It’s been a few years since a dabbled in adventure racing (2009… a Solo Sprint and a longer CoEd Team race). I enjoyed it, though, as I’ve become more focused on mountain biking, my adventure race interest slowly dwindled. I haven’t done any running (other than the few seconds of running in CX races), and I definitely don’t perform orienteering/pace counting very accurately. I did, however, start feeling a little antsy the first time I saw a FB friend post a link to this:

2013 Knoxville Tennessee Adventure Challenge

It’s basically a 6-hour time limit adventure race that takes out two of the biggest things that keeps people from wanting to try adventure racing- the orienteering (navigation with a compass, topo map, and pace counting) and the laundry list of required equipment (to participate, you only need running shoes, hydration pack, mountain bike, and helmet). All of the paddling equipment you’ll need is included with your race entry, and, while the course isn’t marked, you follow a pre-marked map to get to the checkpoints.

Once I figured out that I wasn’t going to take cyclocross quite as seriously this winter, I decided it’d be the perfect thing to make for some fun off-season training. Tuesday afternoon, I went for my first “run”- 5 minutes walking, 5 minutes jogging, 5 minutes walking. Hey… you gotta start somewhere! My strategy is to build up to at least a 10 mile trail run by the first week of October. Easy peasy. Last time I decided I wanted to do something related to running, I went from super bike-fit to running the Ouachita 50k in exactly 1 month’s time. Of course, I could barely walk for 5 days following that race, but I figure there’s no way the adventure race course will include 32 miles of running, so I should be safe.

It’ll be a really fun change of pace before I get bundled up and back into my winter adventures.

Random Stuff

-Shingles: OMG, painful. I went to the doctor on Monday, and she confirmed my self-diagnosis from earlier last week. This shit hurts- it starts with a burning, stabbing muscle/skin pain, then erupts into a rash that feels like someone took your skin off with a belt sander. The treatment is Valtrex (yes, the same stuff that’s used to treat all sorts of herpes infections) and an antiviral/lidocaine pain relief ointment. Only, I didn’t get the ointment because it costs $300 AFTER INSURANCE. So, I’m basically gutting out the extreme pain with ibuprofen and the occasional shot of whiskey. It’s terrible and frustrating, because my insurance would easily cover a large portion of the cost of an oral narcotic pain reliever, but NOT a topical, non-narcotic one. I don’t take the narcotic stuff- it’s addictive, and the side effects are terrible. I feel like it’s a conspiracy to both punish people with genital herpes and also take advantage of the elderly (who are usually the ones who suffer from shingles). Side note- when you’re 32 and you show up at the pharmacy with a Valtrex prescription, the pharmacist will assume you have genital herpes then get really embarrassed when you correct her with, “no, it’s shingles.”

-My Cannondale Supersix EVO is still f*cked: If you aren’t aware of the shitstorm that this bike has put up, start here: EVO Saga, then go here: EVO Saga Update. After that, they sent a COMPLETE BIKE out to me, promising that this one would work, so all I needed to do was take the parts off and keep the frame. It also didn’t work, and I later discovered that they’d just taken a defective frame, “run a tool on it,” and put it back together with the BS honed out bearing cups to pass off to me as a working bike. I was pretty livid, and they promised me that if I could wait until the mold was fixed, they’d send me a new production frame later in the year.

So, in the meantime, I’ve been riding a defective frame with a PF30 to GXP adapter. It works, but it also involved me disassembling one of my CX bikes for BB/Crank parts.  As you can imagine, I was excited to hear that a warranty frame came in while I was in Breck. As you can imagine, I was pretty pissed when the bearings in this frame felt just as bad as the bearings in every other frame they’d sent, AND the warranty tag even had a date on it of March 4th, 2013- It wasn’t even a new frame as they’d promised. My reaction was to call the rep that’s been helping me out (bless his heart), and calmly but sternly say that I’m done with this, it’s obvious that my standard for how a bottom bracket should function and Cannondale’s standard for how a bottom bracket should function are too far removed from each other for either of us to be happy in this situation, and that I’d like a refund.

Side Note- my personal standard is simply, “bearings feel the same installed into the frame as they do when they’re not installed into the frame”

It sucks bad, because since I employee purchased the complete bike, I’m going to end up paying far out the ass for a different bike since I’m no longer an employee at a shop. Also, aside from the bottom bracket thing, the Supersix EVO is one of the most killer bikes I’ve ever ridden. I just can’t deal with a company that’s repeatedly tried to treat me like I’m some sort of idiot by sending me half-assed fixes for the same problem.

-In “not everything is bad” news: I stopped by the Oasis Bike Shop yesterday (Go take a look at the link and come back before you keep reading). Wow… they’ve got a huge, amazing operation there. It’s literally a warehouse of bikes to distribute throughout some of the poorest communities in Memphis in exchange for community service. They also sell furniture and appliances, as Ted put it, “at a price just high enough to give a sense of ownership.”
Memphis needs all of that. If you’ve got bikes, bike parts, time, and/or money you’d like to donate, get the contact info from the link above. Heck, if you’re local, I’ll even come pick that stuff up from your house and take it there for you- just email me and let me know -andrea at brickhouseracing dot com (turn that into a normal email address… gotta keep the spambots away).

-It’s about time to break out the CX bikes!!! Local calendars: Tennessee and Arkansas. It looks like my best bet for getting to anything before the Outdoors, Inc. race in November is to hit up some Arkansas races since Jonesboro and Little Rock are a good bit closer to me than anything in Tennessee (All the middle TN stuff is >3hours away). As an added bonus- most of the Arkansas race days are set up to where I can race both the women’s race as well as the Open race. Then, of course, there’s this: Cyclocross National Championships in early January. I’m still up in the air on that one. I’d have a good shot at a decent finish in both women’s SS and Master’s races (I’d probably race elites, too, but the goal there would be more like “don’t get lapped by Katie Compton”) I’ve spent the last two winters so focused on prepping for Worlds that I’ve missed out on a lot of prime winter mountain bike riding. Then again, it IS pretty early in January…

That’s the rundown of what’s keeping me busy since I got home from Breck. It’s always hard to assimilate back to normal life after being gone for nearly 3 weeks. I still need to unpack, and I haven’t ridden or gone to yoga class yet. Hopefully today, I’ll get that sorted out.

As the time to leave for Colorado is closing in, everything is falling into place for the trip. I had a just-challenging-enough three day block of training at the end of last week, which left me with weekend recovery days. I’ve felt lately that my body is becoming somewhat stunted in its fat metabolizing abilities (main symptom- if I go out for a training ride, I feel kinda lethargic until I get 100 or so calories of sugary stuff into me).  So, Saturday and Sunday morning, I did what I’d like to call “Hell on Earth” rides, where I essentially got out of bed, into cycling clothes, and onto my bike before eating anything or drinking any coffee. The goal is to force the body into revving up fat metabolism in order to have the energy for exercise. Like any sort of training, it’d probably work better if I did it more often, but it’s a special sort of suck that makes riding, even for just a low-intensity hour, pretty dreadful. It’s not totally terrible to have a reason to eat extra Gu Chomps during the course of my ride.

That has to be one of my favorite things about not working- I can do longer/harder training outside of the weekend, then spend Saturday and Sunday screwing around doing “weekend stuff.” For instance: I decided we need crepe myrtles in the yard (if you’re from The South, you won’t have to click on that link). Through a fair amount of research, I learned that it’s possible to make new crepe myrtles from cuttings of old ones. And, just my luck, my parents had the exact color that I was hoping for…

I went to Lowe’s and bought potting soil (even buying in to the special one that’s supposed to be good for this sort of thing) and some rooting hormone powder. Once I was back at their place, my dad took a variety of old/new cuttings, we powdered them, and stuck them into some pots.

Since I’m about to leave town for a few weeks, my parents agreed to daily watering and care. Hopefully, about the time I’m getting ready for the first cyclocross race of the season, I’ll also have a few crepe myrtles to plant in the front and back yards.

To go back to the whole “going out of town” thing, did I mention that I’M REALLY FREAKING EXCITED?!?!? The high mountains of Colorado are calling me. They felt like a magnet last time I drove out to Fort Collins and beyond for Natz. I prettymuch just had to wave at the giants and their puffy white clouds as I skirted around the outside of them along my way. I’m also extra stoked to hang out with rock star road sprinter Lauren Hall, who I used to race against “back in the day” when she lived in Mississippi. If you live under a “never-pay-attention-to-women’s-road-racing” rock, she’s essentially America’s female version of Mark Cavendish, except she’s not a total wanker. If this petition works, there’s a green jersey with her name on it.

Side note- if you haven’t signed it, then you’re not able to read my blog again until you have.

Of course, along with hanging out with friends, there is that whole “Breck Epic” thing that starts on the 11th. With the seriousness of the racing I’ve done so far this season, it almost feels like a race-cation to me. Don’t get me wrong- I take every race seriously. However, this one is kinda more of a 6-day singlespeed adventure with a party at the end than an “elbows out” barnburner like Trans-Sylvania.

Epic times are afoot!

In a week or so (haven’t totally settled on a day), I’ll be heading out West for Marathon Nationals. A few years ago, I raced my first Singlespeed race at Marathon Nationals in Breckenridge, CO. I had a good time and ended up 3rd.

This year, with a lot more training in my legs (and likely a bigger field), I’m hoping to improve upon that. Since the course is at altitude (not super-crazy Breck altitude), I’m changing up my acclimatization strategy. I’ve come to realize that the first day I’m at altitude, I feel like a rockstar- as in, “damn, the air here isn’t totally humid, so I feel awesome and can pedal really hard.” As is expected with normal human physiology, that feeling fades after about 24-36 hours. So, for the race at Sun Valley, I’m planning on avoiding altitude until the Friday evening prior to the race. In order to do so, I’ll pre-ride a little on Thursday, but spend most of the time leading up to the race in south Idaho (3-4K ft of elevation). It’s going to involve a lot of driving , but I’m hoping it will pay off with killer race-day legs.

Afterward, I’m gonna jet back home, recover, and, along the way, contemplate as to whether or not I want to pack up and make the haul to Cross Country Nationals in Pennsylvania less than a couple of weeks later. It’s really going to depend on my results and the degree of either contentment or angst that they produce. Considering the degree of heat, humidity, and poor air quality we get around Memphis that time of summer, it’d be a nice break to go train someplace where there’s just lots of heat and humidity. Otherwise, I’ll be mixing it up on the trainer like I did last year (not so bad, really… there are much worse things than a quick morning indoor interval workout).

For now, I’m enjoying the relatively nice weather. Yesterday, I went out on what was probably, at 112 miles, my longest ride to date. Initially, I wasn’t sure how long of a route I’d need for my prescribed 6 hours, so I started off with a 100 mile course that I’d previously completed in 5 hours, 15 minutes then tacked on an extra loop at the end. I felt strong the entire time, but I’m incredibly glad that 6 hour road rides aren’t a regular thing, because I was prettymuch ready to by sitting on a couch and not a bike by about hour 5.
Side note- sure, I’ve done my share of MTB rides way over 6 hours in the course of NUE races. This goes back to my previous post about training on the road, though. During a 6 hour ride, I had 27 minutes of coasting (you can look this metric up in training peaks or any other software that allows you to see how much of your ride was at a cadence of “0”). You can’t get that amount of pedaling if you’re only riding trails.

Today I’m laying low, going to a yoga class, and sticking around the house to work on some bikes. My repaired I9 wheel is coming back today, so I’m going to set my singlespeed up in race mode and get in some non-shifting miles before Natz.