spo(R)ting life

You CAN Judge a Book By It's Cover -- I INSIST

2012-02-07T08:14:00.000-06:00

Well, there it is. The choice. The very hard decision. The book cover image courtesy of Andrea from Tetro Design. (She needs no introduction.) I'm happy. Very happy. Pretty excited although trying to be subdued about it. What do you think?

There is a long and interesting market study I did to come to this decision to pick the cover (I was presented with 2 options as you may or may not recall). I'm sparing you the entire story in favour of focusing on the important stuff this morning.

I've done a lot with the manuscript too. Last night I thought it was ready for upload so I put it into the preview program and there are a lot of things to fix. I have this cheeky idea that want it's publication date to be February 29th.

What's the book about? Here is the blurb, the same one I wrote 6 years ago, that will act as my Cover Flap sell, maybe with some edits.

Janey Gillis is a virgin, but would anyone believe it?She’s the kind of girl guys invite for a walk in the bushes but can’t bebothered to take to a movie. Her friends Gillian and Andrea, since hooking upwith their boyfriends, have become clingy and whiny, have had twenty-five IQpoints vanish from their heads, and now put their friends second. If that’swhat it takes to have a boyfriend, Janey would rather stick to being the queenof making out. No commitments. But none of this stops Janey from fantasizingabout the big romantic rescue – like some day she’ll find some guy she can saveand maybe he’ll save her at the same time.

SO, SAVE ME, (a novel written for young adults ages 15+),is Janey’s hyper-reflective and introspective story about “love and friendshipand screwing up.” While waiting to hear news about her friend Marc, who is in surgeryfollowing a motor vehicle accident, Janey flashes back over her summer afterhigh school graduation when she’s invited to play softball with a new group offriends. Janey navigates a romantic relationship with Marc, a self professed“good French Catholic boy,” who grieves the recent loss of his mother fromcancer in self-destructive ways, thinks nothing of driving after drinking, andpushes for sex as a way to feel emotion. After a period of awkwardness, Janey alsodevelops a friendship with Colin, an injured former junior baseball star and oneof Marc’s best friends. The problem? The previous summer Janey had anembarrassing encounter with Colin in the bushes at a bonfire party. And Janeysenses there may be something about Colin that she missed out on when shepushed him away.

This is sorta surreal for me. Once I had the book uploaded in Kindle I could see it still has a lot of work needed. The indents are wrong, for one, and they are all over the place through the preview manuscript. I've been fighting with the friggen indents for days in Word. Somehow the table of contents became inactive in the transfer even though they are hyperlinked in the manuscript. Don't know how to fix that. Oh and the author is Unknown. Who the hell is this author?

Reality Check

2012-01-29T16:19:00.000-06:00

I don't know about you but as much as I try for it to be otherwise, winter always makes me feel less productive. It seems like everything you do in winter is a hassle. Just the act of getting the kids out the door takes twice as long with ski pants, boots, jackets, mitts that are often missing or left in the car, hats, neck warmers. This winter thus far has been atypically warm but the hassles still exist.

I lead a complicated life, as most of us do, but a few changes in scheduling this year seemed to have increased the complications. I have my children more days a week. It being swim meet season, this means I also have them irregular weekends while their father is away at meets or coaching in town meets. My kids also are attending two different schools this year because middle school starts at grade 5 in the French Immersion program so that means my daughter is at a different school this year.

On top of it all, at work we are in a transition year. It is the last year for two of the programs I've been working with for the last 9 years and our new Baccalaureate program is in it's second year. This means I teach one of my courses 5 times over the academic year because my course runs this year in all three programs. Because one of the programs runs on a different term schedule, I am never teaching the same material at the same time to any group. Half the time I don't know what I'm teaching, what stories I've told what group and what worksheets I've completed and what I haven't. I rely on my students to tell me. Presently I am in the classroom with 4 classes this term and am working with approximately, 300 students. I operate week by week on good weeks. Usually it is day by day.

It means I'm finding I have to let go of my Type A need to be everything to everyone, be perfect and show up to everything I want to do. It simply isn't realistic or fair to the kids and my sanity to try any more.

I rely on my parents a lot when it comes to the kids and getting me to work on time and allowing me to full fill my obligations there, and I am thankful they are willing and helpful. But I suffer a lot of guilt over what I feel are my constant requests for assistance. One and a half years to go and I have a 12 year old. I'm already prepping her psychologically to be prepared to be taking the city bus to and from school when the time comes.

And I miss my two hour workouts. A lot. That is one thing that has had to be sacrificed in favour of simplifying my life. I'm exercising like a "normal" person right now. I can rarely get to the gym during work hours these days. I would love to be bike commuting all winter. I've slowly been prepping myself to start doing that for the last 3 years. Two years ago I bought goggles and outdoor pants. Last year I bought the bike mitts. This year I bought the balaclava and a night light. Little by little I get ready. Now if only I could buy the time. Right now I have one day a week I can reasonably commute and this is on Tuesday when I have no classes and the kids are with their father so I don't have to get them to school.

My winter commute time is about 40 minutes on average -- compared to spring and fall when it is 30 minutes. And that is just the ride time. That doesn't included the bike storage and the shower and change time pre and post rides which is also significantly longer when all the gear is considered. When I teach class at 10:00 and drop my kids at school at 8:30, there just isn't enough time for a winter commute.

So I have to be satisfied with half hour workouts, an hour at most, and skating with my kid down the river path has to count as a workout even though I barely break a sweat. And I'm despising the bike trainer beyond measure this winter. I'm ready to throw it in a snowbank -- if there were any snowbanks this winter that is. I have to accept my current state of non-competitiveness. That is what is realistic.

This all means that Actif Epica is not going to happen, as much as I might like it to. I can afford a few hours on the day to volunteer because that is what is realistic. It's not the fitness required for it, even with scaled back workout time, I'm still pretty fit. It is the detail required to organize myself to be prepared. The gear. The packing. The food planning. And the four hour training rides that I just can't do right now because the kids are here a lot on weekends and can't be left alone.

And the Barn race, which is today, couldn't happen either. And it looks very very cool.

And then there is everything else: President of Tribalistic Triathlon, blog writing as infrequently as it occurs (which is an act of relaxation), the course I am taking has homework, my kids have homework, and getting my novel ready to publish on Kindle which has it's own frustrations. But this stuff is important to me and who I am. And you have no idea how much I would like to be writing something new.

The latest book publishing frustration being readying the manuscript for upload. Microsoft Word formatting makes me want to punch the computer screen sometimes. It is worse with Microsoft Word for Mac. I can't seem to change the font size of a couple of individually selected words without it changing the entire document. Frustrating. And the Kindlegen program for Mac is a command line tool program. I have so much to learn and don't know who to ask.

So thus is the state of things right now. Gosh there were two days this week when I couldn't even get to the store to restock the milk. We just did without. My daughter just walked in and told me the white milk is out again. Such is my life.

Making it a Visual Experience

2012-01-21T22:11:00.001-06:00

When in the midst of writing my novel, I had all kinds of delusions of grandeur about my book being turned into a movie. Those were in the good moments of writing. Writing, and maybe this can be said of any big project where your life and soul is consumed, can be a little bipolar at times; sometimes you feel you are worthy of fame and fortune, and sometimes you flat out suck.

And I'll admit, the moments you think you suck, far outweigh the moments of grandeur.

Even in the last few weeks since I set myself down the path to committing to self ePublishing this book, I've had a few bipolar moments. I love this book and I hate it too. It was the catalyst for a lot of change in my life. It is full of subliminal messages. I can see stuff about myself in it that I didn't recognize while I was writing. These things are hard to face now, six years later.

I had to re-read the book a few months ago so I could fix a few issues of temporality. I had a cell phone issue to deal with. While I tried to write the book to be somewhat timeless and something today's teenage girls could relate to, there is no denying that I was a teenager in a different era. So there was a scene where my heroine comes home to a phone message but later in the book we know she has a cell phone. If she has a cell phone why wouldn't the caller have used it? I had to fix that. But it meant I had to read the book and that made me a little self conscious.

I'm very fussy about consistency in a book. I'm also frustrated when I'm reading a book and an author takes care of a problem with a "cheat." In fact I finished reading a book last night that used a huge cheat. A character died from a brain tumour and I guess later in in the writing process, like 10 or 12 chapters later, the author created a plot twist that required that the family be in financial crisis. So low and behold, in a one-sentence write-off, the family was suddenly in serious debt because of the medical bills from the character with the brain tumour. That's a cheat because it came out of nowhere. No foreshadowing, no warning. I think cheats are an insult to intelligent readers. And while, it was a small issue I had to fix in my book and perhaps would have gone by unnoticed by most readers, it would have bugged me for life so it had to be fixed.

Speaking of readers, my book has been out of the closet now for a little under six years. In that time I've pretty much indiscriminately allowed whoever asked to read it. I never offered it to anyone but I never said no if I was asked. Allowing people to read your novel can be scary sometimes but I was never afraid of letting people read this one. The vast majority of my readers have fallen outside my target audience however, meaning they've been older than 29 and some of them have been male. Only two of my readers have been in the right zone; one was the cousin of one of my best friends and one was the step-daughter of a co-worker.

When I was asked by my favourite designer ,who I put in charge of my book cover design, to help her by identifying key moments in the book, I sent an email out to some of the people I knew had read my book and asked what they remembered. I figured the best way to find out what was most memorable in the book would be to identify those scenes that stick in people's heads for a long time. You know how when you watch a movie or read a novel there is always one part that sticks with you even years after you last saw the movie? That's what I was looking for -- the moments that suck for my friends.

It didn't occur to me until after I hit "send" that maybe there was nothing memorable about my book and nobody would remember anything, and no one would reply (while sending the email was a moment of grandeur, the fear of lack of a reply was an I suck moment, to say the least). And I sent this email over Christmas holidays so it did take 2 or 3 days for people to start replying but, at last, the New Year came and the responses started to roll in.

Most remembered the "teenager" bits -- the making out and the parties and the drinking. A couple remembered the bonfire party scene. Some remembered baseball. Someone actually, five years later, remembered my heroine's name -- extra amazing because it is also a first person book and the only time you read her name is when another character uses it in dialogue.

Her name is Janey, by the way.

And one person remembered the long walk/run through St. Boniface in the dark. That person happened to be my longtime mentor Laurie and I'm sure he remembered that portion because it was agonizing for him to get me to write visual imagery. Not my strength as a writer -- describing shit, I mean. In fact, I'll confess, the way I remember it is that there was a section during that run scene that Laurie, for all intents and purposes, wrote for me.

What my readers didn't remember was the car accident (not a spoiler, by the way, you find out about that in the first chapter), the grieving theme, the love triangle (sorta), and the emotional bits of "coming of age." It isn't a visual book. I'm not a visual writer. It is an emotions book. That's who I am.

I shot my designer an email with a few mentions of specific scenes, an attachment with the book she wanted for reminders as it had been a while since she read it herself -- not to mention the narcotic factor as she read it initially while recovering from a nasty bike crash. I only had two no-no's for the image: No car crashes and no pink. But I knew I really didn't have to tell her that second one.

And I told her I thought she had the hardest job in the world. I couldn't imagine having to take someone's written word and put a visual on it. We write our books picturing everything in our own heads. We picture the locations, we may even be imagining a real place. We may picture our friends in place of our characters. I didn't write any character to be just one person in my life. Often my characters were an amalgamation of 2, 3 or 4 people I knew mixed in with the invented bits, so for me, a character might have 2, 3 or 4 different appearances.

She said she'd get back to me in two weeks. I freaked out because that was fast. And once the cover came in, it would be real, you know. I would have to go through with this.

She only took a week and a half..........

.........and dammit, she sent me two options. And they are both AMAZING and I have to decide. I think I have decided actually. I'm just taking a few days to keep it unreal a little longer.

The Life Cycle of a Novel

2012-01-03T21:22:00.000-06:00

One day about 6.5 years ago I decided I was going to write a novel. It was easy. It was a spontaneous decision and I just went for it. I sat down at my computer and just began to type and the damn thing wrote itself. Then I made a couple phone calls, got an agent, and because the novel was really good and I was really talented, the agent found me a publisher overnight. That publisher offered me a half million dollar advance which I then used to pay off my house, all my debt, and buy the most expensive bikes possible and we all lived happily ever after travelling to California every spring to climb hills and wander along the ocean.

Yeah, I'm totally shitting you.

I was thinking the other day about the concept of talent. If you are talented at sports, everyone wants you on their team. If you are talented at a really popular sport like hockey or football or golf, scouts seek you out, everyone recognizes your talent, and you are invited to a team training camp or you are drafted (which has nothing to do with sitting behind the fastest guy in the peloton) or if it's golf you go to qualifying school. If you've worked hard and you are driven you are rewarded for your talents with a big contract and a lot of money.

But if your talent is something artistic, it isn't that simple. With artistic talent, you get classified within some genre or style that might be an acquired taste, and you have to meet a popular need. And with writing, a publisher has to think you meet enough of a popular need to make them money. They aren't interested in breaking even off you, they are interested in you making them rich. There are a lot of really popular authors out there who are shitty writers. No, shitty is too harsh. They can write, they just have some horrible lazy habits or formalistic plot generator writing mentality. Please don't make me name any of these authors. If you read, you can name your own.

There were a handful of truths in the lie of my first paragraph. Six years ago, I did write a novel. It wasn't easy and it didn't write itself but I am sorta talented. Everyone has one talent, and I'm grateful to be able to have identified mine, because I am sure that there are some people that never stumble upon what their talent is and most, spend too much time floundering around putting too much energy into a talent they don't actually have hoping talent will magically materialize. Like bike racing, perhaps. Or, like singing. I can't sing.

My novel I wrote didn't get shoved in a drawer. I finished writing the first draft sometime in November of 2005. I had a four year old and an almost-two year old who went to bed early (lucky me) and that's when I wrote. I ignored my marriage and that would be my contribution to it's demise (or part of it). It was writing my book that was the gigantic turning point in my life, there was no doubt about it.

I applied for and gained admittance to the Manitoba Writer's Guild Mentorship program and started that in January of 2006. I worked for 4 months with Brandon writer Laurie Block who at the time was a 50-something poet. I went through great angst trying to figure out why the hell, out of the 60-plus applicants that submitted a proposal, he would be interested in me, 30-somthing writer of a girly teen novel.

But I do credit Laurie with saving my life and my lost soul in many ways but I've talked about that elsewhere. Many elsewheres, actually.

When the mentorship program was over, Laurie encouraged me to submit a proposal for a writer's grant from the Manitoba Art's Council. I got the grant. I used the grant money, not only to live a little, but also to make a big push to get my novel published. I don't remember how many publishers and agents I queried and sent samples to but it was several dozen.

And they were interested. I had two agents request the entire manuscript and two or three that asked for chapter samples. I had two publishers also request the entire manuscript. They all eventually turned me down, (except for the second publisher -- 4 years later and I've never officially received a rejection). Why was it rejected? I was lucky enough to receive more than form letter replies in many cases and the message was always the same: While the writing is really good, we just aren't sure how to market this. It is too old for young adult and too young for adult.

When I sat down to write this book, I wrote the book I would have wanted to read at about 14 or 15 years old when I wanted to transition out of reading teen specific books but wasn't quite ready to read about the lives of 30 and 40 year olds in the traditional adult novels. So I wrote about an 18 year old girl graduating from high school and the the changes and thoughts that come along with that.

But I targeted Canadian publishers and Canada being the small market that it is, young adult means 12 year olds and up. Twelve year olds shouldn't read my novel. The sexual content is too mature. I didn't target American publishers because my book is very Canadian -- Winnipeg Canadian. There is a huge St. Boniface cultural effect in the novel and that atmosphere was very important to me. If you grew up in or hung around St. Boniface, Windsor Park, or Southdale in the late 80's or early 90's this book will feel very much like home to you. Large portions of the book take place in very familiar and in some cases, now defunct locations like Le Rendezvous, Le Canot, College du St. Boniface baseball fields and the characters work at the Safeway and Canadian Tire on Vermillion Road.

I gave the book a chance to be published mainstream for about 2 years. In the time I waited for the pile of rejections, I wrote a second novel. I haven't said much about novel number 2 but maybe I will in a future post. But that doesn't explain why I've let 4 more years go by since I gave up on ever holding this book in my hands in printed form or being able to wander into McNally Robinson and stare at it's cover on the store shelves. I always joked that it was going to be my goal to see my author picture up on the wall one day. Now that picture would have to be me on a bike.

In the meantime I've enjoyed spending the last four years beating the crap out of myself on a bike and I will continue to do that. And a lot of things have changed in publishing since I wrote my novel and tried to publish it the old fashioned way. Book stores are struggling due to big box mentalities. And Kindle and iBooks are beginning to take over.

And my first novel deserves better than it's place in the metaphorical bottom of the Tickle Trunk. So as an act of doing something lofty, I'm prepping it to be ePublished. It's time and I hope I'm ready and I've procrastinated long enough. So for the next little while I'll use this blog to tell you my progress in doing that. I can tell you I am now a Registered Publisher, I can obtain ISBN numbers, I've researched how to upload to Kindle (the information on how a Canadian does that with iBooks has been a bit more difficult to find all in one neat and tidy place), and I've got my favourite designer on the job of bringing the emotional mood of my book to life on a cover image.

I even have some promotional ideas, hence my sudden interest in Twitter which I still don't get. And I hate tooting my own horn and selling myself. It feels like prostitution. Worse, actually, I'm standing on stage naked under the lights. I can't see the audience but it's all people I know, and they could start throwing tomatoes at any moment. But I'll see what I can do. There might be a reason why the time didn't become right, till now, for me to take action on ePublishing.

Most authors will tell you that their first book should never see the light of day. I don't think that's true in this case. I also don't think it was really my first novel.

Stay tuned in future posts. I have more to tell you about how I've been prepping this book.

The Rules: Six through Ten

2011-12-20T00:20:00.000-06:00

Is anybody else bothered by the word "date?" This has been on my mind since I started writing this set of blogs. Did I date before I got married? It was more like we all just hung out together or worked together and then eventually we paired off. My now ex-husband took me on dates when we first started going out but before that, I doubt it was that formal. The guy would invite you to a party or the bar, you met up with all his friends (or your friends), he drove you home and you made out in the driveway for a while before going back in your parent's house. Is that dating? It may just be that my fears of dating are derived from the fact that I have absolutely no idea what I am doing because I have never done it before.

So this is part III, of the Man Diet discussion and a look at Rules 6 to 10. Parts One and Two (rules 1 to 5) can be found at the links.

Rule 6 – Take a Break from the Games

You know the game, right? Don't call for 3 days, take at least 30 minutes to answer a text, and longer for an email. I really don't know how to do this. If you write me an email and I get it, I'll answer it. Probably on the same day. Likely within the hour, assuming the day is going that way. If you text me, I'll answer as soon as I get it unless I'm driving my car, I'm in class, I'm on my bike, or my phone is off for some reason. To me, it seems like too much wasted energy to have to think about when I can safely answer without looking too eager. Don't you want me to be eager? Aren't you excited that I am willing to take the time to reply in an expedited manner? Or is that a chick thing?

And the fact that we know people play these games on purpose is what, ironically enough, contributes to women thinking you still are interested in them when you really aren't. He's just not calling because he's waiting the required amount of time. He's playing the game. I'll just call him instead.

I'm too old for games. I hope you are too.

Rule 7 – Do Not Pursue

The sad thing is, contrary to what I just said above. Playing hard to get, which is also a game, actually works. It goes back to what I said in the first instalment: "You always want that which you cannot have and that which is unavailable is always most attractive." Ever since my trauma in University in Philosophy class, I haven't been able to be the pursuer. And I have to confess, if I'm playing hard to get, I'm not doing it on purpose. It really is just because I haven't noticed you yet. It probably explains why, when you ask couples how they met their significant other, women in particular, usually say, "Finding a relationship was the furthest thing from my mind." And if I look back on my relationship history, I would say the same thing. Virtually all the men I've had serious relationships with across my life from 14 to 40 I was not thinking about meeting someone when I did and I certainly was not the pursuer. It doesn't mean we were meant to live happily ever after but it was still a fun start.

And as much as most men support women taking on "non traditional" roles in other areas of their lives, they aren't quite ready to relinquish the fun of the pursuit of that which is evasive. The author of the book did research for a previous book where she interviewed dozens of men about how they felt about women making the firstmove. Most men were OK with it, 60% in fact if I recall correctly, so she tested the theory andstarted asking men out and keeping tabs. She found that the number of acceptances she got was nowhere near 60%. So while men might be in favour of women being the pursuers in theory, in practice their behaviours don't match. This, my evolutionary psychologist friend would tell me, is the conflict between being socially acceptable in your opinions and the evolutionary unconscious drive of reality.

I’ve noticed this too, even in the onlineenvironment where I made the first attempt at contact about 4 times in nine months, only one guyhas answered (25% response rate with a pretty low sample size) and the conversation petered out pretty quickly despite anoverwhelming number of things in common.

And I’m not a supermodel but I'm a reasonably attractive woman. I’m athletic and areasonable weight and I take care of myself. But it just ain’t that fun for menif there is no hunt. And to be perfectly honest. I enjoy being hunted. So while I flirtshamelessly and often indiscriminately with men I'm comfortable with, I don’t make first moves. Atleast not early on.

Rule 8 – Take a Break from Internet Dating

Yes, this is now a no-brainer. In addition to what I’ve written recently on thesubject, and the book, coincidentally, uses the same words I used to describe the experience(catalogue, disposable), the book also makes one other additional good point. Too many choices are confusing. And when one woman doesn't work out, sometimes for the most benign of reasons or flaws or imperfections or deviation from the cookie cutter vision he has in mind, he shuffles on to the next one because the next time he opens up his email, there are 6 more women to look at.

I'm not sure if the book actually made this point or if I simply inferred it from the chapter. Isn't online dating like the definition of desperation and pursuit, for women? I can't speak for men. But it seems to me that if you make yourself that available, the man is guaranteed to not be that interested in the real you because you've already thrown yourself at him with your online plea and sales pitch. I'd like to be wrong about that but my experiences have shown otherwise. And I'd love to hear about men's experiences with online dating because they probably get some horrible stuff going on from their end too.

But as I wrote in thatother entry, I’m out of the online environment as soon as my membershipexpires. It is a waste of my time and my money. I want to meet someone and be friends first because I intend for my next relationship to be with someone I consider my best friend.

Rule 9 – Dwell on Your Sense of Self

The chapter tells many stories of how failure with men canovershadow your personal success in other areas of your life. As women we havebeen conditioned to believe that we are somehow lesser human beings without aman. Our friends and family don’t help matters by constantly prying into ourdating lives, “So, anyone nice out there for you yet?” Sigh… “In a relationship, everything is rosier,right?” – I was married once, I can tell you this is a myth. The number offriends and acquaintances that have spilled their marital woes to me since myown marital woes became known, tells me that relationship unhappiness is aplague. You can still have, “warmth,validation, and ecstasy,” while single. We are looking for a fairy-tale. Commercialism, dating sites, and jewellersprey on this desire for a fantasy to come true in advertisements. Similar to how advertisements make us feelbad about our weight and appearance so that we’ll spend money, they make usfeel bad about being single and lacking romance so we’ll spend money.

And if you are busy doing lofty things, you should feel good about yourself, because you are more likely to find someone you love by doing the things you love to do.

Rule 10 – Know Your Obstacles

I admit, this is the category where I score a grade of F. I can’t tell when a guy is ready for a relationship or is suffering from that quiet vulnerability of one who is still seething from some past ex and needs some attention. They all look the same to me. Overly attentive in the beginning, a dream come true, and then as soon as you begin to have real feelings, they begin to slip away. Or maybe they don't look the same and I'm just good at ignoring the signs when I'm getting that, "Too good to be true," feeling. The book describes the men to avoid: Married and willing to cheat, Charming with no intention, Keeping the options open men (which basically means, "you'll do" to fill the void right now but you're gone when someone "better" comes along), Good looking and boring, Douchbags, Asexuals, Those with Ex issues, The networker, the evasive mystery man, and worst of all, all your past ex's. I've experienced them all in one way or another, except for the ex. I can honestly say I've never "gone back" to someone I've dated in the past.

But really, in relationships there are only two obstacles. You and him. You can't settle for someone because you should like him because he's nice and treats you well but there's no spark, or because your friends like him. The only person who has to be excited about him is you. And he has to be meeting your needs. If he's charming as anything in your presence and ignores you in-between, or he says one thing, and does another or doesn't follow through, he isn't worth your energy and you are not his priority. And I'm really bad at that. I'm really bad at getting a soft spot for guys who are broken, and healing, and lost. I could write an entire post about my naivety. Maybe one day I will.

The Rules: One to Five

2011-12-20T00:14:00.000-06:00

My last post, The WSM Fallacy, talked about dating issues and how certain aspects of dating the second time around were beginning to get me down. Very down. And not just down, but downright anxious about putting myself out there and being judged, and discouraged enough to want to throw in the towel on many occasions. So I picked up a book called The Man Diet that promised to show me how to stop feeling bad about my experiences with men and to quit making men, or the lack there of, the central focus of my self-esteem. The book gave 10 rules for avoiding specific circumstances that contribute to eating away at women's sense of self in relationships. It does not in any way help you find "the one"; the purpose of the book is to help you find yourself.

I said in my last post that after reading this book, I decided that I wasn't doing half bad. So this time, I will talk about rules 1 to 5 and how I handle them. So Let's get on with the rules and how to go on a Man Diet. (Who makes up these book titles anyway?)

Rule 1 – Refuse to Have No Strings Attached Sex

Alright, nothing like starting out big (no pun intended) by putting the potentially most awkward and personal rule on the table first. No Strings Attached Sex. Call it what you will, this means no fuck buddies, no friends with benefits, and no sex for fun without commitment. No sexting and no flirtatious chats with substandard male candidates that you know will never be life partners. Why? Because as fun as it is in the moment, it makes many women feel like shit in the days after.

You can plan for it, you can agree to it verbally with your "victim," and no matter what happens, as soon as the clothes come off, sex changes everything. That person, will become forever ingrained in your memory in some way (good or bad). And if you are prone to agreeing to have casual sex in the hopes that it will become more -- no strings sex is a bad idea for some women.

It all goes awry something like this: You begin daydreaming about the potential and wish he would call or email. He may have politely asked for your email or cell number on the way out the door, or you leave it for him on the bedside table. And that call never comes. And it sucks a little bit of your soul, because by asking for your number, or by leaving your number, you just got permission to start expecting something more. Bottom line: Don't have casual sex if you can't leave it in the moment for what it was. You asked for it, you wanted it (you were lying to yourself) and you agreed to it. Not to mention the fact that, for women, no strings sex is often pretty lousy sex. Why the hell would you want to have lousy sex that makes you feel worse afterward? You are an emotionless, cold (Ok warm), orifice to some guy's penis. That's it.

Do I sound like I am speaking from experience? I read a book remember. I can glean all kinds of experiences from reading books. I've never been to Africa either but I could write about that too if I read something about it. Be careful about assumptions. The book had some pretty vivid descriptions of the emptiness some women felt in the midst of No Strings Sex.

I have to be honest here though. In my first draft of this section I initially wrote, "I’ve never had No Strings Attached Sex? Honest to God. Never." I've had a couple days to reflect and I've decided that is a bit of a white lie. What I have never done is go to a bar or a lounge or a pub and pick up some good looking stranger and take him home with me. There is my holier than thou moment amongst the rules. I discovered early in my youth that you can't have some pseudo-sexual experience with some guy you just met and expect it to turn into a relationship. So if I was actually looking for a relationship, and I always am, I would stay as far away from shallow encounters as I possibly could.

It isn’t like I haven’t thought about it. Alot. Sheesh, I should be out there having the time of my life, sewing my wild oats. I just can’t seem to do it. Maybe I'm just too old for that kind of behaviour now. And when I've tried, the inexplicable has happened. I've managed to find some nice guy who also only wants relationships and he's continued to hang out with me, sometimes without me being especially enthusiastic, in the weeks or months after. Go figure. There are exceptions to the stereotype.

Once when I was in my early to mid 20s I got pulled into some bar radio contest. I don't know how it happened, but what I do remember is that I was cold sober. I remember this because one of the prizes I won was a drink and I had to go trade it for something else because I was driving. But the contest involved licking whip cream off some guy's bare chest as fast as I could. He was a great, totally attractive guy, as I recall, but I hated the whole experience. I have no desire to do something that intimate with someone I know nothing about, I've never had a conversation with, and I haven't developed a deep respect for. It has never been purely someone's looks driving my physical attraction toward him.

As a final note: as much as the sexual revolution of the 60s did for women in terms of bringing awareness to female sexuality, desires, and the acceptability of premarital sex, a guy who sleeps with many women is still described as experienced and a total stud. A girl who sleeps around is still a slut.

Rule 2 – Cut Down on the Booze

I like a good drink, but I could stand to cut down on the booze. Mostly because I am old and I can't handle the extra calories the way I used to. Nor can I handle the hangover. I sleep lousy if I've even had a couple of drinks, I feel miserable the next day, and the combination of poor sleep and a hangover (which appears with less and less alcohol these days) is when I've had some of my most negative thinking about my love life (or lack there of). There is nothing like a good bout of binge drinkingto make you ruminate negatively about how things are going in your life and Gawddammit, I deserve better. Why does this always happen to me? And geeze, Universe, stop dangling carrots in front of my nose and then yanking them away.

The book calls alcohol a problem because it is likely to contribute to unplanned sex, Facebook stalking, and negative ruminating. Not to mention it is tough on the bank account. Alcohol is the best, non-pharmacological anxiety killer in the market. And that is my biggest problem area. I've poured myself a beer, a glass of wine, or a gin and tonic while waiting for a date to pick me up, while waiting for a phone call or email, after a hard day at work, or during those moments when the kids are getting to me just a liiittle biiiit. And there is nothing like a cold beer on a hot day as the best recovery drink in the universe. I seem to have more friends than I ever had in my entire life and there is always alcohol around when socializing. Always.

But in the name of losing the muffin top over the lip of my jeans, and on some days, my sense of self-worth, the booze must go. Or at least, I will cut back... yes, yes, I will.

Rule 3 – No Facebook Stalking

All my Facebook friends are laughing right now. Am I one of those famous people on Facebook? Everyone knows every nuance of my life? Believe me I'm far less revealing on Facebook than it might appear. Usually I just try and be witty and insightful and see what kind of response I'll get. There is lots of shit I don't reveal. Just ask my friends - I mean, the friends I see on a regular basis and actually talk to, in person and on the phone, and share my real life with.

My workplace doesn't block Facebook so I am on there virtually all day. Or at least the link is open. I'm not always sitting there monitoring everything that goes on. Do I check it a lot? Yep. But I have this little network on there. There is almost always someone talking to me about something and my phone is buzzing or I'm bored and I'm rotating through links and tabs while waiting in line or waiting for kids to come out of school. But 75% of my newsfeed on Facebook isn't people, it is cycling links. If I'm stalking anyone, it is pro cycling teams.

And I'm on it a whole hell of a lot less when I'm in a relationship.

What I don't do on there is stalk my ex's -- much. Yes I have a few ex's that are Facebook friends. Occasionally they show up in my newsfeed. There is a fortunate interesting trend amongst my ex's: They all have pretty low Facebook traffic so even if I was to be checking their profile activity repeatedly, there wouldn't be much to look at. Nor do I spy or much care about their current relationships. And I've never asked a friend to spy on someone for me or hack into their boyfriend's Facebook account to spy on someone for me. No thanks. I don't need to know.

OK, I will admit, that if I meet someone new and we become "friends" as part of the progression, I'll peek. Come on, everybody does it. Facebook, encourages it. That's how they hook you in.

These are all scenarios that the book warns against. The act of continuous monitoring of ex's and former dates, and potentials and partners can screw with your head. Seeing one tiny hint that someone who rejected you in the past is with someone else can be torture to watch and make it more difficult to let him go. And really, what you see on Facebook isn't real. It isn't a real person, it is simply a persona a person has created of themselves. No sense in beating yourself up over some read-between-the-lines statement that someone has made on someone's Facebook status. And if the guy is dating someone else instead of you, that isn't likely to change.

Rule 4 – No Talking about Men

I have way too many friends and for a while I did way too much talking. The book suggests that constantly talkingabout your dramatic man stories and escapades can actually be emotionallydraining rather than helpful and could contribute to you seeking situations that give you more dramatic man stories to tell. I suppose this is the female version of lockerroom talk. The other problem with talking to your friends is that they are not likely to tell you when you are being an idiot. They are more likely to support and validate your opinion. And, trust me, you are not always making the best decisions all of the time and sometimes you shouldn't be validated but rather be given a good slap upside the head.

(By the way, if you think you need a friend to give you a good slap upside the head. I'm the one to talk to. I won't validate you, if you are being a dork.)

It was one situation and one situation only that got me to talk a few years back and it seemed at the time that I didn't have to do a thing to find myself retelling stories of conversations with this person that were, in a word, appalling. I wasn't creating situations to have stories to tell, they just seemed to land at my feet. I've mellowed a bit in the last couple of years. I have some friends I talk to about some things and other friends who hear different aspects of my life. In the end, it was never about the drama or the entertainment value or the plot that held my friends captivated. It was about their concern for me.

Rule 5 – Do Something Lofty

Apparently, "lofty" does not mean riding your bike for 234 km in one day. That is, unless it involves a charity. Then it becomes lofty. Or maybe it means crazy. Take your pick.

I can find projects. I have more projects than I can possibly complete. I have books to write and training to do and research projects to plan. And kids to raise. There is no more loftier a project than children.

The first time I got dumped in an official break-up kind of way, I was 18. Prior to that boys just started ignoring me and hoped I wouldn't notice (That hurts more than anything, and as I've found out in the past 4 years there are still some 40+ year olds who think this is an effective dumping strategy as well). But this dumping happened right as I started university and I did what any overachiever might do, I threw myself into my homework and got straight A's instead (except for that Philosophy course, remember. You know the one where I slipped my phone number to the guy before the final exam. Oh and Film Studies which got killed by going out and drinking every Sunday night and sleeping through Monday afternoon movie day).

You know the phrase "go with the flow?" The word flow has scientific connections. It involves finding that zone where you are completely immersed in what you are doing with no other thought in your head. I equate flow with doing anything that makes me forget to check for messages on Facebook. Sorta, kinda like now, when I am writing this. Except I don't think writing about relationships counts toward stopping your thoughts about them [ahem... that's irony.]

Whatever works.

Coming up: Rules 6-10.... They just get better and better folks.

The WSM Fallacy

2011-12-18T22:38:00.001-06:00

If Miss Havisham, after being jilted at the alter, lived the rest of her
life in her wedding dress, do you think she ever had a bath?

While I was writing my post on my disillusionment with internet dating I originally included a story about how when I was inuniversity I used to sit and read the personal ads in the student-run newspaper The Manitoban. These ads were placed by students to students searching for that elusive cute stranger s/he saw in a class or at the gymor walking from building to building or tunnel to tunnel. They were something I looked forward to in every issue.

Blonde gorgeous saw you running in the Grotto and you lookedgreat in those tight shorts. I’m the guy in the Air Jordon’s and the Gold Gymmuscle shirt. Maybe we can run away together.

Yes they would include bad grammar and poor punctuation. Itwas the precursor to Twitter.

I cut that story from that post, for space, becauselordy-knows, I’m wordy enough and it wasn’t needed there, but my point had been Ialways hoped I would recognize myself in those ads. I always fantasized about sending one myselftoo.

Neither ever happened – although someone did leave me a noteon my car once, with two dimes to hold it in thecrease of my driver’s side window, and it said, “20 cents for yourthoughts.” I never did find out who leftit there, but likely it wasn’t who, at the time, I hoped it was.

[And, if I may interject an aside, sheesh, if that person wanted to know my thoughts, all they had to do was ask. My thoughts are rarely something I will hold back.]

Now, 20-plus years and (theoretically) much greater wisdom later, Iwonder how many of those personal ads were actually real? Or were they written by the ‘Toban staff, or by friends who did it to each other as a joke? Did people really have the courageto submit these things in the raw? Remember this was 1989-92 (I was perpetuallysingle back then too jumping from one 5-week relationship to another). It couldn’t be done anonymously, via a fake emailaddress. You used snail mail or you walked it in to the Manitoban office and delivered it byhand. And I can just imagine the smirksand giggles by the office staff who would smile politely when you handed themthe ad, and say things like, Isn’t that sweet, while sucking back the guffawsuntil you walked out the door.

And if they were real, how many of them were answered? Becausethere is no worse rejection, than silent rejection.

Probably my most embarrassing thing I ever did in the name ofmeeting that cute stranger was to hand him my phone number on a folded piece ofpaper and hope for the best. He was a guy in a philosophy class I was taking. I was probably about 20years old at the time and I thought he was amazingly cute and I wasn’textroverted enough at the time to worm my way into his circles and meet himpersonally (which, of course, seems like the simple and obvious solution and is what I could easily do now -- except, now, the guy would turn out to be married).No, I had to humiliate myself by first going up to his friend a week or twobefore and asking what the guy's name was. I waited to make my big move prior to thelast class – the same day we wrote our last test.

I’m smart, but, dear readers, you have no idea the potential depths of my stupidity when it comes to the opposite sex.

I don’t remember what I said to him but I do remember thegiggling that went on behind me, after I gave him that piece of paper, that I imagined was coming from the girls that sat with him in class. Iremember siting in my desk, second row from the front, too terrified to turn around to check for sure, trying to make myself as small as possible. I’ve never written a test so fast in my life. I was going to be long gone before he got out of that test room.

I got 69% (and I swear I’m not making that number up) on a test I should havegot 96% on. And, of course, the guy never called.

I read a book recently, and I'm going to tell you about that book shortly so bear with me, that suggested that women aren’tsocialized to handle dating rejection the way men are. Yes, I think this is true. We are taught tolook our best and walk sexy and make ourselves noticed but never look them inthe eye and let them make the first moves, the first calls, the first advances. Who teaches us this stuff? Cartoons, TV shows, from Bug’s Bunny toCheers, and all the commercials that run in between. And then when we arerejected, the first place our mind goes is to what we did wrong. Are we notattractive enough? Did we say something stupid?

This factoid about women's place in the dating world works nicely with another piece of dating lore I heard awhile back (on the radio or somewhere else, so I can't cite it, sorry): The men who are the most successful with women are not necessarilythe best looking ones. They are simply the men who are the most willing to make approaches repeatedly. I believe this isalso true.

The problem of course being that the women who are preening and trying to draw men to them aremost likely looking for love, while the men who are approaching are most likelylooking for sex. Gawddamn these gender differences.

If you read enough dating lore, such as the above, you’llwonder how men and women ever come together, get married, make babies and keepthe species going. The contradictions will rot your brain. Are we always at oddswith each other looking for opposite things? My friend who teaches evolutionary psychology always tells me that women control relationships because we controlthe sex (when and how often) and the birth control which means we also control whenprocreation takes place. And without procreation, men can’t spread their genepool to the next generation, which according to evolutionary theory, is what men are wired to do.

But I argue that it is men who control the emotional beginnings ofrelationships. Because baby, in my experience, the words love and commitment ain’t coming into the story untilthe man says it does.

Now, now, I know there are men, possibly reading this, who can tell their own stories of having intense feelings for a woman who proceeded to trounce all over their hearts and spit them out. I know this because I often was the lucky soul who dated these men in the aftermath of this bloodbath and was left scraping them off the carpet while they sucked the blood life out of me and back into themselves.

But this happens because of two other valuable pieces of dating lore which have not magically disappeared in my 14 years away from the game and the supposed advanced maturity of the now older men I am dating: You always want that which you cannot have and that which is unavailable is always most attractive. And it is not just the men guilty of these unconscious desires. I've been guilty too.

Which means I’ve spent a life time with the wrong men. Andgiven my propensity to overanalyze everything, this gets me very very down.Down enough that I’ve wondered what the point is to trying to be in arelationship at all?

When my last serious relationship ended without warning, I vowed no men for a verylong time. That was just a little over a year and a half ago now. Have I keptto this? Mostly. I’ve had a few dates which have ranged from confusing tocreepy. One of those dates that fell closer to the confusing end than thecreepy end of the continuum wore me down so much I went back on, what oneauthor referred to as a “manbbaticle”. And then when I least expected it and wasn’t looking for it, I metsomeone great. But that relationship was fraught with distance, bad timing, andoverreaching complications so as a relationship it ended, as a friendship it will continue.

But it left me once again with the unanswerable question ofwhat is wrong with me? What is wrong with what I am attracted to? And moreimportantly, what is wrong with what I am willing to put up with?

So what did I do? I succumbed to junk food literature andread a book because someone out there has to have it all figured out. I couldn’t help myself really, it was an actof desperation.

Actually, I'd been searching for a while to find a non-fiction book on relationship anxiety. I would have preferred something creative non-fiction or memoir, but this book was the closest I'd found. And it wasn't heavy on the fallacy of preying on my insecurities to get me to dish out my money so I can find out what I'm doing wrong.

Women have been thrust into this world of dating stuck with massconfusion resulting from the incompatible forces of sexual liberation combined with desire to find a life-long mate. Throw in the added social factor that we are still expected, by most men, to be the passive one in the relationship hunt and we might be better off closing up our curtains, and wasting away in darkness like Miss Havisham. While some might believe that feminism is dead (it isn’t) or not required (itis) there are still very strong societal pushes for women to behave in aparticular manner when dealing with men and only by meeting those tacit standards of society will weever be successful finding a mate.

But what the hell are those standards? Feminism tells us things should be one way, our friends tell us things should be another way, and when all that fails repeatedly and nothing follows any sort of rule, it doesn’t take long before idealism and fairy-tale likefantasy turn to cynicism and dogged depression and anxiety; especially afterrepeated “failures” and false starts.

But given that as a single woman you are most likely to comein contact and be charmed by those fearless, and often frivolous, male approachers, it isn’thard to understand why so many women can’t help but think the stereotype of thesex hungry male confabulator, is true of all men. You know the ones. The guys who listen to you like your words are music and act oh-so-interested like you are the centre of the universe, while the whole time it is a fake because it all ends when they get you in the sack.

The book, called The Man Diet by Zoe Strimpel, a Britishjournalist who has been known for and written extensively about, the life ofsingle women 18-35, alternates between being a scholarly analysis of thescientific literature on dating, a pop culture analysis of the real world as compared toSex in the City, Beyonce songs, and Bridget Jones’s Diary, and a dirty-mindedtell all of the exploits of the author and all of her friends. We hear abouther own man-binge sessions and embarrassing episodes of being on a man chase.

Given her target audience is women like her, I do think thatthis book was slightly too young for me. It’s focus was the never-marriedsingle woman. There was no mention of divorced mothers of two who ride bikes, write blogs, and teach research methods (very much in that order ofimportance).

I’m not 18-35 and I’m divorced (for real now, it's final), and I’ve got the added cynicismof a failed marriage along with my serial-hook-up youth in my consciousness. Regardless, I still gained many insights into some ofthe standards of dating that I’d forgotten in the years I was out of thegame. Because let me tell you, even inmy supposed state of advanced wisdom, in the time I was married and off themarket, my former youthful naivety was left in suspended animation. And inlooking for my second chance at love, I find I have not become more wise aboutmanners of the heart during the period of time my romantic potential laydormant.

The book pointed out 10 very real causative factors thatcontribute to trashing women’s self-esteem in the dating world. Except it isreally hard to read these books and not be left feeling like you are doomedwith your own damnable behavior or, if you aren’t making the mistakes outlined, then feel smug and holier than thou with your superiority. The rules when followed, individually or collectively, areintended to help women regain their sense of self, drop the quiet desperationthat seems to cling all over single women, and, not necessarily help them findMr. Right, but at the very least help them find the right within themselves.

And I'm going to tell you the rules. In fact I'm going to potentially humiliate myself by telling you how I've faired with these rules. But that is for a future posts, which I promise to complete before Christmas. Frankly, I'm not doing much wrong if you want a little foreshadowing as to how this will turn out. In the meantime, if you have anyembarrassing pick-up stories that will make me feel better about my ownhumiliating University experience I just shared with the world, please dish and share.

At Season's End

2011-11-08T19:52:00.001-06:00

On Cloud 9 (Carolyn Campeau's photo)

Someone asked me the other day what I would name as my best "age" -- what age was your best year? After contemplating for only a couple of seconds, I said, This year. Forty has been a good year. And Lordy knows I wouldn't want to label the best year of my life as something I could never get back and I know I don't want to be 19 again.

And I'm not unimpressed with my year on a bike either (and I'm never getting 19 back there either) although I would subjectively (and there are objective results to prove it), say that it started off with a bang and went downhill from there, ending with me crawling throughout that cyclocross race out in St. Malo more like an 80 year old. I was done. I had my last good cross race at Whittier Park and there was nothing left in the tank to finish it off. Done.

The blasted Sand Pit in Altona -- God I love those socks...

So I imagine this is what burnout feels like: I'm tired. I'm stiff. I feel like I can't bend over. I can't tie my shoes. I can't put on my socks. I'm doing Yoga again and it's doing nothing. My body has seized up. The last time I was like this, it was because I was over training. What have I done the last 2 months? I've raced cross, I've commuted on average twice a week, slowly. And I've raked many many leaves. Every time I go for a massage, the therapist says I need more like 3 hours on the table because one hour is barely doing a thing. I also don't want to do anything that makes me out of breath right now. Being out of breath, hurts.

I lack serious motivation and drive to win or try and catch people. For example, I fell over in the sand at St. Malo on Sunday and that was it, I stopped racing. I heckled people as I got lapped because there was a lot of that going on this year. And I had a smile on my face the whole time.

The blasted run up in St. Malo (WCW). If you didn't know cross, by looking at the pictures you would think all we did was carry and push our bikes around.

Today I rode my bike to work and that made the grand total bike-ground covered for 2011 5037 km. That number does not take into account the fact that for me, 1 km on a mountain bike is like 3 kms on the road. And there were probably about 150 trail kms this year.

So where did it start:

It started last December with me on a trainer working my butt off with 4 to 5 bikes a week. Greg (the insane one... who's blog is back up, for now... and it better not go down again), kept warning me all winter, when I told him what I was doing periodically, that I was going to burn out. I didn't believe him. (I'll admit it Greg, I didn't believe you!) But he was right. He would know, he's been at this game a whole lot longer than me. I think it took me longer to reach burnout than he thought it would, but by March I was ready to throw the trainer in a snowbank and be done with it. So I pretty much did and went outside.

My over my head backwards shot of Don on the PCH -- that's the Pacific Coast Highway.

Then came California. It is hard to have a good summer on a bike when the best thing you did all year happened in April. That week, fundamentally changed the reason why I ride. And it was made all the more incredible by having the amazing Don right up there ahead of me, or beside me, or behind me. Depended on who was having the good day and who wasn't. But in reality, there could be no bad days on the road with Don.

We would touch the Pacific Coast and then we would end up waaaaaay up here.

And that was just supposed to be the training camp for the GranFondo in Penticton. What a lovely little town that is and some of the most beautiful riding in Canada, I am sure. I got through most of it riding on the wheel of the pleasant draft that was the James Dyker train but I finished too fresh and I could have gone harder. It was a great week and I rather enjoyed getting to know James and Karin better, as well as Rene and Carla. There is a part of me that wants to go back and do it again.

Rene, Karin, James and me... out for a test ride the day before the GranFondo at the Okanagan Beach

This would have been my view for about 110km

Then it was one stupid crazy enduro event after another.

The Falcon 8 hour where I learned how to Mountain Bike in a damn hurry or get run over. Scott B. gave a speech at the start, as he likes to do, and told me that eventually my brain would shut off and I would just ride. And he was right. Every lap I rode something I hadn't been able to ride before, with my best lap being #4/6 with Vanessa behind me, we chatted the whole way and I think I rode 90% of the technical stuff on that lap.

Somewhere around Beausejour, on the Lac du Bonnet ride, when we still looked well and happy and healthy: Scott B., Greg L., and Ben V. It was only me and Scott that turned around and came back by bike too. Ben went on to the Whiteshell, and Greg got picked up and taken to a camp by his family.

The ride to Lac du Bonnet with Scott as his Leadville nutrition test on August long weekend was a 234.5 km round trip piece of torture. Only my longest ride ever by 4.5km but definitely the hardest because if you know Scott, there ain't much draft there and we had to battle 40-50 km/hr winds on the return trip to Winnipeg. That ride was followed by 64km with Alter Ego on the Sunday and 92.5 km on Monday, partially with FOG (where my dead, done body after powering up the hills on Garvin finally said ENOUGH and I kept getting dropped, over and over and over) and partially just me and Jason C. crawling from Birds Hill Park to Lockport where we enjoyed a nice bacon and egger and a large coffee, and then back to the Legion.

Somewhere beyond the 200km mark as we stopped at the Half Moon in Lockport to fight off Massive Bonk #2 of the ride. Wind burnt and salt-crusted.

Scott also looked awesome! And I must say, I can't say I knew Scott very well before this ride either and it was good getting to see another side of him as well.

And all this 2 days after a 4 hour torture session on the tattoo table with Andy for phase 2 of my mid-life crisis tattoo. Here is what the now finished product looks like.

I love the whole thing but my favourite part is that little leaf growing out of the chain up at the top right.

My feeble attempt out at the Back 40 in Tinker Creek was pretty good evidence that I was fading. But that still wins for the best race outing of the summer with the Alter Ego trailer in tow. The laughs that were to be had with Adam and Dave and the wives. And Paul and Penny and "the other" Dave and Kevin. Can you say, ROAD TRIP? And we won't mention what happened in the bathroom at DJ's on the way back from Morden.. will we? What happens on the road trip, stays on the road trip.

Dave C. of course just being Dave

And then it was just a lot of racing. When you race that much, what do you peak for? From end of August to November I did 10 races: 8 cyclocross races, road provincials, and the Tinker Creek back 40. You simply can't be much better than average if you are going to race road, and mountain bike and Cross. I envy those that can. I'm not one of them.

And if we add the Portage stage race (3 races), the River Road Stage race (2 races), the Grand Beach mountain bike race, and the Wednesday night Burr Oak series (I did 2) that is 18 races for the year.

And look at this! Proof that in May, I could hang on a train pulled by Willem B. (Stefan Isfeld, photo)

I did no triathlon. I helped run the show out in St. Malo but the running thing was not working for me this year. The legs are not handling it. So I'm trying to find out what might happen if I lose the shoes and go barefoot or minimalist. I've had some moderate success. Stay tuned. I'm hopeful.

So what's on the agenda for next year? Good question, but I'm open to suggestions. Money is a bit tight and I need to be careful about that. I would like to be able to run again. Is this a pipe dream? I think the best thing I can do to help my biking (and probably my running too) is lose 20 pounds. That's hard.

I've always wanted to ride my bike from Winnipeg to Kenora, maybe that will happen next summer. I'd love to go back to California, but not without Don. Maybe I'll do the Penticton GranFondo again, but I hate doing the same thing twice.

I've contemplated riding my bike from Winnipeg to "Somewhere," as in a really long bike trip. I have a friend in Hamilton, for example -- I even mapped out a theoretical route around the Great Lakes. But I don't want to go alone. Anyone else get the summer off?? Or at the very least... two weeks in August?

That's the wonderful thing about this sport, isn't it. The possibilities are endless.

Catalogue Shopping, Disposable People, and Pre-nuptials

2011-11-05T16:31:00.001-05:00

We have these things to sort out
between us, furniture, cars, nest
eggs and air purifiers, souvenirs
of past lives, past loves. Your cool damp

basement, my unlit closet. Assumptions

about who I am and what I have

without you. And as for the wounds

and the weight of desire

they are nobody’s property

the debts are paid, the account is balanced.

Pre-Nuptial -- Laurie Block (2006)

Although I am not a poet, the verse I quote above is from one of my favourite poems. And I'll admit that is biased because Laurie was my writing mentor back in 2006, two years preceding my love of bikes, and the same year my seven year oldmarriage was quickly and quietly slipping into the dusty pages of marital historybooks.

The poem is about starting a new relationship post divorce. I can still see Lauriestanding at the microphone at McNally at his book launch, telling the story of what he referred to as "resorting" to the personal ads, after a certain amount of time being single, to look for love. What he found there was a recurring theme: No baggage, please.

He discovered quickly that “baggage” was a code word for“children” in personal ad lingo. This was a shock for Laurie, who has two daughters who would have been much younger at the time.

But of course, baggage, in relationship terms, and what became the inspiration for his poem, is also about everything you bring into a relationshipfrom your past. And the conclusion Laurie came to was, Why would you want to reject someone else's baggage? It makes them the wonderful person that they are today.

Now I’m not sure if personal ads even exist anymore in that form. Dothey? I’m sure they have been replaced by online dating. I’ve beenseparated/divorced for over 4 years now. Is that too long to go without having found the next love of my life? Is there a time limit on such things before society defines you as perpetually and irrefutably single?

I’ve had a couple significantrelationships in that time and a lot of bad dates and false starts. I tried online datingand I, and most everyone else I’ve talked to who has done it, has found it ahuge waste of time.

I’m jaded now though, you understand. But I walked into the process of meeting people online full of optimism. Anyone who was willing to put outthat kind of money to meet people had to be serious about it.Instead I found a lot of unfinished profiles with pat, safe statements that could betrue of everyone (I’m inspired by my grandfather and I'm passionate about my kids),but gave no hint about what made them who they are.

It wasn't long, and after a couple of weird dates with people who seemed normal, and even awesome, in writing and on the phone, before I began to suspect that most people in the online environment only thought they were ready to date. Some of them are just trying to replace something and fill voids as quickly as possible. I see a lot of anger and bitterness reflected in many men’sprofiles; the only word many men can come up with to describe what they are looking for in a relationship is, "honesty." Nothing wrong with wanting honesty, I want that too, but that one single word sitting in the large space they give us to describe our hopes and dreams for a relationship, to me implies that dishonesty burned him in the past and he is still obsessing about it. I've also seen pleas from men for women with "issues" to please stay away. As someone who is often too honest and definitely has baggage and definitely is still scarred and conditioned from a traumatic and toxic past "relationship," I find it sad. I'm not looking for someone to be my therapist (nor do I want to be your therapist), I'm looking for a partner.

It made me quickly start to wonder: Was I catalogue shopping for a mate? Felt that way. Flipping through profiles and pictures rejecting people based on nuances and photographs. Most of the time I read profiles and thought, "I don't know." I could muster up no more enthusiasm than that without the aura of the real person in front of me. I made a pact with myself that if someone contacted me I would always answer. And, for the most part, I stuck to that.

The problem is that when someone is an object in a catalogue, they become disposable. I can be brushed off without even being tried on. And I can do the same to them. And people shouldn’t be disposable. A paradoxical trend seemed to emerge in my online pandering: If I did find some guy's profile interesting and having depth, I would often come back to look again at a future date after I contemplated making a move, and found myself "archived." Really?You didn’t even say hello.

One guy had "sex" identified on his list of "things you can't live without." I thought this was amusing and honest and, beyond bikes and coffee and writing, I was having difficulty coming up with two more, so I stole his idea. I left it up for about a week and then decided to succumb to society's stereotypes and removed it, because as a woman, I knew men would take my intentions the wrong way. Why can't I want a deep relationship and like sex too? But my experience in life has told me that as soon as I admit I like sex, the odds of me getting a relationship with someone with depth post that admission decreases significantly, while the number of shallow approaches increases exponentially.

By the way, I had two guys approach me during that week. It took another 3 months before there were 2 more after I removed it. Nothing like playing on a cliche.

Another guy told me that on another dating site he was in, a free dating site, one woman told him he was the first man who had contacted her who hadn't immediately asked her what colour her underwear was. Touché.

Stereotypes's exist with the athletic thing as well. Especially endurance athleticism. Especially female endurance athleticism. Lots of people are active but, nope, they're not really active. Endurance athletes get each other. We go for 3 hour bike rides in lousy weather and up steep hills because it is therapeutic and soothing and more than a little addictive but, let's face it, the rest of the world thinks we are nuts. As one guy I met online said to me: “I like that fact that you are athletic. It's very rare, you know.”

I snickered when I read this in his message. He was "athletic" too. One of his things he couldn't live without was "a gym." Rare? Not in my circles. In my circles, I don’t know anyone who isn’t like me. In fact, I have a rather low weekly output for someone who considers herself an endurance athlete. I have "baggage" (i.e. children) remember.

All the men I've connected with online have only been conservatively active, and they don't get it. And I’ve sensed a threatened attitude often, ("I don't know if I could keep up with you." "I'm not interested in doing that much"), I can’t help but notice, looking around the athletic community, that it doesn’t work in reverse. Women aren’t threatened by men who are endurance athletes. Most women are quite content to support their guy and stand on the sidelines and cheer if they aren't interested in doing that much. Because it is OK, via the stereotype, for women to do less than their man athletically.

And what about that whole evolution of attraction thing? I have a (guy) friend who teaches evolutionary psychology at various educational institutions around the city and when he is trying to get my goat, he shows me charts about how smart women with high incomes are not what guys want -- from an evolutionary stand point. Well... what does one do with this knowledge? I'm smart and educated, I have a good job, and I have children (i.e. baggage). I'm doomed. But apparently we can't fight evolution. Making choices based on evolutionary factors and social stereotypes is unconscious.

I suppose those unconscious "evolutionary instincts" were all fine and dandy when we only lived to be 40 or 50 years old. But they are pretty useless and outdated now that we are living to be 80. I can't imagine living the rest of my life with someone who didn't challenge my thinking or wasn't my intellectual equal as discussed in one of my other favourite literary outputs, You Should Date an Illiterate Girl.

And while we are at it, here is my other controversial opinion, I think "Till death do us part" is also an outdated concept. Who we are as people is constantly changing and evolving, who says we are meant to be with the same person for 50 years? But society still looks at divorce as a personal failure.

Don't worry. I won't make you agree with me if you don't agree. Related to that opinion, I also think it is far too easy too get married and far too difficult to get divorced. And yes, I am a little bit left winged.

But there are a lot of evolutionary theories about physical attraction too. How our pheromones draw others to us. In fact, regardless of appearance, we will be most attracted to someone who is as genetically diverse from us as possible because natural selection dictates that couples who are genetically diverse will produce stronger children with "fitter" traits. Ever been addicted to how someone smells? It is kinda like that. That isn’t possible to detect when you are only looking at a picture on a website.Attraction is about how someone moves, talks, expresses themselves. It is about connecting with someone and feeling, I like having this person in my presence. And you can't even explain why this person and not another. All the psychological profiling and matching in the world will not find you that.

In the online environment, there are no pretences about why you are making your approach. This is helpful, but it makes all your interactions, relationship-like from the very start. Unlike when you meet someone in person and see them in group functions on a regular basis and you go for as long as possible without making your intentions known. Things are more subtle in the real world.

But I've met guys online and I don't even know their kids names or where they live or where they work (you are deliberately protective about that information online, while it is the first thing you talk about when face to face) but we are already, to use the words of my mentor Laurie's poem, talking about the things to sort out between us. Those nest eggs. You dig to find each others’ wounds and find out if debts are paid and accounts balanced.

And that's emotional wounds and balanced accounts and debts. Not the literal kind.

And when one person decides "this is not the thing for me," even if it has only been a handful of emails, it requires a mini break-upspeech (assuming you are gracious). And we each say thanks and we go ourseparate ways back into our separate circles never to cross paths again. And,God forbid, NO facebook friendship. This person could still be an axe murderer for cripes sake, even though he mightnow know more about the pain of my marriage ending than my next doorneighbour.

Catalogue shopping, false intimacy, wipe the slate clean.Done.

I went online to get out of my circles. To expose myself topeople other than athletes, people I might not normally come in contact with in my day to day life, because there is far more to who I am than the factI ride a bike. But it ain’t working. And I hate how it operates. And, to be honest, I would rather have fewer quality dates with people I've gotten to know in person first, who came out of nowhere like God-sends and took me by surprise who love the same things I love, than many false starts and awkward dates with people a computer has told me is "my match."

And at the very least, if you don't love bikes the way I love bikes, you must respect that I do, and you must love that I can do things like I do in this blog and I can write from my soul, because this is who I am.

So what next?

Patience, I guess.

Not So Gut-less

2011-09-27T13:12:00.000-05:00

Fall 2010 -- But a shadow of myself

What's with all the fear of change, these days? Facebook made a couple little alterations and my news feed was inundated for days with, "The new Facebook SUCKS." Just wait folks. The changes so far, are just the calm before the storm. But if the change is coming anyway and if you're like me and you prefer not to wait for the other shoe to drop but would rather force it to drop at a time of your choosing, you have the option to change Facebook now.

Change is hard though. We get comfortable with the familiar. Less willing to take risks with something new. And given all the changes that have happened in my life over the last 4 years -- most of which happened at my own choosing -- I often have trouble understanding people's reluctance to change things in their lives. Although I still have a couple things I could stand to change and all I can say about that is, "I'm working on it." Change is also about timing and readiness. Nobody is perfect.

But I'm not in this to preach enlightenment and existentialism or carpe diem so I stop there.

But change can also be good. For example a catalyst of things have happened since I wrote this post nearly a year ago that have made me happier. Having that "nightmare" or anxiety attack (whatever you would like to call it, because it was both) that woke me up that morning was the impetus for a lot of mini-awakenings.

And, I'll be honest, when I wrote that post, I had no idea what I was saying. I can't, even to this day, explain what I was going through any better than I wrote it there, but the meaning behind my words, at the time I wrote them, eluded me.

Unfortunately happier has also made me Fatter. Where this has become most obvious is on my bike. Painfully obvious. Getting dropped on the first big climb in road provincials was the first painful piece of objective evidence. A year ago that wouldn't have happened. Struggling through two races in the B Cyclocross category and feeling but a shadow of myself from a year ago was the second.

Me racing cross last year in Altona. Thinner and faster.

(I had a great time racing C this past weekend. I wanted to puke the whole time. I've never raced so hard in my life and that is how cross is supposed to be. I'm still on cloud nine about how good that felt).

I am easily 10-12 pounds heavier than I was a year ago when I was racing cross. Life circumstances in spring of 2010 threw me into a state of rapid weight loss. I lost I think about 8 pounds in about 6 weeks that spring and it wasn't for good reasons. I was ensured to gain it back (and to be honest, gain back and then some).

Me racing cross this past weekend at Labarrier a little pudgier but still strong. (Thanks to Bill Gendron for the picture.)

I can't explain what was going on in my body then that caused that weight loss any more than I can explain how I gained the weight I did this year. There hasn't been one smidgen of change to my activity levels. I'm just as fit as I ever was. I'm just heavier. And I've always ate like crap and not much worried about my food choices -- bad habits instilled in the teenage version of me back at a time when I could eat whatever I wanted and still be 99 pounds are hard to break. I could stand to do better there and "I'm working on it."

And everyone who is with me on facebook is aware of my recent "no beer" "no bread" diet. I'm back on bread in moderation and beer only on special occasions. I haven't lost much weight. It'll be slow.

But here is the irony of being happier and getting fatter: For the first time in my life I look in the mirror and I don't see it. I try to put on pants that were loose on me a year ago and struggle to button them up and I think, "Really? They are that tight? Really?" I'm baffled. I can barely believe it. I like and am comfortable with my body in a way I have never been before.

And I'm never giving up happy for super-thin. Never. Although, I do want to find a better race weight.

Not to mention there are a few added benefits of extra weight. My kids have been repeatedly watching a movie lately. There is a line they keep rewinding and replaying over and over (especially the boy) and giggling through. It is at about 1:27 in the video trailer.

Frankly, it makes me giggle too. Tee Hee. I'm 40 and flirty and thriving and still mostly perky too.

I haven't blogged much lately. I've started on a few and they've felt all wrong and inappropriate so I've left them. I've wanted to write more about my experience but it's not working yet. A major part of my awakening has been coming to the realization that what I went through was hell.

And it wasn't my fault.

There was a very specific trigger to all that and I'm still dealing with figuring out how to stop blaming me for how things unfolded. And as open a person as I am, and as much as I'm willing to talk about it all to anyone who hits upon the right subject, the few times I've tried in the last year has left me shaking in that state of "flight or fight" -- the same state I try and kill by doing idiotic things like riding my bike for 391 km in one weekend.

But when I didn't know what I was talking about. I babbled about it freely all the time.

But I'm sure I could help a lot of people by telling my story. It has to be done with grace and tact though (both qualities I lack -- if you know me, you know I'm not exaggerating.). One day I'll find the courage to try.

Looking Outside that Pre-Defined Box

2011-07-19T22:36:00.001-05:00

Photo credit: Team Radioshack

I'm getting tired of writing about biking. Maybe I've just hit that point of saturation with the biking written word. It's not like I'm not thinking about biking. I'm thinking about it all the time. I found the biking enthusiasts heaven in my cottage neighbour's back yard a couple of weekends ago.

Bicycle Purgatory? A "collector's" stash

I made 8 trips to this pile. And NO, there was no Italian. There was this really comfortable big-ass saddle though that made me think of this scene (unfortunately dubbed over but if you listen closely you'll catch it) from The Road to Wellville.

I am as obsessed with the Tour de France as I ever was. I'm reading a lot of other people's writing about the race. I'm learning how it works. Why guys like Fabian Cancellara are hanging out at the back, or at the front and dropping off before the finish or attacking and then fading away as he did in stage one where, I'm sure, he could have won. Easily. If that had been his job. I didn't know superstar cyclists sometimes played bodyguard for other racers. But it shows me why I made bad pool picks this year. I have at least 5 guys who have done nothing for my points situation because it isn't their job to win or even place top 20. They are there to serve and protect.

Photo credit: Team Radioshack

I'm obsessed with the images. Radioshack's artsy fartsy take on product placement, while obvious, is somehow also beautiful in the mechanics of it all. There is nothing more beautiful in its geometry than the bicycle.

Photo Credit: Team Radioshack

I'm obsessed with muscles and scars and bandages and 5 o'clock shadow and white sunglasses and how rain soaked kits "enhance" to the point of distraction. The male body can be beautiful too.

Klodi was definitely working for me before he abandoned (Photo Credit: Team Radioshack)

But then again, Cav has provided his own moments of excitement. (Photo credit: Tour de France)

I'm just not obsessing over my own cycling. Maybe because since I've been back from California nothing has even come close to the magic of that.

Floating down the river channel in Penticton, BC...

Penticton was gorgeous. I made a couple videos. They say it all.

I'd thought if I survived Penticton, I'd give the Falcon Lake 8 hour a try, solo. Survived that too. Barely. I succumbed to heat stroke and dehydration over time, but the agony didn't really hit until the next day. But I'm a much better and more confident mountain biker now than I was when I went into that race. And that really was the objective wasn't it? And I can't say enough about the FGBC and RRR boys and girls and their race planning commitment. They truly go above and beyond.

But I am thinking about words even if not necessarily biking words. I'm thinking about this blog. I've actually been in a rather serious love-hate relationship with this blog for the last 7 months. I haven't much liked most of what I've written here for quite some time.

Except maybe the California stuff. There were moments of genuineness in there.

And all my blog stats tell me is that there are an awful lot of people looking at volleyball ass on google images because that has been the primary blog traffic I've had in the last few months. That blog entry alone has had over 1000 hits since I posted it in January. False hits, of course, because I'm certain only about 2% of them were from people who actually read my intelligent feminist ramblings. My fault for using the words butt cleavage and beer in the same blog title. Damn my facetiousness. But I'll be honest. That stat kinda pisses me off.

I just want to write other things, now. I'll think about biking. I just don't want it to be the central focus of what I write about. I never did.

So I have plan.

I have this book I wrote. I wrote it nearly 6 years ago now. It is a good book and it's too good to sit dangling from a USB drive on my key chain -- where it presently resides. How do I know it is good? Well people with a little cred have told me so. I think the worst thing anyone has said about that book was that it was very good but it wouldn't have been something she picked up to buy. And I was OK with that because I didn't write it for 37 year olds, I wrote it for 15 year olds. I wrote the book that I would have wanted to read at 15.

Well, I would have wanted to read it at 12. But that's a whole other story.

It should have got published but shit happens and agents and publishers can only imagine promoting something that has a clear and obvious audience, not one that straddles that zone between young adult and adult. Nobody wants to take a risk on anything that falls outside some pre-defined box.

And I don't get that, because that it seems everything about me falls outside some pre-defined box.

I guess that one publisher that still has it and was so excited about it 4 years ago and has never rejected it got distracted by, oh I don't know... maybe it fell from the slush pile on somebody's desk and is languishing in dust bunnies behind a filing cabinet. I got tired of emailing to ask if they had any news.

And the world has evolved in 6 years and there is this little thing called e-publishing. You load it up and sell it dirt cheap -- a couple bucks a download -- and work the laws of supply and demand and hopefully I can sell enough copies to make back what I am about to spend to have a very talented graphic artist I know and love do her thing and design me a cover image.

But first, before all that, I gotta read it again. And that could be the hardest part of all as, same with everything in life, I am my own worst critic.

And I wrote that book in another lifetime. And I should really be writing another one and not blogging about my bike races.

Oh, and go online and buy my book when I download it. Or if it isn't your thing, find a kid 15-25 (give or take) who might want to read it. It's good. If you don't think its worth the couple bucks I charge you, I'll hand over my royalties for your copy.

The Human Canvas... Phase I

2011-07-05T21:53:00.002-05:00

Those of you with me on Facebook have seen this. Many of you have now seen this in person. But as you may recall, on the list of things to do the year I turned 40 was a little body ink. So the art was created by Andy at Metamorphosis on McDermot (although, I think that link must be outdated) and the outlining is done.

Andy was a good sport and has the steadiest hand ever. I was twitching so bad by the end I feared I would have made him go out of the lines, if I didn't kick him in the head first. Wow.. this was far more painful than the one on my back.

But it is in that phase now where I have to constantly resist the urge to scratch the shit out of my leg.

At the end of July I go back for the colour. I will leave you in suspense until then. I'm kinda liking it though.

River Road TT and Circuit Race: And on Taking Back Ignorant Shit I Never Should Have Said

2011-06-14T11:31:00.166-05:00

Race day on the the most beautiful road in the Province.

I wish I could find where I said it. I am pretty sure I have said it in this blog but I couldn't find it in the quick look I did. I know I've said it outloud many times:

If I am ever to survive a crit, I'll need to do 50km before I even start the race.

There is something rather humbling about doing two races in one day. Beyond the teenage Provincial kids, I was only one of a handful of us old folk who attempted such a feat. And I haven't figured out how to handle the pacing and the effort yet to survive two races in one day and feel strong in both.

It wasn't a ramp start this time, but here I was praying I wouldn't fall over when he let go. (Stefan Isfeld, photo)

The time trial took place along what I suspect is the most beautiful road in all of Southern Manitoba. I am, still, despite my best efforts to get my power up, much more of an endurance person than a short distance person. I can hold a strong threshold pace for a very long time, but a 16km TT is pretty damn short. So, wisely or not, I did about a 17 km warm up to help me along.

Focus? or Fear? (Stefan Isfeld, photo)

And I had a great TT. My right leg/calf/soleus, which has been cramping on me during big efforts, held me back a bit but I still managed to hold an average speed higher than I ever have before. I have to thank Phil, who along with his lovely wife is quickly worming his way onto my favorite-persons-in-the-universe list as well as into my heart, for lending me a rear aero wheel. But I am also pretty sure, leg pain aside, that I could have held that pace for 40 km and not just 16.

The wheel looks pretty sexy on Kermit.

So I had done 33 km by the end of that race. Then because I had 4 hours to kill before the circuit race, I went for a nice easy spin up River Road from Larter's Golf Club all the way up to the St. Andrew's Locks. I did this mostly to test out the theory that my leg issue is related to the new shoes. So I wore my old shoes and sure enough, no pain. But I wanted to see the sites.

I then proceeded to do unhealthy things.

Like have lunch with Don Cherry and the ghosts of NHL past.

A little visit with Teemu Selanne

I remember going to restaurants like this and HAVING to play the Jukebox. Avril Lavigne's "Complicated" right beside, "I fought the Law and the Law Won." Classic.

The old red Booths.

The best pre-second race meal ever that was guaranteed to be just as bad for me coming up as it was going down.

And of course, locals know where I was. What I didn't realize is that there are two of them right around the corner from each other. The first thing I thought when I went into this one is, "Where's the water slide?" Then when I got back on the road to head to the next race site, I saw the second one on highway 44 with the slide right behind it. All this time and thought there was only one Skinner's.

And what can I say about the circuit race? It was 4 km long and I did a lap of it to warm up which put me at 54 km of riding for the day even prior to starting the circuit race. And of course you have to know I died during the race. And I made a gazillion mistakes. Followed a break I shouldn't have. Killed myself on the chase. I'm cornering better, thanks to Rick and Alter Ego's crit workshop. I nearly allowed myself to get squeezed off the road and instead of getting aggressive back, I backed off and ended up at the back of the group, even though I had pulled where I did purely to put myself near the front for the run in to the finish. I simply don't have it in me to get mean. Then at the run in to the finish, I was at the back at the final corner and lost the group. I was cooked. Then, from a distance, I mistook some pylons at an early road at the finish line and backed off too early. I still managed to not come in last. And Jesse from AE won the race. Young Oliver at the ripe old age of 12 was second. Oliver flattened the whole Cat 5 field in the TT in the morning and was impressive the whole circuit race, at or near the front the whole three laps.

So it was a great race day. A beautiful day. I'm learning a lot. On to the next one, whatever that may be.

I love how iPhone disembodies moving riders. This was the Cat 4 race. All the kids I raced with in Portage (except for the girls and young Ollie), moved up to Cat 4 which makes me even happier with how well I hung on in Portage.

And this is Phil in the Cat 4 Circuit race. Gotta love Phil. He lends me a wheel and I get my one second of fame over him in the TT. I'll be milking that one all summer. Another terrific iPhone photo.

And there's Phil cornering like a pro, in a photo Carolyn must have snapped. This was the last and most difficult corner of the race before the run to the finish. And I believe that's Aaron, and Willem and national level triathlete Stevie Moore with him.

Falcon "Down to the Wire" Video

2011-06-05T20:23:00.055-05:00

I have this new toy and the reason why I got to use it today at the Falcon race was because I am a wuss. I did one trial lap of the Falcon course and immediately decided I was bailing. Injury prevention you know. I could certainly admire the course and see its challenges and merits but it shows nothing if you have to walk half of it.

Sigh.... I perhaps will never learn to mountain bike well, but it also probably won't stop me from continuing to try. I did however learn from watching my own video that it might help to get out of my saddle more often.

I've never seen so many flat tires in one race in my life, by the way. Shredded tires too.

So because my still camera battery was dead when I pulled it out of my bag, I pulled out the Flip Video camera, a similar toy as my buddy Don used in California. This is a compilation of the best frames, meaning the ones that were not long boring shots of grass with no riders on it, or, as with one frame, a nice long look at Adam's legs as I videoed the ground instead of the race by mistake.

No, really, that was an accident.

I would have liked better music but I couldn't figure out how to plagiarize iTunes as it wouldn't let me steal -- I mean upload -- iTunes songs for the video. I briefly considered resorting to an old 80s trick similar to "taping songs off the radio" using my voice memo component of my iPhone and just taping from my computer. This time instead of my mother screwing it up by poking her head in the door and calling me for supper it would be some act of sibling rivalry or someone screaming: MOMMMMMM!! (which has also happened about 4 times while typing this short entry).

So you get stock Flip Video guitar lick instead, repeated over and over and.......

But I'm sure you care about none of that, so hopefully you've just skimmed all that rambling to get to the meat of the issue. Here's the video:

My Love Affair with Steel

2011-06-03T12:23:00.076-05:00

I'm not sure what it is: Nostalgia, looks, or riding a bike that just feels right but every time I hop on a steel bike it has the same comfort as an old worn in pair of jeans. I had a steel bike as a teenager, that could be part of it. I wish I could find a picture of it. And every time I get on the single speed Masi I commute with, it feels like home. So what you see above is my new Cyclocross bike.

(Stefan Isfeld: photo)

As you know, I raced cyclocross on a borrowed bike last fall. It was a lovely bike too which was slightly too big for me and given how hard and fast that I fell for the addiction of cross racing, I knew I had to get my own.

But here's the problem with finding me bikes. I'm short even by girl-standards. And it proves to be very difficult to find extra small bikes, new or used, and I have this particular buyer loyalty that I adhere too which limited me to Specialized or Trek and neither manufacturer had a bike in my size that could be special ordered at the time that I had the money to lay down for one and I was asked to be patient.

The Masi that I love too

So I went to California because I live in the present and am all about instant gratification and quickly found myself in a spot where putting out $3000 for a bike, if and when they came into stock, was looking to be out of the question. And finding used bikes in my size is even more difficult than buying new. When short girls buy bikes, they don't tend to upgrade very often.

And then a miracle happened, without even looking, I got an email one day telling me about a bike and that it would fit me, and thus brought into my life the Steel Lemond Poprad. And I'm truly in love.

Oh and my favorite bike boy forgives me for cheating on him, yet again, which is the best part. Besides, one of my kids is sure to fit my Mountainbike next summer and Mom will need an upgrade.

Thoughtfully and specially adorned with pink donuts by Dan P. I may not much care for pink but it was the thought that counts.

A Road Race, A Time Trial, and a Crit...

2011-05-31T20:50:00.227-05:00

Shoulders at my ears and breathing through clenched teeth. Glad I at least look happy (Carolyn Campeau Photo).

I was a virgin all over again for all three. I wrote about the road race yesterday and despite the flat tire, when the final results were posted today, I found I did even better than I thought. Second Cat 5 female. Not bad for a virgin.

(Carolyn Campeau: photo)

The time trial went great. I was a little nervous about the ramp start. You can see it in my shoulders in the start picture. If you want to know how comfortable I am with a situation, that's always a sign, look at the proximity of my shoulders to my ears and that says a lot. Captain Rick was giving me hell about this in the store today. He's right.

And my damn locked elbows. It is no wonder I have nerve damage in my left hand and tennis elbow in my right arm. After this weekend I can now barely lift up a bag of groceries.

I went into the TT with more tired legs that I'd hoped after my unplanned solo effort the day before. It was an out and back TT and they started us in reverse order of how we finished the day before which means I was third out of the gate, with the wind behind on the way out, against on the way back. This suited me just fine. I tend to be a wimp with the wind and stronger into it. I just wanted to catch the girl in front of me. And I did, around 12 km in. My TT was raw me. No extra aero gear. It was just my legs and Kermit the bike with aerobars attached.

It was kinda short though -- 16.3km. I was just getting warmed up and it was over. I knew my legs were tired because I never did get my heart rate up to where I know I can sustain it. My legs wouldn't let me. I made myself get up and sprint over the finish line and then couldn't move my right lower leg due to a cramping soleus muscle for about 5 minutes after.

My kids were there. They hung out in the car for the 30 minutes I was on the road and two short-burst warm ups. They were patient. It helped that I told them that the long grass around the community centre where the TT started would likely have woodticks in it. I was kinda lying about that. But, yet, kinda not. They did the same in the afternoon at the crit, in the car with a Nintendo DS and colouring markers, and a cooler full of snacks. They were ever-patient.

In many ways the weekend was just as much for them as for me.

After the TT, I skipped the prepared lunch and rushed them back to the hotel for one last swim in the pool and ate leftover pizza and a Dairy Queen Moolate instead. Race fuel at its best. Sometimes race weekends are not just about what you want to do. I had a good time with my kids this weekend. Left the computer at home. (OK, I did still have the iPhone). The kids were in the pool three times for over an hour on the weekend with no complaints about putting on cold wet bathing suits. My daughter went down the water slide about a hundred gazillion times. And my son really really wanted to go down it too. It was all over his face and he wandered up and down the slide stairs about 6 times without being able to get up the courage. After multiple offers from me to either take him down between my legs or catch him, in the last 5 minutes at the pool before we had to go check out of the hotel, he finally went down with me holding him. He had such a death grip on my arms I wondered if he would drag us both under at the bottom but we got down safe and sound and then it was: AGAIN!!

Of course.

Me and the kids in the hot tub.

And then for the rest of the afternoon, every time I asked them to do something: Put on your shoes. Pack your suitcase. Get your jackets on. It was punctuated with: And then we go on the slide? There is nothing like the post anxiety adrenaline rush that comes with realizing that the thing you feared was actually a ton of fun.

I wouldn't know anything about that. I don't model fear and anxiety about anything.

Yes the sarcasm is fully intended.

See, even in the crit warm-up I don't look relaxed (Photo by Stefan Isfeld)

So after he did the slide, there was no way I could weasel out of doing the crit, as much as I wanted to. And I really, really, really wanted to. And I was terrified the whole time, and now two days later, I've come down off that terror-high and I know I need to do one again. Not because I want to, but because I have to give'er another go.

The goal in the crit was simple: stay with the group. Which I did. Mostly. I was glad the speed was manageable for most of it because there was very little juice left in my old tired legs for the third race. I wonder how much extra energy I burned with my shoulders as tense as they were in all these crit photos. I was even tense in the warm up. I discovered it is hard to stay at the front when you don't corner so well. I felt the yoyo effect over and over and everytime I found myself in a position I liked, I fell back on every corner. One of those damn corners was about a 140 degree turn with a man hole right at the inside edge.

I'm proud to share a frame with these young gentlemen. They make me look good on this 140 degree turn. Willem Boersma and Aaron Carter and if someone could help me out with the right name for the third rider, I'd appreciate that. (Stefan Isfeld Photo)

It was all the strong boys from the junior development team, two junior girls, this old mother of two, and Bill Gendron, speed skating coach to many of these young riders and father of Canadian National cyclist Karlee Gendron who was out kicking butt in a race in Victoria for the weekend.

One of the junior girls dropped off the back from the start. She did finish the race and she still never got lapped. Strong girl, she just doesn't like group riding. She had a great TT too. She'll learn. She's young.

Teaching an old dog like me new tricks, that's another thing all together. I have fear. I know I can get hurt. I just wanted to hang on. Stay upright. Play fair. Learn. The boys dropped me on the prime lap and then I caught up on the regroup. I got dropped again along with Bill and Hana on the two laps to go sign. Bill basically pulled Hana and me around for the last two laps. I sat in third position. To keep my position in the overall, I knew I just had to finish with Hana.

Myself and Bill Gendron and Hana Boersma (Carolyn Campeau, photo)

So I thanked Bill for his draft at the end of the race. We had a nice little getting acquainted chat on our cool down lap. The truth is, if I had been left on my own on those last two laps, I would have gave up and soft peddled in. My legs were cooked.

It's funny. And excuse me if I switch gears here and get all philosophical, as I am known to do. Going to California and riding all those hills humbled and changed me as a rider. I don't care what position I fall in anymore. I didn't even have one twinge of anger or frustration with myself for riding through that crappy patch of road after I flatted in the road race. C'est la vie. That's racing.

What I seem to get out of it now is new places to ride and new people to ride with. I enjoyed all the people I got to know over the weekend. I met Nathan and Chris for the first time. I got to know Phil and Carolyn a whole lot better. I gained a lot of respect for Phil and Nettie and the Junk Yard Dogs Club out of Portage la Prairie for the very well organized race they put on and for their great team of volunteers. John the commissaire came up to me every time he saw me with a big smile on his face and asked how I was doing and was I having fun. Fun was just the beginning. It was a positive first race experience. I got to ride with some young, up-and-coming riders that I'm sure I will get to one day say about: I used to race with him when he was only 15 years old.

But most of all cycling has become about beauty. Beauty like this: (Thanks to Carolyn Campeau for all the photos that follow)

Stage by Stage: Notre Dame de Lourdes Road Race

2011-05-30T19:23:00.000-05:00

The cheese does stand alone. There is beauty in solitude. Especially when you are floating on clouds.

I almost didn't go. It was that close.

First I went to register and the early registration had closed two days before. I didn't immediately see that there was a walk up option so I thought, oh well, I missed out. Then my kids were misbehaving after school on Friday and I uttered a threat that I knew quite readily I would follow through with if it came down to that:

If you you don't stop pestering each other, being rude and not listening, I'm cancelling the hotel with the pool for tomorrow night and we are NOT going.

I hoped they'd misbehave. I hoped they'd test me. Of course, they did not. They really wanted to swim in that pool.

Why didn't I want to go? I was terrified. I can't explain why road racing scares me most of all when it is the type of riding I am strongest at. I'm lying really, I can explain why, and I have already in this blog elsewhere.

My parents were kind enough to come to my house on Saturday morning at 6 AM so that I wouldn't have to drag my kids out of bed to get to the road race on time. And a true testament as to how awesome my parents are, they then drove them out to the race for approximately around the finish time so that I could take them to the hotel.

The trainer folk and putting Jason Carter to use pinning my race numbers

As my Cat 4 Alter Ego teammates warmed up on their wind trainers in the parking lot, looking like the pros that they are. I headed out on the road to do mine. When Captain Rick told me the wind trainers were to prevent pre-race flats, I told him I didn't care. If I got a flat, I'd be dropping out of the race. This suited me just fine.

This remark, of course, came back to bite me in the ass later. Serves me right.

I chose to race Cat 5 regardless of numerous people telling me I was probably strong enough for Cat 4. No. Maybe yes, maybe no. But I had no experience. I was starting at the bottom. Which meant I got to race with the Provincial Kids who made up most of the Cat 5 peloton. These kids race Cat 5 because they have to for the rules but many of them could race higher levels easily. A large number of them winter train in that magical winter foil for cycling, meaning speed skating. Some of them cycle to keep their fitness for skating. Some of them skate to keep their fitness for cycling. No matter what, it is a combination that works.

Do I blend in nicely among the youth?

So being one of about 5 riders over the age of 18 in the entire Cat 5 race, I wasn't sure what to expect. I hadn't ridden with any of these people before. But we started off slow. Like really slow -- maybe 25km per hour. I ended up beside Willem who I think is about 15 and I remembered him from Cyclocross last year. Willem is a polite and talkative young guy who I had been "warned" (in a good way) was the one to watch out for. When I told him I'd heard this about him, he shrugged humbly.

And it stayed slow like that. I heard some of the stronger older boys mumbling about the pace. And soon we were averaging closer to 30 or 32. Still manageable but as the pace picked up the formation of the group disintegrated. What began as a double pace line turned into a hap-hazard jumble of riders jostling for a spot on the road. Some riders pulled more than others. I always pulled when I hit the front, always certain that when I did, that's when they'd attack. We hit the hills and the pack broke up a bit on every climb but always there seemed to be a slow down after an acceleration that brought most of the group back together.

My plan for the race weekend had been this:

1. Don't crash.
2. Be conservative in the road race.
3. Don't crash.
4. Be reactive rather than proactive. Go with the flow.
5. Don't flat.
6. Give'er on the TT
7. Learn as much as I could from people who know stuff.
8. Stay with the pack in the Crit.
9. DON'T CRASH.

Somewhere near the start

Well, some things can't be helped. Like riding through a cruddy broken up section of road. It was my fault really. There were two such sections of road both within the first 5 kms of the two lap race. One section you had to take entirely to the right. The second section there was a clear section on the right and a narrower section of good road on the left. I got caught trying to take the left route at the patch of broken road that had no left route, and I went right through it.

Thank God for cyclocross skills.

The hissing started shortly after. The kids heard it before I did. (I hate calling them kids by the way. It makes me feel patronizing and old. I'm used to riding with old-er guys who take care of ME... this was backwards). I think it was Willem who said, "Somebody's getting a flat tire." Then I heard it too. Then my mind flipped into denial.

Can't be me.

But I'm the one who rode through that crap section of road.

Nope. Not me... I don't feel like I'm dragging.

Damn. It probably has to be me.

And then eventually, but it took about half a km, I could feel I was on my rim of my rear wheel so there was no more denial. So I dropped back, put my arm up for the car that was following us. There was a spare wheel truck behind us but I had no spare wheel. I didn't even have a tube. I had already decided that if I flatted, I'd just DNF. I put my arm up mostly just to signal that I was pulling over. I thought my race was done and they'd put me in the truck and carry on.

But Coach Jayson from the provincial team came out of the truck asking me what wheel I needed and brought me a replacement rear wheel. And this is what saved my race.

He told me after that if you flat you were supposed to put your right hand up for a rear flat and your left hand up for a front flat. Just like the gears. Front chain ring with the left hand, back chain ring with the right. Makes sense. Unless of course your using SRAM, then the analogy gets thrown out the window. I had my left hand up because, well, I knew none of this, so I was inadvertently telling him to bring me the wrong wheel.

But the bottom line was that I wasn't expecting to be given a wheel at all, so for that I am grateful.

So I time trialled the remaining 25km of the race, by myself. Still managed to not come in last even though there were a couple of team girls who had got dropped on the first lap who were behind me working together. It was worth a bit of effort to try and catch up because the group was only doing about 26km per hour when I got the flat. It was also worth a bit of work to not get caught by the girls behind me.

I didn't catch up to the group. The cloud photo above was taken about 200m from the turn around so at that point they were no more than 500m ahead of me. You see the leaders coming over the top of the climb in the opposite direction. This is apparently when things started to get good in the Cat 5 race. Somebody attacked on the hill. I was working hard by myself, harder than I intended to work in the road race. At about 2km from the finish I glanced over my shoulder and the two girls were no where to be seen and a question occurred to me, "Why the hell am I riding so hard? I have two more races tomorrow." So I slowed down and made a joke at the finish line asking the spectators if I should sprint.

And then it was done. I didn't get caught. It was anticlimactic, but it was still satisfying.

Then I was able to do a nice leisurely tube change while watching my kids swim in the pool later that night. Much better than a frantic tire change on the side of the road.

Yes, I can change my own tire, boys and girls.

And this made me all ready for the Time Trial the next morning, and my first ramp start. I think I handled it OK.

Thanks to Carolyn Campeau for the photos. More about the TT and the Crit another day.

The Beach was Grand

2011-05-16T12:26:00.125-05:00

A fine looking selection of Alter Ego racers dressed in colours at Grand Beach May 15, 2011. I'm the token chick in the photo. (Including Paul B and Adam G, second and third from the left, and Dave C third from the right. I'm ashamed to admit I don't know everyone's name. I will learn them, I promise.)

I was in Toronto once a few years back and ever since I was a kid I'd had this fascination with the CN Tower. So finally in my late 30s I got the opportunity to go up the CN Tower. It wasn't cheap, but I decided to make the most of it and had lunch over looking the city. It was an overcast day but it was still memorable.

If you've never been up there, or if it's been a while, one of the highlights of the CN Tower visit is the glass floor. You can walk on the glass floor and it gives the illusion that you are walking on air a kilometer or so in the sky. I was determined to check out the glass floor. I approached it easily. There were 20 or so people milling around on it comfortably. There were children rolling on it and lying on their stomachs and pressing their squished noses up against the glass.

Easy.

So I walked up to the glass floor watching my feet and the floor. It's not very big. Maybe 100 square feet. Maybe slightly more. It is partitioned by metal beams between the glass squares so it isn't shear glass. As I got to the edge, even though my body was free to take the steps, my mind slammed into mental force field and I couldn't do it. My palms got sweaty, my heart rate jumped, and all I could do was stand with my toes pressed up against the metal border and watch everyone else stroll around the glass floor with complete safety and ease.

I've thought since that if I hadn't been alone that day, that maybe if someone had taken my hand and pulled me onto the glass floor and coaxed me through it, I might have been OK.

That same feeling of panic is what I felt every time I stared down every single one of those damn rock gardens on the Grand Beach race course yesterday. I'd mentally tell myself every time one approached, that I was going to at least try to ride it. But I'd get to the upper edge and the same thing happened every time. I put on the full breaks and I was off my bike choosing the far more energy inefficient route of walking through it. Damn me.

One of the Expert racers, I think it was Olly, passed me at the first rock garden and he flew through there at top speed without hesitation and that made me and another like-minded walking racer make statements of awe that involved 4-letter words.

OK it was only me who said 4-letter words.

But I feel the same way about the rock garden as I do about the glass floor up the CN Tower. Maybe if someone would coax me through it, I could do it.

That's the kind of mountain biker I am. My teammate Paul B., who won the Elite race, came in all of about 6 minutes (excluding the 9 minute head start) after me and he did 4 laps and I did 2.

My lack of mountain biking skills does not in the least bit make me unhappy with my performance. I rode my own race. I didn't come in last and even if I had, at least I was out there givin' 'er a go. Something has happened to me after California. I went out there to get stronger and I've come back realizing it is all aboutt he experience and being there. My endurance saved me in the race yesterday. I felt like hell on lap one. I can never seem to get a fast start but I settled into a rhythm by lap two and felt better. They were really long laps. Greater than 10k, I would guess.

I'm still recovering from California and I feel it every time I exert myself. I was out hill climbing at Garbage Hill the day before and it took nothing to shoot my heart rate up and make me wheeze with every breath. I felt like a bag of crap the whole ride. At the very least, I felt better on Sunday at the race. And the left hand, while better, is still not perfect. So imperfect in fact I've been threatened with needing to stay off the bike if it doesn't show improvements by the next time I go to physio. And what do I do? I go do two mountain bike races in one week, the most upper body taxing type of biking there is.

At this point is when my dear dear friend, to whom I give nothing but admiration and he gives me back nothing but flack (you can probably guess who) would say, "You damn roadies, always full of excuses."

Am I really just a roadie now? Can't I be more than that?

I had a great time yesterday. I learned a few things. I enjoyed the people tremendously. Tomek's wraps were awesome (I had hummus). My stomach told me to eat slowly so I got to savour every bite. The praises being sung everywhere about the quality of the post race food are all true.

I needed Coke, though. And beer.

And I finally got to meet Mr. Sherwin in person and that was a highlight of the race as he is just as awesome in person as he is in writing. And thanks to Greg, also, for lubing up my squeaky chain prior to me hitting the course. Thanks to JP and Colin for pointing out I had a squeaky chain at all as, in my terror through my gnashing teeth, I probably wouldn't have noticed. Thanks to Olympia Cycle Club for putting on an awesome show. And thanks to Dave C. for trying to teach me how to ride up the carpet and for dragging me into the above photo. He always does a good job of making me feel part of the crew.

It was my first Mountain bike cup race. Actually it was my first cup race ever. It won't be the last. See you at the next one.

Check Your Ego at the Bottom of the Hill

2011-05-05T21:35:00.360-05:00

This was part way up Latigo. Looking down at the roads we came from.

Sort of an ironic title to give to my last instalment about my California climbing experience. California, in particular the Southern California Los Angeles region where I was riding, is by definition the Ego capital of the world.

I would say, the necessity of keeping your ego in check quickly became the theme of the trip for me. Out in the Santa Monica Mountains it is every (wo)man for themselves.

I went on this trip thinking I was a better than average climber. Kind of an arrogant thing to think when you live in a Very Flat Place. Nobody else in this camp came from flat places. I tore up the first climb of the day on Day one like some possessed animal and pretty much blew up by the end of the day and wondered how the hell I was going to survive the week. There was a point on the second climb that I said to Don through choked gasps and a heart rate of about 180: "I need to stop. I need to drink and I can't swallow with the way I am breathing."

That was on Yerba Buena on Day 1 when I still thought it would be nobel and big of me to be able to do all these climbs without stopping (how naive). This was a 10 mile climb up cruddy roads which on the 4th day when we did the first third of it again, felt kinda gentle. Funny how that happens when you pace yourself.

Later in the week on Thursday night at diner, while everyone ate lamb (I won't eat anything "baby"), and I ate steak with my fork fisted in my wonky left hand, Don made some comment about me kicking his ass up one of the climbs on the first day. I have no recollection of any such thing happening and I said so (and for those who know me, if I did remember and if I'd taken pleasure out of such feat as some measure of my own ability, I would surely toot my horn a little bit). But I fried myself on Day 1. I'm sure I lost a few brain cells to anoxia at the same time. And Lord knows Don beat me up and down many more hills during the week. Enough that I often told him to not worry about me and just go... which he did on a few occasions, but not many. I didn't want to hold him back.

Ann said from down the table, "Sure sure, I bet he's just saying that to protect his male ego."

"No. No.. I've been riding with this man for 4 days. I can honestly say I haven't seen one shred of ego. Not one."

And I can say that of most of the people at this camp. There was no point in doing these rides if you were going to turn it into an ego fest. This wasn't some LBS ride with a sprint at the end. A sprint for the county line, as they do in North Carolina. Or a sprint for the bridge over the perimeter as we do here in Flat Winnipeg. I challenge you to TRY and sprint at the end of one of these California days.

We went for dinner every night with Rich, the tour leader and those of the camp that opted to join in. It was different faces every night and depending on the faces, the conversation changed. One night we talked about literature and Rich's affinity for the Casanova biographies. One night it was beer. Usually me goading Don into having another or as it was one tired night, Eric goading me into having one at all. I was in the restaurant known for it's beer. How could I turn him down?

Eric's last day. He was off to a series of crit races in Atlanta on the Thursday. He shouldn't have been drinking that beer either that night in the restaurant. Eric is coached by the same guy who coaches Frank Schlek and has trained with both Mark Cavendish and Bernie Eisler from HTC during the off season in California.

But really when you do a camp like this, it is the people that make it what it is. I'll start by telling you about Paul from Vancouver with his brand new Pinarello he'd bought for himself the year before.

Paul and his Pinarello

What did you do to earn this purchase? I asked him one morning. Paul was a quiet guy. Probably shy, I suspect. He didn't start joining in on many conversations until about that 4th day and he never talked in the big group (not even when they were making fun of how Canadian's talk -- I still insist I DON'T say a-boot), only one-on-one is when Paul spoke -- that is, when we actually saw him. He kept to himself. Rode by himself. What did he do to earn the Pinarello? He rode a steel bike for 14 years before that. Well earned, my friend. The reason why we never saw him much and he rode by himself is that he was in a class of his own. There was no one that could ride with him.

Well there were the "Santa Barbara Boys," maybe. They dressed in their identical kits every day and outclassed everyone. They must have been pros or ex-pros. They looked at me with dry contempt when I teased them about looking hot in their matching gear. We never saw them at all. I couldn't even tell you their names, other than you see them go past us in the Day 4 video. No one, not even Rich or Eric knew what they were all about. We never once saw them at a SAG stop.

Or maybe there was Reve. I think Reve rode with Paul on one day. Reve is a 64 year old guy of Hispanic descent who could outride most everyone I know in this province in endurance feats. He didn't ride the last two days with us because he was headed to a double century race somewhere in Northern California. We heard his tale at dinner the first night of how for his 60th birthday he rode across the US from California to Maryland in 21 days. And he would have rode home too but he called home and his wife had a plane ticket purchased in his name for his return trip. On Day 3, Reve rode up and down the first climb up Rockstore at least twice checking on everyone.

Carol and her 11 pound bike.

And Carole, Reve's riding partner. Ex Torontonian (we won't hold that against her) who's lived in Tahoe for 25 years. Reve built her 11 pound bike for her. Yes, 11 pounds. That's not even legal, if you are a racer that is, which Carole is not. I heard her remark, on more than one occasion: "I haven't really earned this bike." Top level Stork frame was what it was. There are apparently only 25 of them in the whole USA. Pricetag? About $8000 for the frame alone. Never mind the components. Making a bike 11 pounds doesn't come cheap. Carole was the most persevering among us. Of course, she'd earned the bike. She wasn't the fastest, she'd often leave the SAG a half hour before everyone else and still be last in, but she is the one that never stopped on a climb. Never. And I never heard her complain once.

I however, whined as often as I could.

And then there was the rest of our crew. If we had been on the flat we could have formed a great pace line and worked well together but we were in the mountain hillsides riding past multimillion dollar homes (most of which were for sale) wondering what the heck they did if they needed milk at 11:00 at night. Nothing was close. Or riding through Malibu where we saw peacock road-kill and a woman walking her dogs while driving a golf cart.

The veiw of downtown Los Angeles from one such million dollar for sale home.

But in the California hills there are no pace lines. You could grab a wheel for a while here or there but you were either going up something at 10km per hour (or less), or down something at 40km per hour (or more). And there wasn't much wind. Screw cheating in draft. You are on your own for this adventure, baby. Don and I rode a lot with Bob and Ann from Vermont on and off. But Bob and Ann hammered us on the climbs. They were two limber and light people and they had triples to work with (Don and I both had compacts -- it slowed us down often forcing us to grind it out -- in fact, on day 1 and 2, Don only had a 25 on the back). But Ann was a very nervous downhiller and that's why we saw them on the road so much. It was the great equalizer.

Bob and Ann up on Piuma

The DC boys, Mike and John, were strong riders too and often passed us if they started after us. But they had off days. They were behind us on Day 3 and stayed behind. They didn't do the whole day on 11,000 foot day. But they were back in tip top shape on the last day when I struggled, and flew through the last two climbs.

And Judy, another Californian. She had an unorthodox bike positioning but she could power up those hills at a steady pace.

Watching the view: Mike and John from DC, Don, Bob and Ann. Rich in the background.

And Ray who is doing Ironman Texas at the end of the month. Apparently he didn't spend much time on the bike this winter. I think this trip was his bike training for Ironman. On the last day, he was right with Don and I up Las Flores. Las Flores 18% hell... for 1.8 miles. I stopped about 4 times to survive that stretch. I was long over my need to preserve my ego and not stop.

I did however, always refuse to walk any of these steep climbs. There is no walking in cycling.

Me up on Piuma on that part of the Day 2 video that most people have commented about where I can be heard saying: "I wouldn't die if I fell."

And Jenn.... how I talked her into this, I'm not sure. Maybe I didn't. She has her own brand of crazy too. She didn't spend much time on a trainer this winter. She spent a lot of time doing anaerobic training at ELITE and eating spinach and nuts and seeds and chicken. She could have gone and lay on a beach on her vacation but she came out to LA for pain and punishment instead. Aside from the classic moment when she went to pee in the bush and came running out screeching from a snake encounter, my absolute favourite Jenn moment was sitting at the last SAG at the top of Latigo after 11,000 feet for the day and watching Jenn round the last corner and hoot and holler the whole way in. She did the longest day of all of us that day. A wrong turn earned her about 3 extra kms of climbing and probably another 500 ft more than the rest of us who finished. I even had her drinking beer by the end of the week.

Jenn and I at the top of Latigo at the last Sag stop of big Day 4. I think our faces say it all.

So now I recover. I've been home for 5 days. There are two races this weekend. My legs wouldn't survive either of them and I have no motivation to race. For whatever reason, earning race stripes no longer feels like what this past week was about. I'm sleeping about 9 hours a night and eating about every 2 hours. I still feel like I got run over by a truck. My daily training plans for the week say: 60 minutes of light aerobic activity. Not very high performance sounding but they are necessary. So I commute. I tried to run yesterday (it was too much). The 30+ km/hr winds we've had the last few days have felt deadly on my single speed bike. Wednesday's rain and chill felt worse.

I got an email from Don earlier in the week after his regular Tuesday night group ride. He said his heart rate never got to max and he found himself pushing the pace on more than one occasion in ways he never could before. That's what California did for him.

My brain is in a fog and I'm still trying to figure out how this week will change me. It is assured that it has already. It has changed me as an athlete. It has changed how I approach big efforts. It's changed who I am as a person.

And that doesn't feel like a very profound way to end this post but I haven't completely figured it out yet. I'll let you know when I do.

That's me showing my good side at one of the Los Angeles beaches. That water was cold.

On Cycling Escapes and Leaving my Heart in California

2011-05-03T20:57:00.296-05:00

Day 4 video courtesy of Don B., my friend and riding buddy, (featuring me, and Jenn, and Don's voice). I swear, if I spent much more time with this man I was going to pick up his accent for sure.

It was one of those decisions that I'm not sure where it came from. It was early March and it had been a long dark winter. Long and dark. And I got this really nice tax return and I had to get away. At first I thought I would go to back to Tucson, by myself, just for Easter weekend, because at least I was familiar with it. Then a friend tossed the idea of Hawaii into my head and that was enticing too.

But I couldn't get an air miles flight to Tucson and it looked like I was going to be travelling by myself so going to Hawaii, alone looked expensive, with long plane trips and at that time I didn't think I could get the whole week off. Not to mention, the intention was to ride my bike and the thought of riding alone, unsupported, on strange roads made me nervous.

So I started thinking about California. California wine, to be specific, but a Google search pulled up a link to Cycling Escapes and a quick scan of their tour calendar guided me to the perfect tour in the perfect week and doing my favourite thing. Climbing.

The SAG wagon

Except I don't think I really read the agenda that well or thought much about what it meant. When I started emailing the specs to riders I respect for their opinion, the reactions I got were of the nature of, "Holy crap! Did you see that 4th day..... there's 10, 000 feet of climbing."

Uh, yeah so?

I'm dumb. I come from this flat place where the "hills" are a couple hundred metres long on average and 10, 000 feet of climbing didn't mean much to me. I just wanted to climb hills. I did climb Mt. Lemmon last year after all. That was 25 miles of climbing. How could this be that bad? (dumb dumb). The day before I left another friend who rode in France last summer and did all the major climbs of the Alps and she said that the total elevation on this tour was more than anything she did in France.

Holy Hell. What did I get myself into?

Don up at the lookout on Piuma

I had that thought at least once a pedal stroke on the first climb of the first day -- you know when your legs are fresh and your brain is still ignorant. I had followed Don out through the "flat" (i.e. rolling.... rolling hills are the new flat to me now) opening section leading to the climb known as "Rockstore." A lengthy conversation with Don the night before at dinner had me pretty certain I could ride with this guy without trouble so I took his wheel and it was him and I alone on that first climb basically hammering beyond what either of us should have been doing (two geeks with heart rate monitors -- couple of nerds we were).

Like I said, I'm dumb. But I am also not used to long steep climbs. I'm used to climbing at a particular effort and then just recovering at the top. So I climbed at that effort and it didn't take me long before I maxed my heart rate. And then went over my max.

The View from Encinal. A little crooked so I must have been riding when I took this picture.

We climbed Rockstore 3 times over the week. It did feel easier. We also descended down Rockstore at least twice and it was an amazing descent. Aside from learning how to pace these climbs, I certainly saw big improvements in my navigation of switchbacks. I learned to trust the rubber. Break before the turn, and not in it. I studied.

Rockstore, by the way, was one of the climbs in last year's Tour of California. It is 2.5 miles long and about 6-10% grade. They also told us at the bike store that they hold a weekly Wednesday night TT up Rockstore. The guy at the store says he goes up it in 13 minutes. I had a casual conversation with a local cyclist at the entrance to the hotel as he waited for a friend, who told me he could climb it in about 18 minutes, "on a good day" but his buddy climbed it the other day on a cruiser bike in 17 minutes. On a Cruiser bike. I never really timed us and I'm sure we were much faster on day one, but I estimated we were about 20 minutes in climbing Rockstore on Day 4 at a nice easy pace set to start us off for the 11, 000 feet of climbing that were to come.

Don with his Flip camera and Jenn... I stopped us part way down Cothairn descent because it was mighty steep and sketchy roads. One of only two descents I actually dared to go faster than Don.

Day 4 was by far my most rewarding day. When you do a challenge like this not every day is going to feel good. Day one I worked too hard too soon and burnt out by the third climb. I didn't have a clue how I was going to finish the week. Day 2 I paced better, felt better, and the goal was to finish as strong as I started. Day 3 I was bagged and thankful that there was only 5, 000 feet of climbing (ONLY). But day 4 I felt great. If you watch the video above you'll hear my voice is a little cruddy from whatever was going on with my sinuses and chest that week.

And Day 5 was a hard day again. Legs were tired, the lungs were tired, the brain was tired. It had the hardest climb of all on Las Flores -- which had a lovely stretch of about 1.8 miles of 13-18% grade and most of it was greater than 15%.... it just went up and up around every corner on roads they were in the process of laying new asphalt on. Who knew it was possible to kick up asphalt tar at 5 km/hr. I'll be picking that stuff off my bike all summer.

Me part way up Latigo -- Day 3 when I felt like crap. I think Don had been waiting for me for a bit here.

We did Rockstore, Puima, Latigo, and half of Yerba Buena climbs at least twice. We rarely went up the same climb we came down on the same day but we often went up a climb one day and then down it another. There were two climbs we only went down (Tuna Canyon and the other side of Cotharin) and both were brake heating knuckle whiteners.

Doing certain climbs twice was nice. They were never as bad the second time around. You had perspective on them the second time. Many times on a second go of a particular climb I would find myself pedalling along for kilometres and then hit my shifters and find I still had lower gears. This happened on 3 or 4 occasions on the last two days. On Latigo we knew that stretch of downhill near the top was not the peak (the math just didn't add up) and that Latigo had two peaks. It didn't feel as mentally fatiguing to head into another climb when you knew it was coming. Don and I climbed Latigo for the second time on Day 4 talking about life and the pursuit of happiness and it was done in no time flat. Ten miles, that Latigo climb.

Me and Don (and my one sunburnt arm... dumb)

Don may I add, aside from being pleasant company, was also a walking talking map for the week. Ann, one of the other tour members aptly nicknamed him "Garmin." As ex military, and a former Californian, he always knew where we were, and how far we had to go and how long each climb was and he could call how much we had left to nearly at 10th of a mile. He was the perfect riding partner for directionally challenged me.

There is Rich... he basically IS Cycling Escapes

And what can I say about Cycling Escapes? Earlier on in this blog, I referred to the company as "They" but Cycling Escapes is really just a "he" -- one guy, Rich Merrick, a self proclaimed nomadic bachelor who created his dream job. He's a one man band and for a one guy show, he does a bang up job with an iPhone and an iPad as his main sources of communication, and a van and a trailer for SAG stops. He came off 9 weeks straight of tours coming to us and still all his i's were dotted and his t's crossed. He had Eric Barlevav, pro racer with team Exergy, (who have really hot jerseys) as his SAG assistant for the first 3 days of the tour while Rich rode sweep with the slowest riders. And a gal Nicole took over for the last couple of days as sweep rider. Otherwise the trailer was stocked with everything you asked for. You filled out a lengthy food request list prior to arriving to camp and it was all there.

Eric... this is his "training" bike. Notice Microshifters. It would match Kermit perfectly.

For the rest of you geeks, here is MY specs via Garmin.

Day 1 Rockstore, Yerba Buena, Decker
Day 2 Piuma, Fernwood
Day 3 Rockstore, Latigo
Day 4 Rockstore, Yerba Buena/Cothairn, Mulholland, Encinal, Latigo
Day 5 Piuma, Las Flores

And the rest of Don's Videos can be found here.

It was the best week of my life folks. Hardest thing I've ever done. I met great people from around the United States -- North Carolina, Vermont, California -- (and Canada, there was a guy from Vancouver). Nobody else came from a flat place like this. They laughed at me when I told them our standard out and back route had an elevation change of 5 m. Wednesday night Rich and Ray were teasing Jenn and I prior to the big climb day that "The Canadian Girls will never make it." (WRONG). They were teasing. I hope.

Last day of riding, waiting at construction (yes, they have construction in California)

This post was pretty cycle-heavy. I'm sure I'll have more to say about the people part another day. I have so much more to say, about Don, Eric, Ann and Bob, Carol, Reve, Judy, Paul, and DC boys Mike and John, and "the Santa Barbara boys" (as Don called them) who we never really got to know. And Jenn and me, of course. The Canadian girls. It's nice to be 40 and still get away with being called a girl. And I have way more pictures than I can squeeze into this one post.

I'm home in body. But I left my heart somewhere on the top of a foothill of California. Or maybe it's on the Ocean shore buried beneath the sand and the salt.... I love the ocean.

There was no bad part of the Pacific Coast Highway. The temperature dropped by 10 degrees F and it was flat..-ish. Me doing a behind the head photo of Don on Day 1.

Thoughts While Sitting in the L. A. Airport (and Vancouver and Calgary)

2011-04-30T12:52:00.016-05:00

On the Pacific Coast Highway. I could have ridden up and down here all day.

Los Angeles Airport

Sitting in airports appears to be the definition of killing time. There isn't much else to do other than sit and think.

I will attempt to write about this week but there is so much whirling around in my head right now I don't know how to organize it. All I know is I can't look at my week in So.Cal day by day. The days are already starting to blur.

Typing is hard. I've somehow mucked up the nerve conduction to my left hand. I have no pincer grasp with my left thumb and any of the fingers. It functions much like an infant learning to pick up Cherio's off a high chair table. I can spread my fingers apart but I can't close them. It was endlessly entertaining on Thursday night trying to watch me cut steak at dinner -- grabbing my fork with my left hand and fist. I'm not sure how I managed to control my bike yesterday, especially down the Tuna Canyon descent, where you had to ride the brakes continuously on the 17% grades and 170 degree turns. Shifting from small to big ring (and vice versa) was tremendously challenging the last couple of days.

I haven't been 100% healthy this week. I had a sore throat two days before I left Winnipeg. When I got on the plane Saturday morning, I felt OK but by the time I got to Calgary I couldn't hear or talk. The warm weather helped. Monday I rode feeling well, probably powered by adrenaline. Tuesday and Wednesday my nose ran like a tap but I still felt OK. Thursday I did 144.6 km with no voice and I could feel, what for the previous two days I had convinced myself was allergies to something growing on the Santa Monica Mountains, slipping into my chest. On Friday I was coughing up crud but at least the nose had stopped. Today I am still popping sinus meds, over a week later, and I imagine it is only a matter of time before my body gives in to whatever virus I've managed to will myself to ignore up to this point.

I'm thinking about my kids. I can't seem to travel anywhere without some kind of cell phone mishap these days so I've sent an email or two but I haven't had a chance to talk to them. I miss them.

I'm thinking about Jenn still here in L.A. for another day, hopefully resting the legs by a pool. I'm thinking about how proud I am of her that she had the courage to come out here and do this trip. Especially after day one when I think every single one of us there wondered what the hell we had gotten ourselves into. It requires a special kind of crazy to do a trip like this.

I'm thinking most of all about Don from Raleigh, NC who was my well-matched riding partner for 5 days. A good friendship can be built over 25 hours of riding with one person who is good company and always has something interesting to say. I ride with lots of different people at home, and I spent a week trying to figure out who he was most like as a rider and failed to come up with an answer. He was a constant navigator; he knew when to lighten the mood; and he was the occasional therapist. And maybe I was for him too. We took care of each other after a dumb-ass Monday riding too hard and both of us with our respective nerve damage problems. Me and my hand, him and his feet. I hope that fate somehow makes it work out that I can ride with him again someday.

And I'm thinking about the things I'm coming home to as well.

Vancouver Airport

After having to walk the entire terminal to get to my baggage, go through customs and then check another bag at another gate (forgot to take my duty free out of my carry on and put it in my luggage before I checked it), not much time here but Vancouver has me thinking about math.

How about math like this:

499.7 km (shoulda rolled around the parking lot a bit)

11,125 metres of climbing (36, 499.3 feet)

16,410 Calories burned according to Garmin (I still feel fat though -- and I'm sure I drank enough beer to make up for a good chunk of that).

25:20:31 seconds of ride time.... road time... not sure? Add another 10 hours I'm sure.

Calgary Airport

Right about now I am hoping my bike is on that plane. I don't get to see the bike between Calgary and Winnipeg. They transferred it for me. At the very least I can say that it was with me in Vancouver.

Sat on the plan with two nice "newspaper" men from Nova Scotia. They'd never flew over the mountains before, so one of them spent a lot of time leaning over me to look out the window.

I didn't tell them I am a writer. I don't know why I don't tell people that. Maybe because I don't feel much like a writer right now.

The good news is that I think the strength in my left hand is moderately better. I still can't operate zippers. This is annoying but hopefully only temporary.

I feel now like I am getting back into my real life headspace. I've thought about work, but I've drawn the line at checking my work email so far. I have not thought about my legs and let me tell you, I've thought about little else for the last week. I got up this morning and had bike envy at the cyclists I passed riding through Agoura Hills. Except it was really windy in California today and it would not have been pleasant riding.

You learn so much about yourself when you do things like this. You learn what you are capable of under pressure and when in pain. There are a couple of climbs on a couple of roads out there that I feel I have an axe to grind with -- Decker (which was the third climb on the first day when I had already blown up) and the last one from yesterday, the name of which escapes me. The 18%-er... that never ended.... Los- something.... All I can think about now is how is all this going to translate back into flat riding?

Anyways I'm gonna upload some pictures and post this and find food. My next flight leaves in an hour from the moment I type these words. I miss California already. But I miss home too. I will write about the riding another day.

What does 40 look like?

2011-04-19T23:22:00.000-05:00

I've been waiting for inspiration to strike. I figured at some point, some mood would strike me and I would be able to say something profound about this day I turned 40. But the truth is I've kinda been looking forward to it. I don't know how many people have said to me today, "you know that 40 is the new 30?"

I've had two responses to this: I hope this version of 30 is better than the last version of 30, is the first. The second simply says: Good. I think I deserve to live my 30s over again.

On my 30th birthday I was 7 months pregnant with my first child and it was so friggen hot out I was wearing shorts -- obviously this has been a very different weather year -- and my (now ex) husband threw me a "sorta" surprise birthday party. Sorta surprise because he cleaned the house, on his own, with no prompting. Sorta surprise because there was no ruse about taking me out somewhere and coming home to a houseful of people. People just started showing up and I didn't know they were invited.

I, of course, couldn't drink that night, which was OK by me because I didn't drink much back then anyhow.

That moment, by the way, is on the list of "very nice things" my ex did for me while we were married. That was in the first 2 years of our marriage.

Anyways, I no longer want to talk about my 30s. They are done.. and rightly so. I'm happy.

I woke up to a child-free house and marked papers because even though it is my birthday, work has not disappeared and I'm in a bit of a time crunch that doesn't stop for birthdays. I did however avoid more than one email from students who failed my research course.

Speaking of work, this blog has been silent for a month or two because I've been consumed by THIS.

And if you actually bothered to click on that link, NO SILLY, I haven't been consumed by volleyball player's butt cleavage, I've been consumed by the Women's course I've been teaching since January. It forced me to put a little redirect on my emotional and creative energy.

And, I'm not entirely telling the truth there but [butt] close enough.

I rode my bike today, of course. I rode it especially to get to my workplace and get bought lunch by this awesome man. Today, FINALLY, he gave me a hard time about writing that blog entry. I've been waiting. Took him long enough. .... I sat around my work place caffeteria in the mountain bike pants I won after coming in 2nd 40 year old woman at Cross Provincials (the first moment where I had to admit outwardly I was going to be 40) -- those pants are, admittedly, tighter on me than they were the day I won them -- and my latest addition to my jersey collection from the Twin Six family. And silver shoes because that's what I had under my desk. And I looked like a sporto geek who landed in Oz but, somehow, I am OK with that.

Then I rode home and madly rushed to pick up the kids from school and head to the bike store to pick up Kermit who was at the Alter Ego Spa for some pampering and got a hug from my favourite bike shop boy even though he was all greasy. I was OK with this too. It's busy season in the bike stores folks.... I suspect -- actually I know -- he's drinking tonight. And deservedly so.

Then it was off to be a Mom. I showed my kids how to use the Apple TV. I think it took my 9 year old daughter about half the time it took me to get the hang of it. They searched Kung Zhu You Tube vidoes and played Dynamite over and over again while the boy demonstrated his breakdance moves. I absolved my children of homework although I would not allow my daughter to skip swimming. While she swam I took the boy to the U of M Faculty of Nursing; Shoppers Drug Mart, where I discovered that condom packaging has changed DRASTICALLY in the last couple years (and NO, unfortunately, I was not purchasing, but I did have to stand and stare longingly for a while); and Tim Horton's for hot chocolate as, for better or for worse, I stopped drinking coffee two weeks ago. I'm still not sure how I feel about that.

In the meantime, I got one unexpected email, one even more unexpected text message, and about 35 or so "Happy Birthday's" on facebook: the land of my imaginary friends.

Then I met my parents at Mona Lisa Restaurante on Corydon where I drank both white and red (sacrilege, I know) and spent most of the evening listening to a 14 year old punk band playing in the party room. And I don't mean the band has been around for 14 years, I mean the players were 14 years old. And they were damn good.

So it has been a good day and the week's not over. I have 5 papers and 33 presentations to mark. There is more wine, more bikes and a big ass ride on Friday, distance yet to be decided -- maybe 150 if I am feeling stupid. I missed Bruxelles, the gravel road race from hell. It was on the agenda but it was also my last weekend with my kids for a couple of weeks so, I chose them.

Then on Saturday I get on a plane and fly to Los Angeles. I will explore the Malibu area for a couple days with Jenn and then on Monday we get on our bikes and ride for 5 days straight looking a views like this:

Life does not get much better than this.

Ice Donkey 2011

2011-03-20T17:38:00.000-05:00

I intended to write about this but as things go, time passes and then you think .... meh!

It was a fun race though. We kinda sucked. We came in 4th place team. I dare you to go look at the results. Our team name was On-On which I will explain by saying: It's a Hasher thing.

We took about 2:45 minutes to complete the race which was about 10km of biking, 8 or 10 km of cross country skiing, 1 km of running, 3 km of snowshoeing, and 6 km of skating. It was challenging. That was by far the hardest cross country ski I've done in my life, it was uneven, double poling, tree limbo-ing goodness. We are all pretty good skiers and we passed quite a few people in this section (only to get passed back on the snowshoe and skate). And it was one of those races where we went into it saying, "Training? What training?"

We all had our weak points and we all had our strengths. Some of us hadn't been on a bike since before the snow fell, and for those of us who had been on a bike trainer (perhaps too much on a bike trainer), not much of it has been outside. Someone couldn't snowshoe worth beans..... or run for that matter..... someone whined and cried about her legs that whole section. Can't imagine who that would have been. Some of us hadn't put on a pair of skates in about 25 years.

So we had the endurance, we just didn't always have the skill.

L & C at the start of the race.

Thanks to my good natured teammates Lisa and Clayton. Clayton stepped in for Dan aka "SUDs" last minute when Dan's wife decided it was time to have a baby. (What a freakin' lame excuse to bail that was -- it was boy #2 by the way). So Clayton got the hot chick sandwich Dan was so looking forward to, instead. Although you wouldn't know it from the one hideous picture I was able to snag of myself for free. Lisa was hot though. She always is.

I'll keep this one small.

This picture was taken right after that one kilometre run to the river from Whittier Park and I think I was about to cry here. My calves were screaming at me so bad. It was worse than childbirth. I could do no more than walk the rest of the snowshoe.

Sorry team.

Other photos can be found but you have to pay for them which just makes me think we are a little too used to being spoiled in cycling circles (photos here).

There is a great little video too that's linked to facebook with a great little Pushing Daisy's song looped into it. It is one of those funny things where I JUST had a conversation about this very song and heard it for the first time less than 2 weeks ago and here it shows up again. You can catch me 4 or 5 times in this video in the Tribalistic colour blue and gold sleeves. And the red hair. We can't forget the red hair. We are team #74. And there is one very precious moment in this video of me nearly going down on snowshoes. That about sums up my experience with that section of the race (video here).

Will I do it again? Sure. I'll try anything. Twice.

"Sufferfest"

2011-02-25T16:52:00.001-06:00

Everyone in the local cycling community knows this man, right? He is as epic as the mountain range they named after him. Cycling is a family affair in his house. And look at that face... he always has that snarl on his face. He has shit-disturber written all over that look.

I happen to be employed at the same institution as him. I have coffee or lunch with him on a semi-regular basis and because our IQ's reach similar heights, the conversations always have staggering twists and turns with sharped-tongued flavour embedded within. It is entirely fate that brought us together as friends, though, because he works down testosterone ally and I work in the tower of power. We have a mutual friend that I knew from the gym who he used to work with directly and now, over 4 years later, this "dude" in the picture and I are better friends than the original introduction might have predicted.

Yesterday we had coffee together and being he is probably the only person I know, and perhaps the only person in the universe, that I could have a conversation with that involved trying to complete the LA Times crossword (he knew answers like rebs and egocamp [WTF], and I got bologna -- he wins), discussing the magic of prime numbers, and George Orwell's 1984 (which I read in 1984), AND accuse me of being a bullshitter, all in a matter of 5 minutes.

I wish I was a bullshitter. I really wish some of the stories I could tell were actually bullshit. In fact, his favourite story about me is when he and the mutual friend we both know decided to tell me another guy in the office got fired and I believed it. Then the real fun started when I expressed my open opinion on that fact -- until of course I was told it was all BS -- then the joke was on me.

Damn my gullible-ness.

So we all know the pot was calling the kettle black on the account of being a Bullshitter.

Oh and he always manages to find a way to piss off my feminist sensibilities. He does it on purpose though so I still love him and I forgive him.

Anyways, our friend, so pictured above, in his characteristic cantankerous way, happened to comment that if he ever saw the word "sufferfest," again, in any blog it would will him to come out of blog commenting silence. So I informed him that I was happy to rise to that challenge. So he knows I'm going to write this. I doubt however that he realized HOW I was going to write it.

You see, his argument is that it isn't suffering if you are doing it by choice.

Oh, and he also wants me to tell you he stole that from someone who knows true suffering and it isn't his own independent thought.

Did I paraphrase you right, sir?

Anyways, I adore this man, even if his son claims to have been "raised by savages" (it makes me belly laugh to think of that) and I thought I would grant him his 15 seconds of fame amongst the 5 people that actually look at my blog.

And if he invites you to his house this summer for a "hammerfest" -- it isn't what you think it is and you should tell him you're busy.

Are you for Riel?

2011-02-21T15:13:00.001-06:00

Yes I am for Riel. But, that, my friends, is a really shitty time for a 100km, which was more than enough time and distance for me today and was the stop goal I had in mind when I started. But it was on a trainer so I will forgive myself. Or at least I will pretend that I spent the 100 km against the wind and gently uphill the whole way. Which my legs felt like I was from the first moment out of the hop.

The other actual goal was to stay aerobic because I need to do some serious fat burning to shed my waistline of it's winter insulation. I should start thinking about losing 5 or 8 (or 10) pounds before I have to climb Richter Pass in July.

The plan to stay in my aerobic zone worked well until Paul, our humble Are You for Riel host, and fellow Tribalistic teammate put in "Local Hero" the latest Sufferfest instalment, where I, Sufferlandian racer, had to chase down Fabian Cancellara in the the 2010 World Championship time trials (amongst other gem sprints from famous races past) - then it was bye-bye to aerobic zone for a little while. Spartacus by-they-way, and by means of comparison, was able to pull off these max's in his recent TT in Oman... AND... he only came in 4th, thereby disappointing the world:

Stolen from Leopard Trek Facebook page. And, yes, that does say his max speed was 108km/hr.

Bye-bye to aerobic zone also meant bye-bye to my legs which were toast by 80km and the last 20 were the true "sufferfest" of the day. This, was thanks to a tough 2 hour bike yesterday at Pan Am Pool and me looking over at Jenn and announcing, "I'm going to stand for the last 10 minutes of tempo." Which made her say, "I'll do it too then." Which, of course, meant that I actually had to follow through with that. Me and my big mouth.

I really miss riding with people. These group rides seem to happen few and far between these days. I cherish them when they do, so thanks to Paul and the Wellness Institute for hosting a great (and cheap) event as always. Till next year.

Sex Sells ....

2011-02-15T21:42:00.000-06:00

Got your attention? Naturally. I rode outside today and it was beautiful. It was warm and windy and it was coming from the south and I came home with mud caked in my hair. And I have NO pictures, which is really a good thing. Trust me. But damn I feel good.

Anyways I don't have the time to be all thoughtful and articulate in my blog these days but I can't resist tossing out these latest ads from Pearl Izumi. I tell ya. I'm ready to go shopping!

I can't tell if that's a beer-belly laden (laid-en?) guy with muscular legs at the front of the conga line or a pregnant woman. Thoughts?

And if you have a foot or shoe fetish, this is the one for you.

Make of this what you will..... But it is definitely memorable.

Design me, Draw me, Ink me

2011-02-13T23:07:00.001-06:00

The other day I went on a graphic image hunt on a mission to help out a friend who didn't ask for my help but got it unsolicited because I meddle like that, and in the process of that image hunt I came across this picture which made me *chuckle* because if I was to make an image to reflect the various dichotomous parts that are me, this would be as close as it comes.

Thank-you Google Images for guiding me to this picture and, most of all, thank you especially for falsely inflating my blog stats during this period of time when my blog lies quiet. There sure are a lot of people out there searching for "Walmart Bicycles" -- which, actually, kinda scares me more than a little bit.

And yes, my blog has been quiet. I am freakinunbelievablebusy right now and suffering a touch of SAD that January and February always seems to bring. I can't stand the thought of another cold day. I feel I will lose my mind. The good news is that I got my first sunburn today and my first sunglasses racoon eyes of the year. I've missed my racoon eyes. How I got these, I'll save for another post.

But speaking of images..... I've mentioned before that 2011 is the year I turn:

Yes. It is true. In fact, we are just a little over two months away from the special day itself. And this January and February I have felt every second of my 40 years. Good thing, inside my head, I am still 18.

But I digress as always. To mark this momentous occasion, my plan is Tattoo #2... yes, if you didn't already know, I have another already and I'm always happy to show it off, assuming I am dressed appropriately to do so.

And, I need an artist and I'm slowly collecting referrals. So if you can suggest a good Tattoo artist. Please share.

Good to Know

2011-02-04T13:34:00.001-06:00

The new Trenta cup at Starbucks (Availability in Canada, unknown). Holds an entire bottle of wine!!

Enough is Enough.... Let's look at some Art

2011-01-10T21:49:00.000-06:00

Enough is enough. Some of you may have liked it, but I could no longer stand to see picture of a volleyball chicks ass in my face when I opened my own blog so it was time to replace it with something else.

And, yes, I chose that picture purely for shock value. But now it shocks me, so I'm over it.

What you are looking at is the artwork hanging in my kitchen over my back door. I kinda like it. It came from a place called Earth Studio in Moab, Utah. Yes, Moab. Home of mountain biking utopia. I have never been there but there is this little thing called the internet. It's kinda addictive. You can search and find out anything you want to know and buy anything you want to buy.

Damn internet.

I guess the other thing I could update you on is the situation with my calves which I first reported on here. After a visit to the Sports Medicine clinic, X-rays of both my shins, and about 6 tubes of blood work -- which, by my recollection, is more tubes than I would typically draw on any ICU patient I ever looked after when I worked in ICU once upon a time -- I decided to try the one and only calf repair treatment I have never tried over the course of 2 years since this problems started.

I stopped running. For 3 weeks.

And then the coach asked me to try. So the day I had to go back to the clinic for the follow-up I hopped on the treadmill and waited for that typical 5 minute onset of stumpy legs. Five minutes came and went .... and then 10 and .... then 15. Nothing. I stopped at 15 minutes. There is no better cure for any problem than making an appointment with the doctor.

But maybe stopping running is all I needed to do. I'd never taken any time off before. I just pushed through the pain.

So I am going to start running again and build slowly like I just got off the couch from doing nothing for 10 years.

And once radiology took an expert look at my x-rays they did identify what was likely also an old stress fracture on my left shin. Go figure. I can't tell you when that would have been. I can vaguely remember some shin pain from about 5 years ago but I likely just bought new shoes and it went away. The pain I remember very much predates my crazy exercise addiction days. It also pre-dates my half marathon training days too.

And my blood work showed nothing abnormal except for elevated white blood cells which can be explained away by the fact that the day I had it drawn was also Day one of the flu from hell which made me feel like Death through most of the week before Christmas. First year in MANY..... MANY.... that I have not got a flu shot and I got the flu. Let this be a lesson to me. Karma.

So there you have it. And thanks for checking me out again. At least I no longer have to check out the bikini clad butt when I open my blog. If you miss her, just scroll a little further.

Butt Cleavage, Celebratory Beer, and a Touch of Academic Geekism

2011-01-08T20:40:00.001-06:00

The secret signal is..... ??

I have to teach a new course starting in a couple of days. This is a course I picked up to help fund my expensive "biking habit." It's on women and health. And while I'm excited to do it, I'm terrified too. What exactly qualifies me to teach this course when the person who taught it before me is a world renowned expert on women and sexuality in cancer recovery? I'm just the schlumpy college instructor who happens to be a woman and has published one article associated with the subject. That article is the second thing that pops up in google when you type in my full name and the word "nursing." (Or, at least, today it did.)

If you happened to have imitated that google search you'll find, yes, I have an academic life. This explains why I frequently can flip into academic geek mode. I do it anywhere, including in the middle of a bike shop, as I did the other night when I stood around in my favourite bike shop (you know which) with my favourite bike boys and chatted about exercise addiction. This happened about 2 minutes after I brought them beer as a post Christmas and New Years "Thanks" and cracked jokes about girly drinks and whipping cream. So I can flip that switch into academic nerd pretty quickly, anywhere, with anyone, under any circumstances.

Live with it.

Exercise addiction in endurance athletes, if I may digress for a moment, is what I figure, once I get my ASS in gear -- or when someone pays for it, whichever comes first -- I will eventually do a PhD about. We talked about the depression that results when you stop exercising, even for a few days. The other part of the conversation was about that fine line you hover around knowing that you need to exercise to still be upright when you are 80 or 90 and the damage you cause to your body when you don't [CAN'T] stop when you are injured.

Anyway, I geek out quite frequently in my blog too so if you don't like it, I suggest you stop reading right now because it's gonna get worse. But I'm drinking wine as I type tonight so, that might help a bit.

I also flipped into academic geek mode pretty easily here in the comments on this tongue-in-cheek blog entry. My new course has a pre-established assignment where they have to find an advertisement that focuses on something related to women's health (tampon, birth control, diet pills and plastic surgery ads are likely what I'll see a lot of) and the first advertisement that popped into my mind to use as an example was the one my friend the Cyclechick shared with us a couple months back. Graciously she has allowed me to use that blog entry in my class as a fine example of how my students should be thinking when they look for their own ads.

Achhk. .... I made my point in the comments about how disgusting those ads are, you can go to the link and read them there. If you care.

Or even in nursing itself. This predates me, but nurses used to wear little white caps and white pressed uniforms and clean pantyhose and said things like "yes Doctor" while bowing and averting their eyes. Walk into a hospital today and see if you can tell the difference between the doctor or the nurse. Better yet, can you tell the difference between the nurse and the housekeeper? Good luck.

Of course, I suggest, neither is a good image. So nurses still aren't getting it right.

But I could probably walk into my first class on Tuesday and spend the entire class ranting about the invisibility of women in sport. Yeah we gotta sex 'em up to get anyone who watches sport (meaning men) to pay attention. Best example? Beach Volleyball. Show some cute ass and, still, no one notices we have some pretty fantastic female athletes out there, but some great butt crack goes on permanent record in our brains.

Go to google. Type in "beach volleyball images." Ignore gender ...... or don't.... type in "men's beach volleyball" it is still 90% women in those pics.

You can't tell me that dressing like this helps their play when.......

.......when the men get to dress like this.

And of course, heaven forbid women celebrate when we succeed. How un-female of us.

But you get that this is how women survive? We find a way to behave a little like men so we can at least feel we are on the same level. And then we get told we are not allowed to behave that way, because obviously, we don't do it right.

And if we can't feel like we are on the same level or get the same attention then let's take some clothes off and play on their sexual fantasies.

And I won't go any further than that. But I do have to THINK about these things in order to teach this course.

And feminism isn't about bra burning and man hating. I love men. I love them a little too much. I've done every naive, desperate, stupid, cliche thing in the book to get them to notice me.

But I do have to figure out a way to get a group of about 40 women to not automatically want to think of menopause as a disease -- the way the medical model does.

Tougher yet, I've gotta get their instructor to think that way as well.

Anyways. In other thoughts, I've considered quitting the whole blog thing. I'm writing but I'm not doing productive writing and I bet, if I printed out all the blogs I've done in the last year, that the page numbers would total greater than both my novels put together. And that excludes the pictures.

As well, it's January. I struggle enough to get through January without trying to find ways to be entertaining or academic or inspirational. Today I don't feel like being seen and would like to dig a huge hole and just crawl into it and stay there till spring. Just like the bears. I actually can't believe I'm bothering to write this at all.

But, as I've said, writing sustains me. And, believe it or not, this post was actually inspired by a Facebook friend who posts a lot of items related to the horrible abusive treatment that women face in war-torn Taliban ruled Afghanistan......... so we've got it pretty good.

But tomorrow is another day. And this women's course is going to consume me. So maybe you'll see me and maybe I'll take a break.

Time will tell.

I'm Only Really Happy When I'm Writing ......

2011-01-06T19:21:00.001-06:00

A friend forwarded this article to me and it is so bloody good, I wish I had written it. It pretty much sums up (in a humorous way) exactly what is wrong with my writing life right now and probably explains to some degree why I'm not likely ever to become rich from writing.

Yesterday brought to the forefront of my mind the thought of -- not resolutions -- but goals for 2011. I'm going to write a post about that at some point in the future, but not today. I'm not ready.

It is a big year for me. I'm turning 40. I'm training harder than ever. I have a big biking event I signed up for that I've told a few friends (and the coach) about but haven't revealed to everyone else.

Soon. Soon. I'll write about it as soon as reality hits for me.

I would LOVE to make one of my goals for 2011 to write SOMETHING (short or long) that might be publishable, but the truth of the matter is that I don't at the moment feel that my heart or my mind, and for that matter, my desire, is in a place required to do that.

And frankly, I like these little short efforts I spew out in this blog. I especially like these little spontaneous ones that I spew out quickly because they come to me in a flash of inspiration.

Anyways, the article I linked says it far better than I ever could have dreamed. Enjoy.

The First Ride

2011-01-01T17:08:00.000-06:00

It is a Frozen Wasteland this place we live in

I made a vow to myself at the end of the regular ride season that I was going to get on my bike outside at least once a week this winter.

That hasn't happened. It is not ideal weather for skate skiing so the Training Plan said "60 minutes aerobic activity of choice" today so what better day than this New Year's Day to go for a snow ride. I have this little thing called Ice Donkey that I agreed to participate in after a few beer at an HHH Christmas party. Well the sign up has officially happened now and I'm honoured that my compatriots felt I was worthy of being asked to participate and I think it be good that I keep my winter riding legs in shape so that the the event doesn't feel like a total B-itch.

So I dressed appropriately (over dressed actually) and headed out into the -16 weather with 40km per hour NW winds which made it -28 with windchill. I rode from my house to THE park which is about 9 miles round trip, I think, if I recall from running it. Here are some of the things I saw along the way.

I look like I am about to head out and rob a bank. Orange jacket is a little conspicuous though.
It was the maiden voyage of the Oakley's.

One of the goals on the agenda was to check the one challenging part of my commuting route. It is a pretty low traffic route but there is one piece of it that is generally difficult to pass through in the winter. Last spring this section could have been described as sketchy at best. Doesn't look so bad this year. But I'm not sure if this is because they've ploughed it once or twice or if it is just my newly discovered bike handling skills that have altered my definition of "too difficult" to ride. This looks totally ridable now.

Locals, you know where I'm talking about right? (If you don't, the next pictures will serve as a further clue.) Does this path look better than normal this year?

I don't know what it is, but I actually find the graffiti fascinating and somewhat beautiful.

Who's the guy whose face is imprinted here?
No River Trail this far this year. I think last year it came up to this bridge.

It is like a subversive culture.

I hit the park next. It was against the wind the whole way there. Other than the fogging of the sunglasses it was fine though. I was sweating. I ended up in the formal gardens first. Just earlier this morning people ran scantily clad in minimalist clothing there. Always a good way to start the year. I've done it in the past. I opted to sleep in for this years Frozen Nipple. That last 200m would have been freaking frigid.

Mountain bike was bike of choice today. And NO I have not yet removed the pannier racks from the Golden Triangle. This is procrastination at its best. It requires I get out a screw driver.

Then I headed over to check out the the duck pond. Too cold for skating today I guess.

The future outcome of all the construction going on there.

And then I headed home for a nice wind-assisted return trip. These gloves are awesome by the way. My hands were sweaty the whole ride.

Na-noo, Na-noo (Yeah, I just dated myself didn't I?)

Random thought: Does anyone actually obey these signs??

I took the bike path on the way home. I love trees. Something so peaceful about riding through trees.
Riding INTO trees, well that's another issue all together.

Got to check out up and close the skating rink they built in the park out the front of my house.

So, there you go. I'm officially a "HARD" woman. Before today that was questionable.

A 2010 Top 5 with a Bonus #6

2010-12-31T00:00:00.001-06:00

It's been a pretty good year. It was punctuated with some shitty parts too, no doubt. Some REAL shitty parts. But it's December 31st and in the end, things are finishing on a higher note and the final balance weighs in favour of the GOOD rather than the EVIL.

Since at this time of the year everyone seems to be popping off their top 5 something-or-other lists, I might as well be cliche and join the club. And this will come as a big surprise: 4/5 things are about biking. In Chronological order:

1. The Madone zone:

Nothing can come between a girl and her bicycle. My mail-order husband -- ordered in January -- took all of about 3 weeks to come in. It was love at first sight. My love for my bike even inspired a shot gun wedding ceremony. I guess I gushed about my bike. A lot. Such is my way. And now Mr. Madone, aka "Kermit" and I have been through many a trial together. Several thousand kilometres worth, through Kenora, Calgary, Canmore, he even kept me hanging on the back in the South of Manitoba for that sub-6 200 km. Nope, I didn't have anything to do with all that. It was all the bike. There was one frightening moment when he refused to get on the airplane in Phoenix and went galavanting without me for two days. I wondered if I would ever see him again. But all's well that ends well, as the bard once said. It has been a happy relationship and I look forward to many more years of ride and rider.

2. Mount Lemmon:

On the list of the top 50 rides to do before you die, I have one checkmark. "Mount Lemmon is like dying. It's just something you have to do alone." The whole Tucson trip in itself was fabulous. It feels like it was a million years ago and belongs in another lifetime. It practically does belong to another lifetime. I'm not sure what moment lives more special in my mind: Steak done to perfection at the Hacienda del Sol; Lasagna a la Krauss at the Ranch; or guzzling mountain run-off at mile 16 on Mt. Lemmon. Best tasting water, EVER, and thankfully, on that day, free of parasites.

Michael Krauss points out Mt. Lemmon in the background. Me, Jim, Sean.

3. A Reuniting:

Of all things ridiculous about Facebook, once and a while it pulls out a miracle. (Yes, I am on there too much and I'm not leaving -- although one day, if I ever get a life, I will be on there LESS.) I got a friend request back sometime in June or July from the guy I would describe as one of my "first loves." I fell in love with bike boys at the age of 15 because of this guy. It has been fun re-getting to know Dean these last few months. He lives far away but we've had some good chats and one brief visit at the end of August. I think I've inspired him to get back on a bike after about 8 years away. Dean, I can't wait for you to drop my ass flat next year with us both on road bikes. Can't wait. It's good to have you back in my life.

4. The Golden Triangle:

The most beautiful, the most painful, the most soul cleansing ride of my life. It expanded my lungs and the size of my rib cage. It claimed both my legs as a victim and at certain moments, it claimed my sanity too. It also claimed my phone. Oh well, I got a new one. Guy and Wayne were good company and good sports to allow me to butt in on their male bonding ride. What can I say. Everything about that entire time I spent out West in Calgary and the highways of Banff, Yoho, and Kootanay National Parks was about peace and contentment. A much needed way to end the training season and move on to the season of fun.

5. Cyclocross Everything:

When I showed up at Menno Cross barely knowing, the two weeks before, that cyclocross existed, I had no idea it would quickly become the love affair of the year. There I was, loaner bike in hand -- a bike I thought I'd have for ONE race only, but thanks to some clever race avoidance tactics by my bicycle benefactor, turned into a season long affair. I had no mount or dismount skills (Cross labs? When were those?) and about to navigate mud puddles and bunkers and rock beds. If you check out the link to Menno, there is a short video of the race and a nice shot of me doing some sketchy riding through a puddle (depths and bottom condition unknown). I'm the one covered in mud in case you don't recognize me right away. It was riding like I had never seen before. I couldn't wait till that bloody race was OVER and then when it WAS over I couldn't wait to go again. And go again I did, six more times, and each was better than the last. And the post pain amnesia set in faster and faster. I saw my life flash before my eyes on the hilly beast out in Altona -- I carried that fear with me all the way through the Whittier race. It didn't leave until I raced incognito and in the mud once again out at Harbour View. I was just finding my cross legs by Provincials and then it was done. I can't wait to go again. When's the next race? When is it? Huh? Huh? When? What do you mean I HAVE TO WAIT!?

And a bonus:

And this one isn't about me. It's just something that puts a smile on my face and gives me hope. My friend Terri, I would have to say outdoes, even me, in terms of the amount of time she's spent in the land of the cynics when it comes to relationships. I've never in my life heard anyone come up with more excuses to avoid relationships than this girl. And in all fairness, she has some pretty good reasons to be avoidant. So good, in fact, that she has said to me recently upon reading my admission that I steal from my friends lives when I write fiction, that she fully expects me to steal from hers one day and maybe she should STOP telling me crap....... then I reminded her that I steal but I also F&*K with it (you know, remove all the serial numbers, give it an new paint job, and crap like that) so she'll likely never even realize.

I almost didn't send the message I sent. You know that message Terri? The one I sent asking you who the heck that Darryl guy was who was always flirting with you incessantly all over your facebook status comments? Yes that one. I almost didn't send it because I had given up asking Terri such questions because her excuses were so LAME that I didn't want to hear another.

Her reply was: "Darryl is the ex that I shouldn't have chased away. But just friends. And soulmates. But friends. :)"

[That's a cut and paste job, by the way. So no f'ing with Terri's life there.]

"Soulmates."

"Just friends."

That doesn't even MAKE ANY F'ING SENSE, TERRI!

That was my internal reaction. I was much politer in my message back. To make a long story short it was a faith issue, really. Faith is really important to Terri. So not really knowing what it meant to "have faith" (I'm the one, you know, when I step into a church the walls start caving in around me and lighting bolts of death start shooting from the sky -- that's a genetic problem by the way. My father has the same problem) I asked a few key questions and made Terri think about what that meant. What does it REALLY mean to have faith in God? And how do you know -- how DO you know -- that just because someone doesn't buy into organized religion that they don't have FAITH?

Anyways, it was a naive question and a very philosophical conversation ensued and Terri gave Darryl a chance and I'd like to think I had something to do with that maybe? No? For the most part things were already tumbling down that inevitable path for Terri anyway. But it is true that other people's relationships are clearly viewed with happy endings all in place in my crystal ball. It's my own relationships that are confused jumbled blurry messes.

Terri is a really happy woman right now and I, in turn, am very happy for her. Good thing there are do-overs in love. Sometimes.

Oh well, for me there is always 2011.

It's been a good year. I have plans for next year. They are shaping up nicely.

Happy New Year everyone. Thanks for reading. Now please be entertained by evidence of my lack of a life by a handpicked selection of a year of Facebook status's.

They're Looking at Your Socks

2010-12-25T16:02:00.000-06:00

You think they're not looking at your socks? he asked. I nodded gravely. They're looking at your socks, we said in unison.

That's a quote from one of my favourite books, A Complicated Kindness, by Miriam Toews.

And, of course, I'm NOT writing about socks. I'm never just writing about what it appears I'm writing about. I told you that already.

The quote reminds me a little of how I feel about blogging some days. You never really know who's looking or what secret thoughts they are having about your "socks."

I think I am fairly safe in saying that all of us who write blogs have a little nagging wonder about who the hell is reading our crap spewings anyway. No?

Which makes me wonder, why the hell do I do this anyway? Why do I put myself out there like this? It is a full-on public forum after all. Anyone can look. Blogging is like literary voyeurism. Well, except without the sex part....

......Maybe.

Or maybe blogging is actually literary exhibitionism? Get a little half-undressed in public and see if anyone notices?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately as it has come more and more into my awareness that people are actually reading this garbage. I started my blog as a way of dealing with my my post-divorce identity (still haven't figured that out yet) and perhaps with the hope of having others read and say, "Yeah, I've been there too."

I actually own this magnet. Fitting. Or at least, at one time, it was.

And occasionally people take the time to tell me they relate to what I say. I've had some really nice emails from people saying some really serious things that they wouldn't dare say publicly in a comment where they would prefer to maintain a persona of "light and fluffy" (I've done the same, by the way).

I end up writing about biking a lot because that's what I use to distract myself from the sucky parts of life. So I write about two very different things with likely two very different audiences (touch of overlap here and there maybe??). I don't know. I never thought anyone would ACTUALLY read. I just kinda hoped they might.

I've thought about separating the subjects into two different blogs but . . . . . . I don't really want to.

And I'm pretty reflective and serious at moments in this forum. It's really hard to write funny and fluffy, as I recently discovered, so I don't try often. I get a far bigger kick out of ironic humour than HA-HA humour, anyhow. I'll happily comment light and fluffy on your blog though, although even then I'm usually holding back and trying to masque how deeply, DEEPLY, penetrated my mind is in the gutter. The real-life me is famous for cracking some inappropriate black-humored or off-coloured joke at exactly the wrong moment.

Or maybe the "real-life" me just says what everyone else is thinking?

Anyways. In terms of the biking crap, sometimes I feel I write about biking from the perspective of someone who's walked into the room half way through the conversation and is trying to sound like an authority. I really don't know what the hell I'm talking about because I don't know the history. I'll probably write excitedly about something because I've just discovered it, in the meantime all the veterans are rolling their eyes at my "old news."

Just humour me, 'kay. I'll grow up eventually.

Mostly, though, I blog because I like to write. I'm a pretty good writer, I think. Although my style may not be for everyone. I just like to write about what is burning a fire in my gut at the moment.

And RANT a little.

Or A LOT.

But given that writing kinda sustains me, I end up feeling pretty vulnerable about anything I spew out. That's hard for me to deal with some days.

Literary exhibitionism. Hmmmmm. Notice I said "half-undressed" above, eh. It's always most exciting the moment before the last item comes off.

Maybe I'm just intimidated by all my more experienced biker blogging friends who I have come to revere and feel inspired by and I think DO know what they are talking about?

Maybe I should just stop obsessing about the whole damn thing?

It's a chicken or egg, kinda thing isn't it? Do I write because I over think? Or do I over think because I write?

Meh. Mostly I write for me.

Gearhead

2010-12-21T18:13:00.000-06:00

I lifted the photo from the ProBikeKit Facebook page. It is a nice little piece of art in addition to being a schooling for me. I've already talked about how useless I am when it comes to bike components so that even simple things like knowing how aggressive I can get with those components when cleaning my bikes makes me nervous.

The other day a friend, who I know reads my blog, forwarded me this link about how to clean your bike in 10 minutes from Bicycling Magazine -- the mag for everything a lay person (and mechanical idiot) should want or need to know about biking, or so you would think. I scanned it with interest until point #4 which told me to "remove rear derailleur housing" and then I was done with that article because that was the most useless thing you could ask me to do. I'd have to stare at my bike for about 10 minutes just to figure out what might be the "derailleur housing." The bike still wouldn't get clean.

Actually I could stare at my bike all day and still not know what that is exactly.

I get a little better every year though so I will get there. I listen. I learn. I take people's unsolicited advice -- usually. The understanding isn't instantaneous and I don't know what I don't know so I fail to ask questions that I probably should. I'm a strong believer in learning from my own mistakes. I ended up with a bike too big for me because I didn't know what to ask. I loved that Devinci. It was pretty and orange and I wanted it and they didn't have a size small. So I was sat on a medium (not at Alter but at another bike shop in the city -- also a good bike shop) and told to put my hands on the drops, bend my elbows 90 degrees and, could I see the hub?

Uh, No. I said. I didn't know what "the hub" was, at the time. I thought "the hub" was something other than what it really was.

OK, then it fits. I was told. Well, it didn't really fit I quickly discovered. Lesson learnt. But what did I know. Nothing.

When I was going through the experience of creating my Project ONE a year ago, I had test rode another slightly lower model Madone that was in the store and Dave told me I would have basically two choices of shifting systems that would fit best with my price range Ultegra or SRAM. And he did his best to explain the difference to me and I'm sure I stood there blinking with big eyes and a "deer in the headlights look." A look, I am sure, Dave is very familiar with by now, coming from me -- it doesn't stop him from at least trying to teach me, though.

Although not long ago I went in the store to get chain lube (owned bikes for 2.5 years, I just bought my own chain lube .....sad...sad....) and he says to me, "You want a low viscosity lube?"

ME: I don't know. Sure?

HIM: Yes, yes you do.

ME: Whatever you say.

And that is kind of a standard bike shop visit for me.

But I digress from my shifting story......

So I mocked up my Project ONE and emailed it off to Dave with the explanation that I was counting on him to tell me if I was making any bad choices. I chose Ultegra, I guess, (Ultegra SL, apparently -- whatever that means) and that's what I have. I'd never tried SRAM at that time and I guess I gravitated to the familiar, and a lower price tag, but I have tried SRAM now and if I could go back and do it again, I would pick that instead. That's about the only thing I would change of the choices I made in ignorance a year ago. I was trying to keep costs down because, as it was, I spent about $1000 more than I intended to.

But it's all just a matter of preference, I suppose. The Ultegra is fine, actually. It's great. I haven't had a single problem with it. I had Shimano 105 before that and it was constantly causing me trouble.

So imagine how lost I am feeling right now knowing that the next time I make a big bike related toy purchase it will be wheels -- which is item #2 on Kim's covet list. I had considered getting race wheels when I originally built my Madone but, again, the costs were already mounting so I opted to just wait.

So I'm thinking about wheels now and I should be doing some research but I don't even know what to research. I'm trying not to have a price tag in my head because I know I'll throw the price tag out the window if I find something I like the "idea" of. I can tell you that I'm not spending $4000 --- $1000 is probably a more reasonable estimate. I said I wanted wheels that were, at the very least, no heavier than what I presently have on the bike. Dave said that would be pretty hard to do because the wheels on my bike now are pretty good wheels.

I'll take his word for it. I have no idea what makes a "pretty good wheel." These are kinda nice looking though (and probably way out of my price range):

Stolen from the Bicycling Facebook Fan Page. Facebook usually isn't good for much more than telling me that everyone is sick right now and getting ready for Christmas, but it does feed me lots of cycling news.

So I don't know. There is another part of me that says forget getting wheels and go on a trip or something. What do I really NEED them for? Am I even competitive enough to need that? And with all the damn crosswind in this province will they be helpful? I don't know.

So if anyone wants to feed me information about "what I don't know about wheels, etc," feel free. I'll listen. Email me if you'd rather.

I must buy a cyclocross bike for next year and that really is a bigger priority. I suppose I have a few connections that might lend me wheels for the couple important times I might want them.

I never thought I would turn into someone who contemplated this kind of thing. It's only a matter of time before I insist on having a dual suspension mountain bike too so.......... But I'm hoping to be able to wait until one my kids can ride my present mountain bike for that.

Never ending money hole this biking thing is.

But you can't put a price tag on love or freedom.

A Christmas Fantasy

2010-12-19T16:41:00.000-06:00

'Twas the night before Christmas, when down the back stairs,

The bikes were all leaning, stacked up in pairs.

The carbon was shiny, top tubes all a glitter,

In hopes that new wheels would join this fine litter.

In my bed I was resting, not a word to be uttered.

Hot cycling butts visioned, mind firmly in gutter.

New Twin Six jersey -- adorned -- what a find!

"Sweetest jersey in the world," Fort Garry, never mind.

This, No?

Or That?

When at my front door, bump thump and whatnot,

Tore my mind from its thoughts of... well... (dot... dot... dot).

A peak through the curtains gave a big fright.

The snow was all gone, it was sunny and bright!

I gave no second thought, I stood in a trance.

Out on my front walk was the man they call Lance!

Wearing fingerless gloves, I took this a sign,

Helmet and shoes and Madone 6.9

Lycra and Shack shorts, Livestrong 28

I knew at that moment, there would be no debate.

He snapped his fine fingers and said, "Let's get going!"

From behind bushes and fences they all came a rolling.

Voigt, Kloden and Sanchez, Hesjedal and Sastre,

Wiggens and Evans, could this group get much faster?

Lance beckoned with finger. I did no more than laugh.

"Come on and get moving. Get in our draft."

So with odd grace and ease, I took to my bike.

Straddle and clip-in and moves of the like.

And low and behold, what's this that I see?

My numbers all tell me our speed's 53!

I move up the ranks. How will I outlast?

I glance at Saint Lance, "I can NOT go this fast!"

"Quit yer whining," says he. "You're not here by luck.

In my peloton you will not wheel suck."

"I brought you out here to have a short chat.

You must get a grip and all this and that.

Enough is enough, from all that I've read.

Why are YOU sleeping alone in that bed?"

I shrug and I shrivel and keep up with the pedal.

"Why do you care? What's up with this meddle?

Where are we going? You disrupted my thoughts!"

That's when off in the prairie I see the gift box.

We pick up the pace. This is way out of whack.

In all this excitement, I've dropped the pack!

"This year we'll be 40. No time to downshift.

I pulled strings and called favours to bring you this gift."

I unwrap the gold bow. I feel a big wreck.

And from out of the box jumps Andy Schleck.

I'm stunned and I'm panting, up shoots my heart rate.

I question Saint Lance, "Isn't he jail bait?"

Saint Lance rolls his eyes, mistletoe in his fingers.

Andy bends down, his kiss simply lingers.

Lance says with a smile, "Here's my message to you."

"Dreams become real. Now I must toodle-loo."

He sprang on his seat in a mount I do envy.

With a wink, smirk, and nod. THAT told me plenty.

And I heard him exclaim as he rode out of sight.

"Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!"

Merry Christmas Everyone! And Thanks for Reading!

Why I Will NEVER do an Ironman

2010-12-16T20:14:00.001-06:00

Feel free to quote me on that, by the way.

Thanks to Jenn H. for alerting me to this. It speaks for itself.
Language warning so... plug your kids ears and careful while at-work-not-really-working.

Crazy Legs

2010-12-14T22:52:00.000-06:00

Duathlon in the Park Series May 2010

....... I train? On reflection I think in the past two years I've TRIED to train but failed.

Right now I am training f'ing hard. Harder than I've trained any winter season.

Is it wrong to admit that I'd rather be better than mid-pack at races?

Have I mentioned I'll be 40 before the next race season starts? My time of improving from season to season is rapidly running out.

I was having this conversation today about the connection between a skating history in childhood and cycling. I used to skate as a kid. I did recreational figure skating until I was 12. Nothing spectacularly high level. My parents didn't want to put out the huge cash for club skating.

Then I switched to basketball and school sports. Yes I know I'm 5'3" -- but I started playing basketball in grade 8 and the assumption was that I would still grow taller. I didn't, but everyone else around me did. I was a decent basketball player. Very agile. An excellent free throw shooter and ball handler. But by a certain age, my lack of growth caught up to me and I spent a lot of time on the bench. Actually there was a performance anxiety thing too. I panicked in real games when the ball came my way and got called for travelling a lot. If I was relaxed in a game I was fine. But usually I wasn't relaxed and my legs stuttered and I didn't even know it. It earned me a nickname though.

Crazy Legs.

I hated that nickname.

I developed leg muscles early in life because of skating, though, and I guess I carried the ability to re-develop those muscles into adulthood because the minute I got on a bike, at the ripe old age of 37, something clicked.

So, in case you care, here is my hot and cold romance with the notion we call "Training."

I did OK at sprint distance triathlon, the summer of 2008, with zero training in swimming or biking. I had trained all winter for the Manitoba Half Marathon and ran my best time to date (1:54:15). My best triathlon result that summer was coming 5/20 in my age group in Riding Mountain. If I could do that well on essentially NO formal training, I wondered what would happen if I trained.

I joined a triathlon club the following fall and probably biked about 3 times per week and ran about 3x per week and tried to swim 2x per week but fell off the wagon by January or so and probably swam once a month, if that. It was a huge jump in training volume for me as I tried to keep up with the Tribalistic "Jones's" and I paid for it in IT band problems, night sweats, weight gain, and calf troubles -- perpetual calf troubles. I was also dating someone who lived to race. Some of those races I did too, some of them I did despite not wanting to do them, and some of them I was saved from doing by having the kids.

Sometimes kids are a fantastic excuse to not show up.

Physio and Athletic Therapy were my friends that fall, winter and spring. My triathlon performance that summer (2009) was not much different than the summer before, which makes me walking evidence that overtraining is counterproductive.

My biking was getting better though. Still not where I thought I could be, and by this point I knew I was on the wrong sized bike which I was also sure was not helping.

I signed up for the Calgary 70.3 because that race-hungry boyfriend at the time signed up for it. Again I was trying to keep up when I wasn't ready, but I kinda felt like I was supposed to try. Two weeks later I was done with the guy and stuck with a race entry.

I packed up house. I moved. I found another guy. I bought a bike. You know the story.

I biked maybe twice a week last winter. Skied a bit because the new guy was a skier. Swam rarely, once again peaking in November and falling off the wagon. Peaking at swimming in November does nothing to help your triathlon race in June.

I focused on running last winter, thinking that if I could train for a half marathon in the winter and spring and, during the summer, just maintain that fitness until August 1st, that would help allow me to focus on the bike when the snow melted and be ready in time for Calgary.

But the calf problems came back sometime after Christmas. Same thing. Cramping so bad and painful that running was impossible. My calves would be hard as rocks. The tightness creeped slowly down the back of both my legs and then settled in my calves. So I would walk and then run and walk and then run and eventually it would relieve itself and I could run steadily and normally but that usually took a painful half hour to get there.

Because AT worked the first time around, I acted quickly and went back as soon as it started up. A few weeks of running very very slowly and taking very long warm up periods, had me ready for Police Half at the beginning of May, at least. But I longed for the days when I could run a 9 minute mile comfortably. At that time, a 10 minute mile felt hard. I feel maxed out of breath a whole lot quicker when running in pain. I ran 2:00:15 at Police this year.

And Athletic therapy has always seemed to work. The guy I see is a bit of a sadistic bastard... (his words, not mine) but it works. And it hurts like hell. I'm not the best at consistently doing those little stability exercises they give you, but I try. But the timing of AT working has always been around spring -- just as we hit the road and outdoor bike training begins.

But biking feels good. Biking never seems to feel bad. It felt even better once I had bought myself a nice little package of speed in the form of the Madone. And I was finally on a bike that actually fit me.

The Calgary training plan came out of a book. The plan was to pop into the half ironman training schedule at the finish of Police Half, and by that point, I was already far advanced of where the training plan had me situated in both running and biking (still wasn't swimming). And I was having trouble fitting the book's plan to my crazy life. So the plan kinda fell by the wayside and I did my own thing. So the Calgary training ended up being bike bike bike, a couple runs a week, a long run every second week, and swim when the mood struck and only in a lake. No more chlorine, thank you.

Thankfully, the calves were fine through the Calgary training and through the whole Calgary race. I did 3 Olympic Triathlons this summer prior to Calgary and came in 3rd in my age group in each one. I paid for the poor run training and inability to do speed work though. I think that in 2/3 of those races, I was in first place in my age group after the bike. Lost it on the run -- and never by a close margin either.

So training hasn't gone so well for me the last couple of years and I've never really focused on bike training before. It's hard to train for 3 sports, single parent, work full time -- even if I can do my workout in the middle of the day during work hours. I'm trying to be realistic now. One sport it is. My favourite one, of course.

I might do one or two triathlons this summer but there will be no swim training -- 6 AM dips in the cold pool in the middle of winter don't agree with my psyche. And I HATE doing 100s of meters of IM which is what Master's swimming forces me to do. What the hell do I need to do Fly for? Really. The occasional swim once the water opens up will be enough.

I hired Pat Peacock our head coach to train me this winter to bike better. I invested in a VO2 max test at U of M in November to get a baseline. I did that on my own because I've always wanted to try. It turned out OK, and believe me, my several cyclocross races in the weeks prior, helped that.

So now I'm on the trainer 5-6 times a week for 1-1.5 hours. I've been pretty well behaved up to this point in following "the plan" but this is only the beginning. I'm still enthusiastic. But I tend to follow plans pretty well. A friend offered to make me a plan in 2007 for my first half marathon. It was my first experience with formalized plans. It was combo running and strength training. I think I did nearly every run on that plan and followed it to the letter.

And yes Pat's training is the kind of training where I keep my heart rate in zones and time my intervals. Is that so wrong? I've had a problem of only having one speed all this year and that's a problem I'm trying to break. If I have to use a heart rate monitor to keep me well behaved, I'll do it.

I intended to run too on this plan. Not a lot of running but enough to maintain what I have. I didn't want to burn myself out on a bike by only biking. Since the summer, running has actually felt OK. It has been a sigh of relief to run pain free for the last six months. I felt like I was getting faster, not nearly back to where I was 3 years ago, but the potential was there.

But within two weeks of being back on the indoor trainer I was not able to run. I'm always in denial when it starts up again. I had vague lower calf pains for a very short period of time on my first training run on the treadmill two weeks ago. I blamed it on Supercross actually -- pedalling with one leg in places and paddling the ground with the other leg in other spots. That's what caused my tightened calves, said my denying brain. But I finished the run easily that day. And I kinda liked it.

I did an HHH run, three days later, through deepish fresh snow that left my calves cramping and forced me to walk part of the trail. Not even the beer helped. I blamed it on the uneven running surface.

I did my scheduled treadmill run four days after that and it was a waste of time. After 40 minutes of walk-running, I aborted the run figuring I'd suffered long enough. The calf problem is back. Can't deny it now.

I don't know what it is about this time of the year that kills my run. Is it being on a trainer? It is 100% equal and bilateral. My calves are hard as rocks and the lack of range of motion and foot flexibility in my lower legs leaves me feeling like I'm running on two stumps.

What's different about being on a trainer than being on the road? I have theories. Lack of upper body stability required to maintain balance, for one, I think that is part of it. I think it ends up changing my pedal stroke too perhaps? I don't know.

It could quite possibly also just be just a personal glitch I have in my anatomic make-up. I may just not be built to run and bike at the same time.

Anyways this is the 3rd winter training season where running has been hampered by this problem so I'm sucking it up and hitting the sports medicine clinic. I hate that idea too but I feel I have no other choice. Being a nurse, I have enough experience to know that what it boils down to is that doctors and the medical model have basically three solutions to problems.

A) Drug it.
B) Let's do Surgery.
C) Tell you to "Suck it up Princess" and live with it.

So I am going as a skeptic, but I'm going.

Cool Cyclocross Video: One Lap

2010-12-14T16:27:00.000-06:00

A cool video of American Cyclocross Nationals Mens 35-39 from the perspective of a bike cam from one racer. First crash.... 10 seconds in.

Cyclocross National Championships Masters 35-39 from Josh Whitmore on Vimeo.

On Bicycle Dirt and Bicycle Saviours

2010-12-13T19:46:00.001-06:00

The bike family ready for their bath.

I'm a baby-biker. I've got a lot to learn about bikes and biking in general and sometimes my fear of what I don't know and what damage I could be causing scares me a little.

Case in point: It scares me to clean bikes. I'm a bit of a dichotomy in this way. I'm cursed with a touch (a touch!) of perfectionism so when it comes to taking on any task, if I can't do it perfectly, I then take the opposite stance and I slack completely. Bike cleaning falls nicely into this category. It didn't help that, due to a leak, I didn't have an outdoor hose to use at my house all summer. Cyclocross motivated me to take care of that problem. Once, this past spring, I took my Madone into Alter Ego and when I went to pick it up, my bicycle benefactor, Dave Chennell had left a nice note on my receipt that said: "Kermit would like to be kept cleaner."

And thus is the origins of my bike's nickname.

I'm a little embarrassed about how dirty my bikes get. I admire all those who show up at every ride with their bikes sparkling and shiny. So I am trying to learn. It's been about 2 weeks since the last cyclocross race and I've been walking past Dave's cross bike in my basement daily thinking I should clean it up good and bring it back. But now that it's snowed I can't use the hose again. Supercross was snowy so the dirt factor was minimized, but I had only done a cursory cosmetic clean up job on the bike after Provincials, 3 weeks before, and Provincials was wet and muddy.

There's dirt everywhere on the bike. There's dirt in nooks and crannies that non-mechanical me would never think to look at. I could hear dirt grinding in the brake mechanism when I took the wheels off so I could get at those "hard to reach" places. I could hear dirt in the skewers when I unhinged them to loosen them. The front one was so freaking tight, I didn't think I was going to be able to undo it. And I'm not really sure what other things I can pull on and loosen up to get at some of that griminess because there is a good chance I'll take something off and not be able to get it back on.

Like I did with my road saddle when I put it on my mountain bike for the Golden Triangle ride. (Trading saddles was NOT a good idea by the way -- live and ... ouch ... learn). When I tried to put it back on my road bike and go for a jaunt out to the gravel at the end of Roblin, I got basically around the block when the saddle tilted. My hands are just not strong enough to tighten things well and Trek uses this weird saddle mount system that I'm not familiar with. So the longer ride was aborted and I made the 4km jaunt to Alter Ego instead for a visit with Dave.

Or when I tried to put my own mountain bike tires back on..... Dave took one look at them the next time I was in the shop and says, "Uh, you know you have the tread backwards."

Damn. I didn't know there was a difference. It's a miracle that I can get the tire on myself, period.

I especially appreciate that Dave never laughs at me when I do these ignorant and silly things. I try. He just looks at me patiently and asks if I'd like him to switch them for me. Yes, please.

Well at least he never laughs at me to my face.

All of us who bike have "a guy" we go see, right? Well, Dave's "my guy."

I met Dave because of my ignorance about bikes. He came to one of our Tribalistic Christmas training camps a couple of years ago to do a bike fit session when James turned up sick at the last minute. I'd been riding for all of about 8 months at this point. Dave fielded quite a few difficult questions about aero position from some of the more experienced in our group, questions I couldn't even repeat now they were so over my head.

All naive-me really wanted to know was why I was having so many problems with saddle sores. Let me tell you, there is nothing like going up to a stranger, a guy for that matter, and talking about your saddle sores.

I discovered pretty quickly that, thankfully, Dave and I have the same warped sense of humour. He's also virtually unembarassable (trust me, in the time since, I've tried -- bon chance, mon ami, says Dave to that). So he sat me on my bike and watched me peddle on the trainer for a bit and just from eyeballing me announced I needed to drop my saddle about 3 cm (3 cm!!). He took a couple quick measurements and it ended up being more like 3.5 cm. And it worked.

It was the beginning of a beautiful biker-chick/bike-shop-guy relationship.

I could give a dozen, or so, examples of Dave saving me from my own ignorance but you see the point. I definitely play favourites when I go into the shop. The rest of the Alter guys razz me/us mercilessly. Nothing personal boys. I love you all too. I hope I'm not contributing to making Dave's "Ego" too difficult to live with.

So I want to clean his bike up right. I took the wheels off and scrubbed them up good in the bathtub. And then I flipped the bike over because I don't have one of those fancy bike stands at my house like Greg, here, does (I should get one) and I discovered more secret hidden dirt:

There is something about this view of a bike that makes me want to avert my eyes and give it some privacy.

See I don't even know if it is appropriate to flip a bike like this (no wheels remember). I fear the damage I unknowingly cause to my own bikes, but I suppose this position is better than sitting the bike on its own drivetrain. It's a good thing Dave sent me off with his bike saying there was nothing I could do to it that he couldn't fix. I fear, Dave, that your bike is not coming back to you in the practically out-of-the-box clean condition you gave it to me in. Despite my best efforts.

Anyways. I'm thankful for Dave. I'm more than thankful. I'm grateful, and for the most part, flabbergasted. He's a good egg and he's becoming a good friend. I bring him coffee once and while but it hardly feels like enough. Yeah I've dropped more than a few bucks in the shop, because of it. Somewhere in the neighbourhood of a "tithe" -- to the church of the bicycle, of course.

I need Dave taking care of my bikes the way he does. I'd be lost otherwise. He's earned my trust and he makes me feel comfortable. I, in return, try not to take advantage of the service I get. It's all about give and take and I'm happy to sing Dave's praises even if it might mean he'll need a "bigger helmet." I put a lot of kilometres on my bikes and somebody has to save me from myself.

My Bike Saviour Dave: (yet another great Stefan Isfeld Photo)

American Idol Academics

2010-12-10T21:03:00.000-06:00

I've written a few blogs this week. Yeah, I know, you haven't seen them. As it sometimes goes, I write things I hope I can post and they end up going to a dangerous place and a little voice inside me screams: "DON'T DO IT!"

I don't always listen, but this week I did.

Then, as inevitably happens, something gets tossed in my path and I figure it out. I didn't figure it out for all of the blogging I've done but I figured it out for half of one post.

What happened is today, I sat through an epic staff meeting. Any staff meeting that goes over an hour can be defined as epic (today's weighed in at about 3 hours). Any staff meeting, of any length, where I can get through without making a sarcastic remark might be called a miracle.

Fortunately my coworkers, after 8 years of suffering the sharp-tongue that is me, have come to know me and love me for who I am. Because today was no miracle.

Part of today's meeting was my coworkers reporting on conferences they went to that were paid for by the department. There was a theme to today's reports: student entitlement. This theme was coincidental because I wrote the majority of what you will read below on Tuesday of this week.

One of the reports likened student entitlement to the American Idol experience. The "bad" American Idol singer experience. You know, those ones that THINK they are good because their moms and dads and aunties and uncles have told them their whole lives they are good, and then they go on TV and they are so laughably bad that they make it onto the bad singer portion of the show?

Don't we have students like that too? Don't we have a whole cohort of students who have been told their whole lives they are "good" and they can do anything (because heaven forbid we harm our kid's self esteem when they perform sub-standardly by telling them so) when really, they are only average. When did average become the new A+?

The other day I payed a vist to the other educational institution where I occasionally moonlight. I'm moonlighting again in January in order to pay off some bike-addiction related debt, and I had to pick up a textbook. I found my mailbox -- which I didn't know I still had, by the way, I haven't moonlighted in a year -- and it was stuffed with crap.

One envelope of that crap was a pile of standardized mandatory student evaluations from the summer of 2009.

I can't believe they kept them this long, was my first thought.

My second thought was to scan them with interest, particularly in light of the fact that I recently bragged about how my students thought I was cool.

Typically at this other institution, I am not perceived as being so cool. They are a tougher audience. My home institution has a much more "access" oriented attitude to admissions. Most of the students at my usual home base were not the "best and the brightest" in high school and they know it. They never worked to their potential before but they are working their butts off now, and sometimes the grade given for hard work is a shock. I've had thank-you's for giving out C's.

At my moonlighting institution, however, there are lofty entrance requirements and high GPA's. Many of these students were the kids who sat through classes in high school, stone faced and dazed, didn't study, and still got A's. They figure they should have the same privilege in university. They are equally shocked by my grades. Yeah. When they put in the same nothing effort in their university classes and get a nothing mark for it, guess who's fault that is?

Certainly not theirs. They are "A" students. And they've NEVER gotten this bad a mark in their life so the problem is with YOU, PROFESSOR.

[I especially love how they call me Professor -- usually with thick-tongued sarcasm veiled as feigned politeness. It makes me want to turn around and look over my shoulder and see who's standing behind me. I have a Masters degree and I'm a sessional. I don't have a rank.]

The quantitative part of these evaluations were the highest scored I've ever seen in the 6 or so times I've taught this course over at "the motherhouse" as we affectionately call it at my home base. I vaguely remember this section. This class went well. They were a pleasure to teach. And they got the material and asked good challenging questions. I remember standing up in front of the class and complementing them.

I'm obligated to hand these things out even though they never tell me anything new or say anything useful that helps me make the course better. A lot of them come back looking like this, with careful thought obviously put into their selection of evaluation choices:

Notice the clever camera placement to disguise the institution of origin (as IF you didn't know)
This is a fine example of what we call in research "jargon" the "acquiescence response set bias."

Do you think this student even bothered to read the stem associated with the question?

They don't usually write anything qualitative on those fancy computer generated lines where they are allowed to do so. They can't be bothered. Most of them come back blank. But those that do comment seem to have no trouble saying something blatantly rude and unhelpful during this opportunity they've been given to anonymously vent.

Who am I to talk though. I probably did it too. Once upon a time, I was one of them. Overachiever. A student. Same institution. Same faculty. You'd think this would make me more understanding.

I remember, as an undergrad, sitting on a faculty council at this same motherhouse institution and it was the same year they brought these standardized evaluations into being and listening to the discussion from the mouths of my profs and instructors about how nervous they were about having these things published publicly. (Which apparently they are. I've never looked.) How nice of them to publish those qualitative comments that talked about how the students didn't like a hairstyle or a suit they wore one day or how one had been referred to as "the dragon lady."

I can't recall a time that any student wrote anything so personal about me. Most of the time the comments I get are about things that I can't control, such as the fact that my course is in the program at all. "This is the worst most useless course I have ever taken." Great. I'll follow your carefully outlined feedback and make it better. Thanks for your suggestions.

Or my personal favourite from a few years back: "This course is just further evidence of the cash-grab nature of [this] program."

Thanks for the constructive criticism. Please take that up with the Canadian Nurses Association who has put countless hours of research into the entry level competencies required by nurses. See if they agree with you. They'll probably want to rip that degree out of your hands and tear it in two, because clearly, you missed the point of your four years of education. Please go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. And while you are there, find some personal growth.

From what I hear among my colleagues, you would think there isn't a single course in the entire program that is of any use to their career, except for the clinical ones and those are graded too hard and are too much work.

Today I particularly enjoyed reading this literary effort:

This class was IMPOSSIBLE to follow as a result of the profs teaching style. She spoke quietly and VERY fast, using jargon without explaining what it meant. Her tests were not related to her class content and the questions were hard to understand. Class notes had no flow and seemed random.

Wow. Was she in MY classroom. (It may not have been a she. But the handwriting is very girlish.) Me QUIET? Jargon? You mean like Cronbach's alpha, operationalized, manipulation, criterion related, transferability? That kind of thing? All the words you need to know and were supposed to have studied to understand research methodology? I take back that cheat sheet I gave you for 2 out of 3 tests. And next time I won't bother to give those practice exercises, which basically ARE the tests. Did you at least flip through the textbook that my notes were essentially plagiarized from? Obviously pre-loading you with the test questions didn't help. I won't do that any more.

Yes I do talk VERY fast by the way. I can't refute that.

Oh the joys of teaching mandatory curriculum material that doesn't involve saving lives. I've come to learn that often the students equate their passion for the material with the person standing in front of them. They can't seem to separate them. They hate the material, they hate the instructor. They hate the teacher, they hate the course. It is a shame.

They also seem to fail to equate their grade in a class with depth of understanding. The sense is that they should get an A just for showing up, reading the book, handing in their assignments (maybe). Oh but I worked SOOOOOO HARD in this class and I still only got a B.

Working hard does not equal exceptional understanding. I understand what I teach, but start talking interest rates and investing with me and my eyes glaze over. I squeaked out an A in economics one year not understanding a thing that came out of the mouth of the foreign grad student who was teaching the intro section or, for that matter, anything I read in the textbook, only because I've learnt over time how to outsmart a multiple choice test. And because I'm part of that 3% of students who will do well no matter how crappy the instruction.

Before I started teaching, I thought all students were like me. I thought I was of average intelligence but knew how to fake the system.

I can write a paper with ease. I can do stats. But I'll never be able to find the feel of knowing exactly how much to turn a screwdriver in my rear derailleur so my bike shifts better. We all have our aptitudes. I could study an engineering textbook for hours and still not develop a depth of understanding.

Notice that I didn't give you any examples of the positive things that students said. There are lots of those too. In fact, there are WAY more of those than the negative ones. Why do the negative ones stand out so much?

This one was kinda nice:

Excellent instructor -- Very good -- glad I had her. Loved the old tests -- review. Awesome cheat sheet idea -- actually an instructor who understands the point of the course i.e. not to memorize the text book!

Now there is a student who gets it. What she wrote was exactly what I was trying to do. One of our advisors in the staff meeting today said students are always coming into her office and saying that the test they just failed wasn't on anything they actually took in class. When she asks them to tell her what some of the questions were, inevitably one they recite back is a pure application question.

No, I am not always going to ask you to tell me the definition for "acquiescence response set bias." (If you were paying attention in this blog, you'll know it already). Sometimes I might show you a picture and ask you to name the response set bias shown in the image.

Most of the positive comments I get are spoken to my face and then never written formally. Like the student who spontaneously walked into my office today to thank me for my course. (Same course as I am being evaluated on above. Different audience. Different institution. Different year.) "I really enjoyed what you did. I could have sat there all day doing that stuff we did yesterday," he said. "I don't get it. But I enjoyed it."

I don't dwell on my student evaluations. I read them and I nod in agreement, usually. I smile when they are cute and gushy and nice. I roll my eyes when I am dropped unhelpful scathing feedback I can't change or offers no solutions that will make it better. And then ten minutes later it is gone out of my head and I'm on to the next pressing task. I don't lose one second worth of sleep.

So I have a stack of student evaluations sitting beside my computer now. There isn't much more I can do with them and there is a lot of blank space. They are good for this kind of thing though:

The next pressing task: Coach Pat's Friday trainer workout. This was a relatively easy aerobic day. You should have seen Wednesdays.

We Interrupt this Regularly Scheduled Blogging for a Musical Interlude

2010-12-03T21:50:00.001-06:00

The view from the Trainer. This ain't no Golden Triangle.
But the bike's got class.... "Loud", like his owner.
Meet Mr. Trek Madone aka "Kermit" (Because it ain't easy being green)

When I write those really cerebral posts as I did a couple back, I'm always left a little worn out and ragged -like I just came off a rebellious teenage bender or something. So I have to spend a few posts writing small fluffy little pieces.

When I wrote my first book, I used to kill many an anxious hour in the kitchen taking care of life listening to tunes that were speaking to me at the time while I waited for the hours to tick on by till the kids went to bed and I could write.

My kids are older now, so I can write while they destroy the living room right under my nose. Which is what it sounds like they are doing right now, by the way.

Then in the last months of my marriage while we still lived together but were essentially already separated, I used to escape the tension by going out to see my friend's husband's cover band (7 Days). They had what was considered, at the time, a pretty break-through set list that burst through some standards in the cover band industry (if such a thing exists), meaning they played some hard rock tunes while rebelling against the traditional sappy pop covers.

The last couple of years I haven't listened to as much music. The cover band split their various ways about 3 years ago but it was good news for some of the members of the group. The drummer now plays with Theory of a Deadman (I believe still does) and the singer currently tours with Ian Thornley.

We all knew that cover band was too good to last.

So as I was sitting on the dastardly trainer for the fourth time this week listening to tunes I'd just plugged into a playlist specifically for this purpose, while pushing myself through some painful intervals and I thought I might share a little of what I plug into my ears while I ramp my heart rate up.

And if it doesn't have loud guitar, don't even put it on.

So here are a sampling of 5 of mine, in no particular order. What are yours?

Uncle Johnny -- The Killers -- One of my young writing friends put this on a CD for me once when I asked her to expose me to what was considered "Alternative" now.... because in MY DAY, alternative was nothing like this:

Go Let it Out -- Oasis -- I always and forever will have the hots for bad boy Liam Gallagher.

Psycho -- Puddle of Mudd -- probably related to my state of mind. Is that really Kid Rock and Pamela Lee in this video?

Superstition -- Stevie Wonder - the "band" used to play this and then they stopped. It was the first song I ever heard them play.

Paper Thin -- John Hiatt -- Another song that showed up on a made-for-me CD by a different friend. The song is pretty damn good.

Not So Pretty

2010-12-03T15:30:00.002-06:00

I was testing out the remote post and it didn't quite work as planned and all the typing didn't go through.

Don't you love how cyclists flaunt their wounds? My turn.

Keep in mind, I don't bruise and this has been nearly a week.

Ich Bin Ein Puppetmeister

2010-11-29T23:12:00.000-06:00

I started teaching my writing course this morning. Never mind that the scheduled class started at 0800 and I wasn't awake enough to be coherent, I was there and I was on time, and the coffee dripped nicely from the IV I started on myself (there are benefits to my line of work) and things went swimmingly.

I talked about the things the students cared about the most, meaning, how to get a good grade in my class while doing the least amount of work. We talked about "VOICE", I read to them from Chuck Palahniuk (because he's brilliant), rob mclennon (because I needed the obscure poet voice), and Bike Snob NYC (because I am nerdy like that).

I teach research and I teach academic writing and thankfully, I have enough self esteem to take it. I hear daily about how much students hate my subjects. They want guts and glory and kinaesthetic learning and they don't want any of this heady dry abstract crap that isn't going to save a life. They like me though. I'm kinda cool, so says my student evals. I stand up in front of my class and make jokes about being hated and they laugh. This is how I am in my real life. In my job life, I don't care what people think. If teaching dreaded courses keeps me from talking about IV's and dressing changes, nursing theory and pathophysiology, I'm a happy woman.

And I legitimately like this crap.

I'm known as the "APA Queen" and, under the right circumstances, "The Plagiarism Police." I can answer any question about APA and its most optimum use, I can mark a page-long reference list in about 20 seconds. I can rattle off an opinion about what constitutes plagiarism and what doesn't, similar to how the bike shop guys can rattle off a pitch about why Dura Ace is better than Campignolo (or vice versa, depending on who you talk to).

Which is why it makes it all the more ironic that I'm about to write a post that I've essentially stolen from another post. But since I linked it, I suppose it is no longer stolen but rather cited -- so I am safe.

I am a writer. I'm controlling you and you don't even know it. I'm hypochondriac, paranoid, and a "lying liar who lies." I told two lies in the above paragraphs and made reference to something which was inspired by something written by someone else and I'm not going to tell you who it was. I will steal your life and then I will fuck with it. You may not even know it's happened. That's how good I am. And if it makes you feel better, I fuck with my own life as well. I'm one dangling participle away from being committed.

Except, of course, I'm lying. So don't believe a word I say.

Beware of the Family Dinner

I wrote two novels for teens and for the plots of which (I use the word "plot" loosely -- I'm a character writer) I stole liberally from my own life. I stole tid bits from my friends' lives too. I stole words out of their mouths, their favorite sayings; I stole their body language too.

I bet you don't even realize that you do that thing with your hands do you?

Yes, I'm talking to you.

I'll tell you a story about stealing. I was in a writer's course a few years back.

This is how the lying begins. I start to get vague. I can tell you names and I can tell you dates but unless you were there, you'll never be able to pin it on me.

One member of my class was related to a person who was soon, but perhaps it was unknown at the time, to become a published writer. I could tell you genders and I could tell you ages. But I won't, because the innocent need to be protected.

Another person in that same class wrote a brilliant first chapter to a potential novel. This second classmate received accolades for this chapter. The end of this chapter contained a reference to a rather shocking, yet hilarious, sexual anecdote. The chapter author essentially confessed to the class that this was an incident that happened in real life (writers are good at getting personal like that).

Fast forward a couple-ish years. The other classmate's relative has book published. I read book, and LOW and BEHOLD if this, now published, book doesn't contain the EXACT same highly unique sexual anecdote as our classmate's chapter. And it's not nearly as well written or as authentic sounding as the original author's version.

Coincidence? Could two people have had the same hilarious sexual experience? I think not. And my paranoid writer's mind can conjure up the conspiracy theory of how this happened.

Classmate #1 goes home to the fam. Pleasant family dinner, ensues. The white linen table cloth adorns the table. Candles are lit. Perhaps they have ham and brussels sprouts and cream corn and mashed potatoes.

And wine. Naturally, lots and lots of wine.

Classmate #1 starts talking about the writing course at the dinner table. There are other writers in the family. They'll care.

Ha ha ha. YOU'LL never guess the amazing story that Classmate #2 read to us today.

Hilarious sexual anecdote is related at the family dinner table. This would be the kind of family where such an anecdote would be perfectly acceptable dinner-talk amidst the fine china and silver and crystal.

Fast forward a week. A month. A year. Classmate #1's relative is in the midst of editorial hell and rewrites. She remembers a story she was told of a hilarious sexual anecdote. It would fit her character, brilliantly.

Who told me that story? Gosh I can't remember. I think it must have been my friend Jane. It sounds like a "Jane" story.

She "steals" the story and it ends up in her book. The book gets published and there it is. Classmate #2 is essentially screwed. She could never publish her story. People will think she stole it.

The moral of the story is, don't tell your secrets to writers. You're life is fair game. They'll distort them and then they'll use them and they'll publish them and they may not even be able to remember whose life they ravaged.

But naturally I'm lying. I made a part of this up. Maybe it wasn't at a class, maybe it wasn't shared at a dinner, or maybe it wasn't a sexual anecdote at all but a fight in a bar with a unique outcome. It could be, but sex is more fun, isn't it? Maybe you can tell me your secrets and I'll protect them for life. But I don't know what's true anymore.

I don't remember.

Wake me Up

For one book I was the puppet master and for the other I was the puppet.

I wrote one novel in 9 months. Writing a book is a little like making a baby. It starts off as a parasite inside you and then it festers and grows to a size that is unmanageable and it is a tremendous relief when it comes out. It's often a painful extraction, but the drugs involved can be very very good.

Book number one was a poor sleeper. It woke me in the middle of the night with startled and profound certainty that I was the most horrid writer in existence and I should just QUIT before I hurt someone. In particular the one likely to get hurt was me. But it all came out OK and it was good to wake up and find that the world was kinder than I thought and what I wrote was actually good. I controlled this book. I overprotected it. It didn't see the light of day until it was perfect and well matured.

The second book wasn't a parasite. It was poison. It was tasteless and odourless. It was voodoo. It was written at a time when my life controlled me. And after a while I wasn't sure if I was writing the book or if the book was writing me. Dictating my decisions. Feeding my paranoias. Turing into my self-fulfilling prophecy.

I've written nothing fiction since. I've written this blog though, which of course is mostly obnoxious narcissistic crap.

And this is what happens with blog writing:

It takes 10 hours of thinking to conceive a post such as this one. Sometimes more. It takes me about 3 hours to write and edit. And then I hit "publish post." The pretty orange button at the bottom. More often than not this is late at night. I sit up re-reading what I wrote. I can't let it go, similar to how I had a heck of a time letting go of novel number one, I overprotect. I nit pick. I "obsessively edit,"as my notation says below beside the date -- this is not a joke invented for your entertainment. It is my real nightmare.

But for the evening, I think what I've written is clever and entertaining and I send it out there to be lapped up and ridiculed or adored and admired... who knows. How I feel about it, depends on when you ask me.

Because I sleep on it. And then I wake up thinking I'm not much of a genius anymore. Except this isn't like my first book which I could smother and keep to myself. This is a blog. And it's out there and being read. And I check my stats and, overnight, about 24 people have looked so far. This sucks. I suck. And I wanna pull it down and hide it again the same way I changed my mind when I offered to let my (X) husband read my book. His sin? Not asking why I took the offer back when he wasn't looking. I did it on the sly. When he was out of town. And then he never asked again.

So I delude myself. So 24 people looked so far but that's OK because it was likely so bad and so boring that no one bothered to read the whole thing anyway. They didn't get to the real obnoxious part.... you know where I insulted this person, or that person who I deliberately teased about something.

Lord knows in real life I have a knack for inadvertently hitting on people's sensitive spots, unknowingly. Like that day I made fun of a certain guy friend and ridiculed him for not wearing his glasses all the time. He should just admit he needs them. He can't even recognize someone he knows from 20 feet away, for cripes sake.

And then it was just one insult after another thrown back at me for the rest of that conversation because I reminded him of his age. I guess.

Why is he mad? Doesn't he know I have a thing for guys in glasses? He read my first book. I said it in there. I liberally stole that nugget from my life.

And I tease you because I like you. I'm like a 12 year old boy.

I've become an expert at assuming I've offended and apologizing. It's one thing to tease someone in person and be able to read their reaction. It's another thing to do so in writing. I get paranoid about that. My writer neurosis can't take blogging. My skin may not be thick enough. That's why I had to go back and remove the word asshole from that last sentence. Who's the asshole anyway? Only me.

Although most of the time I think I am really damn good.

I'm teasing. I'm just teasing.

And I'm lying. Naturally. Because I'm a stupid f'ing liar.

I'm a writer.

Supercross, Nordic Cross, Whatever-cross. Belgians Rule.

2010-11-28T17:52:00.001-06:00

Story of my life. Picking myself up off the ground.

I sucked.

As I sit here and write this I'm still feeling the effects of the beer I drank after the race. I shoulda drank it before the race. It might have limbered me up a bit for the core workout. But I wanted to get this down in typing while it was still "clear" in my memory. Clear as mud, that is. Or clear as snow, in this case.

Still looking tough and determined early in the first lap. And still on my bike.

Top Five Crashes I experienced at the last cross race of the season:

1. The remount crash. This was the stupidest of all crashes so I mention it first. I hauled my bike up the stairs out of the bush and -- I don't remember what happened. Maybe my front wheel was twisted. I took a flying leap. And pretty much missed the saddle. It was on flat smooth snow. It was all downhill after that.

2. The face-plant crash -- Slipping on my shoe covers hauling-butt up the steep grassy hill. Boom. Down with my bike on top of me.

3. The crazy dip from hell crash x 2 -- shortly after the steep climb hill, there was a dip in the course and it was perfectly rideable for about 3 laps and then it was slippery as hell. The first downing was benign. The second caused cheers from the spectators. I believe skidding was involved.

4. The bottle neck crash -- Sandwiched by two passing A racers. One of them was the Dark Lord. I can say this with utter certainty -- I would know that blue Cannondale tie-fighting bike anywhere. The other.... who knows... but JP apologized about a dozen times for knocking me down somewhere, so what the hell, we'll blame him.

Taking a lesson from the master of evil: There's the Dark Lord there. Proof of his aggressive tactics. Cutting corners a little.

5. The S-turn, I-shoulda-been-running-but-instead-I-was-trying-to-ride, crash -- All I remember is Dave Benson pointing at me with his camera and saying, "I got you on that one." Thanks Dave. That moment was recorded for posterity above. Here is the after-moment as I respond to Dave's snarky remark.

See, I'm a good sport. Still smiling because I am having the time of my life.
Sporting my own "dark side" colours.

It was the second time I've ridden on snow. Ever.

There are more than a couple snowbanks with outlines of my body embedded within. The whole cross amnesia thing is setting in now. I'm sure I was picking myself up off the ground at least a dozen times with another 2-dozen near misses. But I have equally as many bruises. You can play dot to dot on my legs.

I have no idea how many laps I did. I kept thinking the whole race: I'm just as winded as I usually am but my legs are working at 50% capacity. My upper body, however, was working at 110%. I was not prepared for the constant battle to keep the bike under control. It was pure terror and awesomeness combined. It felt like we were doing far too many laps. I fully admit to graciously thanking Paul B both times he lapped me...

Paul B. Sporting the Mo AND abiding by Rule #37.

I must point out this photo of Johnny G as I, similarly, spent much of the race in this exact pose....

......other foot though. I have a left foot preference.

Sometimes I think I could have run the course faster. It was the first race I've done that had a run-in start. This is the bike I wanted to take instead of my own. The reason is obvious.

Not to mention those SHORTS.

Other important news of the day is that after talking all big and bad-a$$ in my last post, I did still manage to beat Terri despite her major equipment upgrade. Terri who commutes much of the winter and has snow riding experience held her own out there pretty good, and fared far better than I in the staying upright department. I could always see her the whole race though, right out of the corner of my eye. I did, unfortunately, miss hearing her ragging on the Dark Lord for knocking her down. I DIDN'T however miss her calling Morgan a "jerk" for shovelling snow on her.

Terri sporting new wheels.

Terri, you have no idea how thankful I am that we understand each other as we do. 15:5 now Terri. I'm still behind.

The after race was as fun as the race itself. The Belgian beer went down nice. Had a nice chat with Gary about next year's race schedule. Got to meet and know a little better a few people that I know primarily from their blog commenting prowess. Discovered I know JP's wife from a past life -- yet another former lifeguard I reconnect with via my obsessive athletic pursuits. The world is too small.

JP doing his thang.

Thanks Olympia for putting on a great race. Thanks Dave Benson for the great photos, as always.

And just so you know, I missed my daughter's mini fun swim meet to do this race so Rule #11 was obeyed. I mention it only because Mommy guilt is setting in now.