ‘special needs’ bags in the shade, closed my eyes, laid down & had some cold Coke that they were passing around to the volunteers. (I must have been there for at least half an hour. I don’t really know.) It’s not to say that Ironmans don’t make your stomach upset, because they do, but the stomach wasn’t the real problem. It was the migraine, and if I had my migraine medicine that I...
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Jun 19, 01:58 PM by Kimberly | Vote!
Posted in Cycling & Miscellanea | Comments [3]Could you all vote for my dad Doug? Send him on a 70+ mile 12,000+ foot climbing adventure with a 30+ lb mountain bike hell ride!
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