Getting closer

Friday, 14 August




You have to understand, good pie crust is in my genes and is part of my heritage. My mother and my grandmother made such fantastic pie pastry that, as a child (and even to this day), I preferred pie crust to pie filling. They taught me well, and I can make a flaky, wondrous delight with flour, shortening, water, and a few grains of salt. But then shortening was condemned as the root of a lot of evil, so I substituted canola oil. Definitely not the same, but passable, and more work. Then my husband gave up wheat, which cuts out the whole flour thing. But apple tart is his dessert of choice, and it's gravenstein apple season, so I must bravely go forth and try to learn new pie-making skills.


The first recipe I found was a flop. It basically said you could substitute rice flour for wheat flour, and butter for shortening, and you'd be happy with the result. NOT. If you're not a pastry maker, it's hard to explain, but gluten is the thing that's in flour that makes a pie pastry too heavy and ugh-ly if you work the pastry too hard and beat down the gluten. So, if you start with gluten-free flour, it's pretty much a no-brainer that you've got a headstart to heavy and ugh. It came out like rich (that's the butter), dense, chewy pastry instead of a light flaky wonder.



Then I got some sound advice from a true pastry chef (thanks, Laura!) and inspiration from a county-fair, blue-ribbon pie making queen (that's you, Judy)--both of 'em bike racers. And did some more research in that giant cookbook called the internet. I narrowed my choices down to two recipes. Both called for weird things not in my cupboards (potato starch, xanthan gum, sorghum flour), so I had to go shopping.



I have to digress here. I have a "thing" about trying to make foods into things they're not just so they look like other foods. Tofurkey comes to mind. There are so many good foods out there that if you choose not to eat one (turkey, in this case), why not just admit you don't eat turkey and not pretend to yourself that you're eating dead poultry when you pretend to others that you don't eat dead poultry? I'm a vegetarian, but I try not to eat overprocessed foods--and most of those tofu-derived, fake meats fall into the category of things I don't buy. What's this got to do with pie crust? Well, maybe pie crust is meant to be just shortening, flour, salt, and water, and if you choose not to eat one of those ingredients, maybe you should just be content to eat apple crumble instead of having your pie and eating it too.


But I had to try. So this afternoon I stood (in my helmet and cleats) in the "natural foods" section of my supermarket (what are all the other foods they sell--"unnatural"?), pondering sorghum flour and other things I'd only seen as so many words on nutrition labels. I thought the recipe calling for xanthan gum would be the way to go because it only called for two things I didn't already have. But xanthan gum is $13 for a little package, and really what was I going to do with a pound of xanthan gum? So I opted for the white rice flour, sorghum flour, and potato starch recipe because those three items together cost less than xanthan. Not cheap, but not $13. Oh, and I also bought some shortening, on a tip from Laura.



My recipe rubbed against my pie sensibilities. Adding an egg is cheating! And no thanks, I don't want cinnamon in my pie crust. I'm not sure about vinegar, but I know a lot of people use it. Basically, though, I followed the recipe, substituting shortening for some of the butter. It rolled out better than my previous GF attempt and it hung together better in the pan. It smelled good while it baked (that was the apples, though), and it got nicely brown and a little crispy on the edges. Then we had to wait for it to cool.


I think I'd rate this attempt at a B+. It is definitely better than store-bought pie crust. I had more pastry than pie, so it was maybe a little thicker than it should have been, and thus a little heavier. The bits of the rolled edges were close to the "real thing." One noticeable difference is that rice flour is grainier than wheat flour, so at first bite the pastry is toothier. But when you eat the crust with the filling (like most pie eaters do, I suppose), it's really really close to a wheat flour crust. With some tweaks, I think this recipe will be a keeper. Maybe I'll have to let the PruPieMaster be teh judge....

BTW potato starch is pretty cool stuff. It's kind of like cornstarch, but heavier and not as...flighty. I'm looking forward to working with it some more.

Cascade

Monday, 27 July

I've been going to the Cascade Cycling Classic longer than almost any other race. I always have a fun time in Bend. This year was no exception.

There were so many things that contributed to a great week. Best find this year was Le Cakery, where you get to pick the flavor of your cupcake and the flavor of your frosting; it's a really good thing there's not a place like that around the corner from me the rest of the year! Thump Coffee was a great place to drink super good coffee (if I can tell a difference, it must be good!), catch up on email, watch the Tour, and people-watch the who's who of the Bend cycling community (thankfully I had a guide who recognized them; I did not, for the most part). The scenery around Bend of course is marvelous, and the level and amount of competition in the bike races prove that riders in the NW will race in the summertime if you give them what they want. And having Jadine and Mike share their honeymoon with about 600 other bike racers made this year's trip to Bend unique! :)

But the thing that made the week most special for me was people:

The host housing friends who welcome you back year after year.

The teammates and support staff who work so hard together to make it all happen, even in the face of bad luck, illness, and injury.

The "kid" I haven't seen in years but ran into out of the blue on the crit course who now owns a bike shop in Boise.

The man who came up to me at the crit and said his son was at a national junior team camp (?) with the son of an old friend of my husband. His son's name is familiar in Oregon bike racing, but how did this guy know me just walking down the street in Bend?

Four of the Hagens Berman guys, melting into a bench outside an ice cream shop in downtown Bend. After I'd chatted with 2 of them for at least 10 minutes, one of the other 2 says "I don't think I know you"--as in, why are my friends so chatty with this old broad? The fourth was too shy to say much at all. :)

The commissaire from Seattle who shared a table with my team director and me during our morning coffee/Tour/email ritual and offered up a little of the officials' side of the race.

The OBRA official who didn't hesitate to let me register for my husband while he was stuck in a rental car nightmare. Everybody else had to show their license, but my magic words that afternoon were "I'm Mick." :) I did have to repeat them several times as I moved through registration because everyone in the process wondered why I was at packet pick-up for an event with no (amateur) women's field.

The woman behind me in buffet line at the meet-the-sponsors pasta feed for the women's race who had crewed for a two-person relay team at Race Across the West. She was astounded that I had even heard of the race (RAW and Cascade draw from pretty different cycling communities) much less that I knew riders and other crew at that race. I tried to get her to try the 6-hour Ring of Fire TT this September.

The Bend cyclist who killed the women's Firecracker TT on July 4 who was part way up the time trial course, cheering for my rider AP.

The race staff who always had time to say hello and answer my questions.

Cycling is such a small world and for the most part a close-knit, supportive community. It is fascinating to go to an event as big as Cascade and see how parts of your world are connected to each other in ways that don't involve you that you would never imagine. I stopped in to see a tandem friend at his bike shop in Bend and to thank him for advertising some other friends' used tandem on his email list. Totally coincidentally, a clothing line they rep was hanging on the wall next to the tandems in the shop.

So much better than Facebook.

Bliss on a bike

Monday, 13 July

Back in May, at training camp in north central Oregon, I agreed with Terri that it was spectacularly beautiful country but, due to lack of “real” trees and bodies of water, I wasn’t sure I could happily live there. My riding this weekend was at the opposite end of the spectrum: Friday and Saturday featured so much riding among the close quarters of hills and evergreens that when at last I got to that plateau east of Mt. Hood, it felt comforting, like coming home.

My two-day bike journey this weekend was from my home in Seattle to Hood River, with a stopover in Packwood. Friday’s ride was nothing hard to figure out, and I had ridden all of the roads before, just not strung together in this order. The worst traffic was in the first two miles (I forgot to bypass Lake City Way at rush hour). There were very few cyclists on my route out May Valley, down past Hobart to Ravensdale, then past Palmer-Kanasket Park en route to Enumclaw (it was STP weekend, so nobody was out training on Friday!). Mud Mountain Road out of Enumclaw was so peaceful—and it was fun to read the years of race exhortations written on the road. Then the reality of 410 traffic all the way to the top of Cayuse Pass. Somewhere along there (mile 70 in this day’s ride), I counted 15 cars going by me in one mile. Not so bad. Since the Stevens Canyon Road is closed and drivers can’t make a loop through Mt. Rainier National Park, there wasn’t much traffic after the top of the pass. Better yet, there is no road construction this summer on 123. It’s pretty much downhill all the way to highway 12, and then rollers the last 7 miles into Packwood.

The weather was a good friend. I had a perceptible tailwind on all the southerly sections (almost the entire route) of my Friday journey. Mountain thunderstorms were in the forecast, and, sure enough, the big puffy clouds forged into ominous blackness as I got to Crystal Mountain. No thunder and lightning, but the cloud cover was a wonderful relief for the long climb up Cayuse Pass. It was pretty chilly at the top, with lots of snow still lurking in the woods. By some fortunate wind-swirling-in-the-mountains effect, I also had a tailwind boost heading west along 12 into Packwood.

Packwood is not exactly civilization (no cell phone coverage), but it has more than one restaurant and a supermarket. And elk. And, last weekend, the Sports Car Club of America. Fun to see people who geek out about something besides bikes!

Saturday’s ride started along the course of Cascade’s High Pass Challenge: west on 12, south on 131, then continuing south when the state road turns into forest service road 25. The climbing here is long and steep and slow (especially with a backpack, especially when you know a long day in the saddle lies ahead); I kept reminding myself that I’d done this on a tandem. Eventually you come to the turn for the Windy Ridge overlook at Mt. St. Helens—I kept climbing south on 25. Finally you crest a ridge and your close-up view of a million trees is gradually replaced by territorial views. After all the meandering through forest, I wasn’t sure what direction I was facing. I was surprised that the first peak to emerge into sight was Mt. Hood! A couple more bends in the road, though, and I was looking NW straight at Mt. St. Helens. Eventually the road dropped back into the forest as I descended toward the Swift Reservoir. Once at the junction with FR90, I was on familiar roads. 90 follows the Lewis River drainage NE to the junction with FR23. Persistent climbing here—not steep, and some sections with a great tailwind. I saw a few other cyclists going the opposite direction on this road, and I stopped at the only campground to get water. At mile 80, I counted the vehicles that went by me in a mile: zero. It was another 1.8 miles before any traffic passed—in either direction! Yes, these are quiet roads. The abundant trees were a bonus on a 90-degree day; I was thankful for so much shade on the road.

I was delighted with my faulty memory when the anticipated climbing on FR23 was mostly just rollers for about 10 miles before the descent, which brings amazing views of Mt. Adams. Finally I got to Trout Lake for coke and cookies and another water bottle refill. From there, it’s 22 miles mostly trending downhill toward the Columbia River and the end of my journey in Bingen, where I found our car, drove across the bridge (no bicycles or pedestrians permitted) to Hood River, and then out to The Dalles and the trek south to Maupin.

As I drove up out of the Gorge onto the plateau of central Oregon, everything was bathed in hazy soft pre-sunset light, the hills and fields were golden, and Mt. Hood and Mt. Jefferson were sentinels over this vast space. The closed-in feeling of riding under tree cover all day was lifted and I truly felt that all my worries and fears were gone and that I was returning to a familiar, comforting space. Such a contrast to the emotion in May near Antelope and Shaniko where the scenery is similar but I missed shades of dark green and blue.

I did have plenty of worries and fears to release into the great wide open. There were the issues of being a solo female rider whose transportation was a device whose mechanics she doesn't grasp very well. Have you ever noticed that things (shoes, pedals, saddle, unknown bike things) are particularly prone to squeaking when it’s hot? Other niggles weighed heavier. After a poorly calculated trip last year, I was more cautious in mapquesting this year’s epic ride, but forest service roads are not well documented. I was slow (8-9% with a backpack yields low speed) to cover some sections of the route, giving me much time to think that I would never get there. And then there were practical issues: Where exactly are you supposed to seek shelter in a forest in a thunderstorm? Are those frequent piles on the road that look like dog poop actually bear scat (had to be—no dogs live out here)? What if deer run out in front of me when I’m going 30 mph down a descent? What if I miscalculated the distance by 30 miles again this year?

When you’re riding solo, there is too much time for such things to mess with your mind. My trip was perfect. The weather was summer-hot but not miserable, not wet, and certainly not cold. I had plenty of food and water. There was minimal traffic but just enough so that I probably wouldn’t be stranded out there for 3 days in the event of a mechanical catastrophe. The distances were almost exactly what I’d calculated: 123 miles on Friday and 137 on Saturday. I was blessed with tailwinds on important parts of the route, with headwind mostly only as I approached the Gorge (where there is always wind). Motorists were considerate (!). The biggest critters to cross my path were chipmunks. No issues with feet or saddle or bike or backpack. The up-close, clear-air views of Rainier, St. Helens, and Adams are things you cannot even imagine from the cityscape. I rode for miles and miles where the only sign of humanity was the road I was on and the only sounds were birds, bugs, and breeze in the trees. Bliss.

On the third day of my weekend, I got up at 5:30, waited patiently (making hats, of course) in a parking lot for the show that is Race Across Oregon (a 517-mile, nonstop bike race, if you didn’t know) to come through the tiny rafting mecca of Maupin, kissed my husband as he climbed off his bike at the end of a relay leg down cruel, demon-filled Bakeoven Road, leapfrogged his team on to Dufur and up FR44, and drove on to the finish line at the Cooper Spur ski area. An inspiring group of 4 riders and 4 crew, Koenig’s Kronies were the first to finish the race on the new route. Congratulations to them and every other competitor in the race!

Weekends don’t get much better than this. I feel truly blessed by the good fortune that led to my perfect ride and by the family and friends who checked up on me during my travels.

Gluten-free-ness

Monday, 29 June

Since my husband embarked on his gluten-curtailed diet at the beginning of March, I have only hesitantly worked my way into the realm of GF baking. Most recipes call for weird things that I can't find in my supermarket or that cost $12 per pound. I got muffins and brownies dialed in, and I think my GF waffles are better than the white-flour original, but didn't venture any further afield. Bob's Red Mill makes a lot of great GF baking mixes, but I am not a mix person and like to bake from scratch. Since Bob's also offers a huge line of GF flours and other baking products, it was just a matter of time before my GF pantry had enough options.

Last week I got an urge to bake again. First up was strawberry shortcake. Yes, fresh local strawberries are mighty tasty on their own, but who doesn't like shortcake? This recipe was a 100% success on first try, straight from a Google search, and incredibly simple.

Next up was raspberry chocolate shortcake. This was pretty much brownies with vanilla yogurt and raspberries on top. It disappeared before I got the camera out.

Irish soda bread is a versatile quick bread. It's great for toast at breakfast or with cheese any time of day. But the "real" recipe is just wheat flour and soda and buttermilk. In Ireland, they have a coarse-ground flour that's much coarser than anything you can buy here, so I puzzled over what GF product might provide a similar texture. I ended up using a lot of coarse-ground oatmeal (a couple of quick pulses in the blender). For a fuller flavor, I added buckwheat (which is not really wheat and is GF). I also used corn flour and soy flour to round out the flavors. It all worked well, but next time I will back off on the buckwheat--it has a pretty strong flavor. And maybe a drop of molasses will help give some depth to the buckwheat flavor? And I might try adding some steel cut oats for more texture. Maybe I can get the Irish Heritage Club to make a gluten-free division in its soda bread competition next St. Patrick's Day?

Finally, I tackled buttermilk pancakes. I think I used 5 different flours in these. Again, I used too much buckwheat, and next time I'll substitute some ground oats. When the batter was the right texture for buttermilk pancakes (lumpy), the pancakes were too dry. But I added a little more buttermilk and they were great. No pictures, but pancakes are pancakes. :)

Post-pancakes, we went on a 75-mile tandem ride. Melinda was in the group, and I remember her moaning one morning before a ride years ago that she had made pancakes for breakfast and was regretting it because they were "gut busters." Not so with GF pancakes. If you've ever had a feeling of being way too full after eating something with white wheat flour, I encourage you to try a gluten-free alternative. Even if you're not gluten intolerant or celiac, I'm pretty sure you'll notice a (happy) difference. You can eat lots :) and still not have that lead weight feeling in your stomach!

How to stoke a tandem

Monday, 29 June

We had a perfect little spin on Saturday: Newhalem to Mazama and back over the North Cascades Highway. I got a handicap by dropping my husband off in Marblemount, making his ride over the pass 15 miles longer than mine. This time he got to Mazama just 5 minutes after I did (I stopped to take too many wildflower pictures!).

Two cycling clubs were having big outings on this same route, so there were lots of cyclists on the road. They all spent too long at sag stops, and I passed the last ones at Easy Pass. Mick passed a tandem in Newhalem on his ride east and noted at the time that the stoker was not paying attention to the task at hand (riding a bike) while the captain toiled away on the front. After our leisurely refueling stop in Mazama, we headed back west--and saw most of those folks coming down from Washington Pass. We encountered that same tandem about 3 miles west of the summit of the pass, climbing at a pace that could not have been greater than 5 mph. The stoker, as they would say in Ireland, had not a bother on her; the captain looked absolutely wrecked, as if he had been towing a car all that way. Her attitude seemed to be "honey, why are we going so slow?" while he did not look like he could pedal the bike another 10 feet.

I got all my training on how to be a tandem stoker from tandem captains. This woman was apparently taught by another stoker, one who must've thought that stokers were ornaments, just there for show and maybe to provide verbal support ("nice effort, way to go, looking strong"). Lots of people tease stokers for not doing any work and getting a free ride, but I have honestly never figured out how to ride that way. If you want to go fast, you have to pedal hard. If the road goes uphill, you have to pedal harder. Is it really possible to sit in the stoker compartment and do your nails or knit a hat?

We took our tandem out on Sunday, and there were a few climbs where I was tempted to try out this different approach to stoking. But I could not do it. Partly because I wanted to get home sooner rather than later, partly because I want to ride the tandem again, but partly because it would just seem wrong. Apparently I need to go to stoker school and get brainwashed. But then I would have to find new captains because nobody I ride with now would have me back under those terms!

June-uary indeed

Monday, 22 June

Another successful Elkhorn Classic has come and gone. They're different every year, but Baker City always rolls out the red carpet and gives us a warm welcome, and Ernie and so many with OBRA do a marvelous job in putting on the production that is a stage race.

There were a lot of transitioning riders in this year's women's peloton. Okay, there were just plain A LOT of women riders this year. Some were getting back to racing after injury or illness, some had to sit out the race due to illness or obligations (thanks, Judy!), some were rethinking their commitment to competitive cycling, and some were racing for the first time. It was so good to see anxieties overcome and confidence regained.

Stage 1 was different this year because of the direction of the wind. I am usually hating life by the last 25 miles (it's a 75-mile road race), but there was a tailwind for most of the last 40 miles, including up The Climb and over all the "rollers" that are usually brutal. There was an early pee stop and then a short shower (the men's fields got more rain) around the first feed zone, and it was kind of eerie to race between windmills when the sky behind the white towers and blades was stormy black. We rode past a field of mint, which smelled fantastic. It was a good race, no heat exhaustion or dehydration. Wind is my friend when it's behind me!

Stage 2 was a different TT course for 2009. They took out all the hills. It was okay except for an awkward, contorted, contrived finish. This year we finished on Main Street, which involved two 90-degree turns in the last quarter-mile. The problem was getting us set up for those last two corners through a busy intersection. I'm not used to having to pick out a race chute between orange cones in the middle of the road with a sharpish bend after 11 oxygen-deprived miles. I don't care how many people are waving and pointing and trying to direct you along the course, it suddenly becomes a different event.

Stage 3 was a crit. Dry. Uneventful. Loads of primes.

Stage 4 was the anomaly this year. It was 45 degrees and raining in town at race time. The stage is 105 miles and finishes up an 8-mile climb. It was snowing at the finish when we were supposed to start. While everyone realized it would not be snowing still after we finished 105 miles, the fear was for riders who got hypothermic (or nearly) somewhere out on the course. It's one BIG loop, and while there are road signs pointing to some far-off towns, the course does not ride through anything you might call a town. No coffee shops, certainly. Nowhere to warm up and wait while you hope for a ride if you decide to DNF. So. With very short notice, the start times were delayed 30 minutes and the course was changed to "the short way" to the top of said climb--same Dooley Mountain, but climbing up the side closer to town. 10 miles of flat road, 8 miles of climbing. In the cold rain--and most of the cycling clothes you had brought with you.

Much to my surprise, there was no distinguishing the end of the neutral start. We continued to roll out the flat road. The pace picked up a little, there were a couple of faster stretches, but it was all just a nice warm up and never single file. Eventually we made the left turn, started the climb, and still the pace was social. So "social," in fact, that we had a little deja vu with some surge-and-brake issues we battled on Friday. One woman's frustrated reaction was to swear. Then she realized you're not supposed to do that in a bike race (lest you might get DQed) and she apologized profusely. That was pretty funny because we all shared her sentiments. Finally Alice took off at the front of the group and the race was on. The group just kind of dispersed. I followed the other Landshark in the peloton for a long time and let Molly do the work of making a gap between dropped riders trying to take up the whole road. Eventually Molly fell back and I just kept riding a steady tempo. At one point I had a train of about 6 riders behind me. Some of them fell back and a few passed me. The 3K sign came sooner than I expected, and the finish was pretty fast after that. The rain eased up on the climb, and since the climb is not steep, it was really a nice little race.

The pro-1-2 men started 10? 15? minutes after the women did, and I was very (pleasantly) surprised that we finished before they caught us, especially given the easy spin nature of our ride out of town. The finish line was barely controlled chaos, because the officials couldn't see riders' numbers buried under 19 layers of clothing (pin your numbers to the outer layer, people!), because it seemed that every third rider had a personal support vehicle that had driven to the top (where parking is minimal), and because riders were milling around. But that kind of barely controlled chaos is pretty fun. My husband started 45 minutes after I did, so I stood there in my wet clothes, drinking hot chai, wrapped in a blanket, huddled under a tent, until he came through. Then we climbed in a truck (thanks, Claire!) for the ride back to the start and a hot shower and another breakfast. Good times. :)

Adventure no. 2

Tuesday, 9 June

Last weekend was the second round in my adventure travels this summer. And the adventuring part didn't even involve my bike. I took the train from Seattle to Bingen, which is across the Columbia River from Hood River, OR, site of the Mt. Hood Cycling Classic. The only time train travel makes the news is when it's disrupted and passengers are diverted to buses. My only expectation about this trip was that I would eventually get to Bingen.

The adventure started with a bus ride from the end of my street. It's a route I never take because it goes downtown (where I never go). I think the Kingdome was still standing the last time I was at the King Street Station, but I managed to find it. Have you ever noticed that it's impossible to tell where the "front" of that building is or where the front door is?

My train ticket said I had a "reserved" seat, but that's not the same thing as a specific seat. So I had to stand in line for a rather elaborate ritual of getting an assigned seat before the train arrived from parts north (it starts in Bellingham and goes to Eugene). When I got on the train, my assigned seat had already been given out to a rider from Bellingham. This was not a good sign, but I managed to find an open seat (next to a very chatty man from Bellingham from whom I learned much about senior services in Whatcom and San Juan counties), and the train left on time. Completely uneventful ride after that. I did not venture to the lounge car to sample the food--I have awful memories of train food from a trip to Montana ages ago. I read a little, dozed a little, and people watched a lot. The train itself is pretty quiet, but there were some noisy parties of two and four that kept the chat level up. The women in front of me were griping bitterly about going on bike rides where people ride too fast and couldn't possibly enjoy the scenery they were riding through.

I had a two-hour layover in Portland, so I got to venture out into the Pearl. Found a nice coffee/chocolate shop, tried not to drool on the goods in the Pendleton home store, and almost walked over to the yarn shop.

The train from Portland to Bingen was altogether different. It's the Empire Builder and goes to Chicago. Most of the folks had checked their luggage and were loaded down with bags of snack food and bottled water. Mmmm, two or three days of sitting in a train seat and eating granola bars. But the cars on this train are bigger, and passenger seating is on the "upper deck" so the view is even better. Since the train follows the Columbia from Vancouver to Bingen, I made sure I got a window seat on the view side. And a great view it was. Mt. Hood peeked out, and we saw a bunch of kiteboarders as we got into the Gorge. But I was definitely ready to get off in Bingen.

The rest of the weekend was filled with water bottles, feed zones, watching for poison oak, and two short but fun and scenic rides on my bike (which got to Hood River by car, not train). The weather was cooler than expected but there were some spectacular views of Mt. Hood on Saturday.

Small engine repair

Monday, 1 June

Saturday was the OBRA masters road race. Old biddies like me (and ones a lot younger than me too) got to race two laps (32 miles) on a hilly course just across the river from Longview. It was a perfect afternoon for a bike race, maybe a touch warm but that was just conditioning for the hotter races ahead this summer.

Since there were three age groups racing together in my race, I wrote the numbers of those in my age group on my arm before the start so I could keep tabs on them. The course goes up and down a bunch early on, but we stayed together. About miles 4-7 are mostly up and finish with the second most significant climb on the course. That's where a pair of riders (one in my age group) split the race to bits. Two of us managed to stay with them and two more caught back on. So we were a group of six for the descending portion of the course, and we worked well in a paceline to keep the speed up. Unfortunately, the last two to get on got popped for good on a roller about two miles from the end of the lap.

The 16-mile loop finishes up a 1K climb that's nice and twisty and not severely steep. About halfway up, I realized I was not exactly holding on to the wheel in front of me and before I knew it, they had a gap. Blah. I figure I should bury myself and work on closing the gap, but they are driving it up there and all I can do is keep the gap constant. Blah. 16 miles to go. Three ahead, two immediately behind, the rest who knows where. TT time!

The first mile of this course has stunning views of Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Adams, but I promise I did not see them during the race. The three ahead were in sight and I was trying to at least hold the gap constant. Up and down, twist, turn, and they're out of sight simply because you can't see very far. Somewhere out there where I'm trying to pretend that I'm motoring along and holding off the riders behind, I pass a sign at the end of a driveway that says "small engine repair." This is exactly what I need! Clearly I do not have a large engine, and clearly it needs some tuning up so that it can reach higher RPMs and thus have better acceleration. I make a mental note to consult the yellow pages when I get home and see what can be done.

I knew I would lose time on a group through the downhill stretch, even more when I realized how much of a headwind there was. Pedal, pedal, pedal. This is where I figured out that this entire race was going to take me less time than the climb at training camp from the John Day River at Clarno up to Hamilton. That climb had been hard work too, so a little mental self-flagellation convinced me to keep the pressure on and try to hold off the field behind.

Somewhere around about mile 2 or 3 of my second lap, I realized that the official for the race was following me. At one point, she went up the road to check on the front group, but she came back and followed me. So long as she was right there, I figured there were no riders close behind her or she would've pulled over to let them pass. I also figured she wasn't giving me any time splits to the riders behind in order to keep a fire lit under me. :) After the race, she told me I was the "first chase group" (a kinder phrase than "last one to get dropped") and hence that's who she was following.

There's a flat straight bit of road before the final climb, and I couldn't see anyone behind me. There was a photographer just after the road tilted up, and when I asked he said he couldn't see anyone either. I didn't exactly soft pedal the finishing climb, but at least I didn't have to try to hold off a closing stampede. So I finished 4th overall, 2nd in my age group. I don't think the order of finish would've been much different if we had just done 16 miles. Turns out the break of three was probably the biggest group on the road--the field behind was shattered into onesies and twosies with huge time gaps between.

Since 32 miles seemed a bit short for a day's effort, I rode the loop backward after the race. Funny how the pitch of a road looks so much different going the opposite direction. And how you see so much more when you're not oxygen deprived with race blinders on!

812

Sunday, 24 May

Yesterday was the Lewis and Clark 12/24 hour time trial, which starts and finishes in Hockinson, WA. It features miles along some beautiful scenic rivers (including the Columbia) and the best in-your-face view of Mt. St. Helens I know. The Gorge winds were a nice tailwind (ahhhhh) but that meant headwind on a long stretch through Cougar. Since last year I'd managed to forget how many tough little hills there are, in addition to the main climb over Old Man Pass. The day was sunny but not hot--perfect! The field size at this race had tripled since last year, its first year in existence, so it wasn't quite so lonesome out there. In addition to a detailed cue sheet, all the turns were marked on the road.

Highlights? The view of St. Helens. The Washougal River Road. The dogwoods blooming on the Old Man Pass climb. The vanload of teenage girls that passed me screaming every positive thing they could think of. The fantastic support from the race organizer, his volunteer crew, other riders, and the support crew for those other riders. Have you ever had folks do the wave for you as you ride by? Coming one step closer to successfully managing the mental and physical aspects of riding for 12 hours (still working on the feet).

After the big loop of 140 miles, you fill up the rest of your 12 hours with laps on a 9.6-mile circuit that is mostly not flat. I did 5 of those plus 2 miles. I was pretty spunkless when I started my short laps. After switching my "nutrition" to coke and tortilla chips, I got perkier. No, I'm not advocating junk food for long rides. But I realized that most every other day of the week, I get tired and hungry sometime after 4 pm and my body is just programmed that way. Whether I eat in that period or not, I feel better after that time has passed. Yesterday was no exception. I had taken pretty good care of myself up to that point and was able to "just" pedal through it. But it makes for a tough mental battle.

This morning, the winner of the 24-hour race asked me how many miles I had ridden in the last 10 days. I had to get out a calculator to tote them up when I got home. 812. And I worked every day last week! The riders who do 24-hour races and more don't quite understand why I don't take on something bigger than these piddly little 12-hour TTs. I can't quite tear myself away from dinner at dinnertime and bed at bedtime....

This is such a fun race, and thanks to Glenn for thinking it up and putting it on!

Camping

Tuesday, 19 May

It's been a few years since I last did a training camp, and the bar was a little higher this time: bigger hills, bigger miles, better roads. I shan't bore you with an inch-by-inch description of the 500 miles I rode in 4 days--we mostly followed the route of the 2009 Race Across Oregon (we had to detour around a couple of roads still under snow). But here are some of my favorite things about this "camping" experience, in no particular order:

The wildflowers. Some I recognized, many I did not. Some were fragrant enough to smell on the bike. Yellows, blues, white, and red. I have research to do to find out their names, including the tall weed I came to think of as Oregon saguaro because of its shape.

The mountains. We were looking at these all the time, not riding in them. The most stunning views were around Antelope and Shaniko; you could see every peak in the Cascade range from Mt. Bachelor to Mt. Rainier--all at once, from the same spot. The mountains look different across the central Oregon plateau than they do from the west side; somehow the eastern plateau is like a pedestal that sets up each peak with no foothills to distract the eye.

The camaraderie. We were a small group of riders, each with different goals and expectations. One was training for the Trans Portugal MTB race. Two were training for the first part of RAAM, which is the Race Across the West. One was from Houston and learning how to ride up (and down!) real hills. Sometimes I got to ride with another person or two (thank you, Mick, for riding with me through the nuclear gorge winds), much times by myself. It is interesting how rapport builds through shared suffering and shared enjoyment.

The learning about myself. How I can come back from the depths of the black mental abyss caused by trying to ride in gorge winds. What hurts the most after 150 miles on the bike--and the better corollary: how much does NOT hurt after 150 miles! Finding the legs to get in a boys' TTT paceline after 75 or 100 miles. Discovering that, outside Seattle, I am a coffee snob (and an addict who needs her tasty morning caffeine).

The riding and the roads. After the first day, the riding was exactly what I had hoped for. Seemingly endless but not-same miles through beautiful, changing terrain. Virtually empty roads. The feeling of being a tiny speck in a huge expanse without feeling lost. In a few places, the chip seal was not the best friend, but for the most part the roads were smooth, sans potholes. Bits and pieces of the route were familiar from the old Columbia Plateau stage race, and it was interesting to ride some of those backward ("I thought this was flat!").

Seeing the difference between central and eastern Oregon. We weren't far enough south of the Columbia to be in Bend's high desert country, and the creased hills of central Oregon were still green--but with scant foliage. Eastern Oregon has trees and more compact hills. Before we went to camp, I looked at a map and realized how close we would come to La Grande. And when we reached the first false summit of Battle Mountain, it looked like La Grande. Welcome to eastern Oregon.

Isolation. Two miles out of The Dalles, we lost cell phone coverage for 4 days. No laptop, no internet. No news (OK, there was a TV one night, but basketball and baseball aren't my idea of "news"), no phone. I did not miss any of them. At all.

Franklin Hill. In the first stage of Columbia Plateau, the cat 1-2 men did an extra section that none of the other categories rode. I knew there was a climb, and this weekend I got to ride that climb. OMG. It's one of those where you can pick out stretches of the road on the mountain above you. It must be a 5-mile climb. Wunderbar. I think I smiled all the way up. It's a climb that would shatter any race, but you can see the world around you every inch of the way as you climb higher and higher.

The climb from Clarno toward Antelope out of the John Day drainage. The rider from Houston told us afterward that this was an 11-mile climb. Same idea as Franklin Hill--you could see parts of the road winding around hilltops above you, in and out of sight. The view this time was east toward the Blue Mountains. The trees were scrubby junipers, so no shade (good thing we were there at 9 a.m.) but nothing to block your unlimited horizons. This climb is going to be incredibly difficult at RAO. Most riders will do it in the dark, and they will not be able to see the top, however far away it is.

Fossil. This small town wasn't any "better" or more interesting than the others we passed through or stayed in, but it was familiar from Columbia Plateau. Same mercantile, same Shamrock--but we did not have to sleep in a tent on the lumpy football field! And the route out of town on Sunday morning was a gentle little 4-mile climb through a picturesque valley. Fossil still reminds me of Ireland in many ways because of the green, grassy hills and occasional trees.

A successful training camp, me thinks, with challenges both mental and physical, time to relax and socialize and share impressions, many opportunities to learn, and fantastic, supportive, inspirational fellow campers.

Just race

Mothers Day

I wanna do a race that's just a bike race. Not part of a series or an omnium or the Washington Cup. I'm tired of races where nobody's racing for that event but for some grander prize. Last week it was a two-race omnium. Nobody on Sunday knew anything about the prize list for that day's race, they could only focus on who had how many points in the omnium and who was most likely to win the trip to Minnesota. Thanks to the strangeness induced by the omnium format, another rider said that race featured "the most negative racing" she had seen in a while.

Yesterday's race at Ravensdale was part of the Washington Cup series and it featured some of the dumbest racing I've seen in a while. It was all about securing more WA Cup points and not about racing the best race on the day. Sure, it's great for team tactics, until the wrong teammate is up the road in a break. I watched someone chase down a break, but then stop her chase 25 feet from the break and sit up and no one else closed the gap or countered. Huh? It was weird racing all day, and once the right split occurred, the "pack" had to work harder at not catching the break than the break could organize itself to work to pull away from the pack.

It seems we get no races for the sake of racing. Good road races are all part of the Washington Cup, so good racing goes out the window for the sake of making sure the right riders get more points. The LWV series is just that, a series, so by race #2, it won't be about racing but about manipulating the racing. I guess there's a reason that no one says road races or crits are the races of truth.

Eight hundred ?

Thursday, 7 May

This morning's Seattle Times says "the average American now spends 800 minutes a month talking on the phone." That's more than 13 hours. These average Americans can't find time to exercise, or mentor kids, or cook more nutritious meals, or volunteer to help clean up a local park, or get enough sleep. Wow.

Propriety quandary

Wednesday, 6 May

Those "massacred" in my workplace on Monday were given yesterday to stay at home and figure out how to cope with the bad news, but they still have to work for the next 60 days. So they'll be back in the office today. Since there was no official announcement that cuts were made or to whose positions, that means officially nobody knows there were cuts. When I see these people, do I adhere to the official line that we don't know they were "reduced," or do I be sympathetic and thereby admit that we were gossiping about them all day yesterday when they were out?

Monday massacre

Cinco de Mayo

The man who had to do the deed referred to it as "the Monday massacre." Staff positions in my department were reduced by 3.5 yesterday. That's out of about 40, and most of those are not FTE to begin with. And there will be another round of cuts in 60 days. Okay, I know I work in an insular place and everybody is suffering through this and I'm extremely lucky that my position was not on that list. That doesn't mean it hurts less. We celebrate the 100th anniversary of our department next Monday. Who's going to feel like celebrating anything?

Gear shortage

Monday, 4 May
Black Monday, I think

I had to skip the first half of the Westside Omnium this weekend because of a work commitment. That seemed to work out pretty well, at least in terms of weather. I missed the dumping rain at the finish and sliding out in the corners that some folks seemed to have suffered at Glenwood. Sunday's weather was just about perfect; we were all able to work on moving our tan lines up our legs by shedding the knee warmers.

I thought my bike was set up perfectly for the Longbranch course, with compact gearing and 11 speeds. That, of course, presumes that I could use all 11 cogs on the cassette. Sadly, I discovered the first time up the 15% hill that I was not going to be using the 4 lowest gears on my bike. The chain would skip, eventually, every time I dropped the gear to something low enough to get up the hill. My speed would go from 5 to 2 mph and I'd have to hurriedly shift up and pedal in order not to tip over. For a while I was in denial, figuring maybe it was just one bad cog and if I shifted all the way to the bottom, I might spin ridiculously but at least I'd spin. Not so. So I clambered up that hill (the follow official asked me afterward what was up) 5 times with an rpm of about 30. I would get dropped every time, but I guess I saved time and energy by not having to shift up so much at the top and I managed to get back to the pack on every lap but the last. The feed zone climb was not so bad because the steep section at the bottom was shorter and the two pitches after that weren't so steep. Hard, yes. Shrieking pain in the quads like the 15%er, no. Needless to say, there will be some mechanic consultation happening before I take the bike up another 15% grade.

It was a curious race. Two hard road races in an omnium format with a huge prize on the line to the winner. There was less emphasis on winning Sunday's race outright than winning the omnium overall. It made for some very strange spells in the race where virtually nobody in the pack would work because of the few riders scattered up the road--either they were teammates or they had no omnium points and weren't worth the trouble of chasing down. The course at Longbranch is enough to make sure things never get very boring, and there were race dynamics going on for a good long time. Afterward, I realized it was the first Washington road race I've finished this year; at long last, we seem to have moved out of snow season!

Mega miles in the month of May

May Day

If all goes according to plan, May will probably be my biggest mileage month of the year. For those of you who abide by training programs, I could say this month is carefully planned to make sure I have the endurance to finish Elkhorn. :) And how appropriate that the promoter posted a reminder today about the good times that await at Elkhorn. Some of my miles will be long, "junk" miles, some will be shorter (how can a mile be longer or shorter?) with greater intensity. There is some epic climbing built into this "training program" too.

So to kick things off on the first day of May, I tacked an extra 5 miles onto my commute, for a grand total of 33. If my daily average is that measly sum, I'll barely get over 1000 miles this month. I aim to do better than that--stay tuned!

DRVTT fun

Monday, 27 April

This weekend was the fun little Deschutes River Valley Time Trial stage race in charming Maupin, Oregon. Two days, three time trials, for a total of 82 miles of racing.

The weather was cool but sunny and dry. Conditions were made more, um, interesting by wind speeds in excess of 25 mph on Saturday. Since I don’t much like riding in the wind, I was positively delighted to be racing tandem.

Stage 1 is 26 or 27 miles—stokers don’t keep track of these things. I think the elevation gain is something like 1,600 feet, and most of that comes in the first 4 miles as you climb up from the Deschutes through Maupin proper. Then a nice descent, flat, rollers, a twistier descent, and then 8 miles of flat road (with cattle guards) along the Deschutes. There were savagely windy stretches around miles 4-6 and 24-27, making for especially good fun with a disc wheel. Tandems were the third category to start, and we were last in our category because we won the event last year. So lots of rabbits up the road. We knew we had some tough competition this year, and although we had caught all the other tandems by the top of the climb, we were highly motivated to do our best to hold them off on the descents and flat stretch. We did, and we had the fastest time overall for the stage. This never happens; we give credit (?) to all the wind. Having a leadweight anchor (me) on the back of your bike is helpful on rare occasion.

Stage 2 is about 8 miles of hillclimb. I was expecting this to be hatefully hard and that we would get blown sideways for 7.9 miles. As soon as we rounded the first hairpin and started climbing in earnest, there was a nice little tailwind boost. Big-ring climbing is my kind of climbing! Somewhere around mile 4 or 5 (the promoter sets out mile markers for every one of the stages), the road turned and was no longer as sheltered (i.e., we got up out of the river canyon). One gust sent the tandem three feet across the road. I was very happy to be leaving the driving to someone else and just kept pedaling. I could see that the road turned in a couple hundred meters, and we would have a tailwind again. But there were a more (and more frequent) crosswind stretches before the finish. We did not win this one and lost our spot at the top of GC.

Stage 3 is 23.x miles of mostly uphill on the way out and mostly downhill on the way back. The wind had mostly subsided for Sunday’s stage, but we did definitely have a tailwind on the way out and a headwind all the way back. Last year we utterly bogged down on the way out on this stage, mentally and physically. On the tandem, there’s not much opportunity to vary your position, and 23 miles of climbing is pretty static. We made an effort this year to stand more often, and I devised a little scheme to keep me mentally distracted. Stokers are tasked with providing more power than drag, so I have to keep my head down (i.e., quit looking around). Watching the captain’s bottom bracket is only interesting for so long. I could only see those mile markers when they flashed by in my peripheral vision, and there was never time to see the number (which is painted only on the front). But I started counting them off from the start, and after the really tough first 4 miles of switchback climbing subsided and we settled into a rhythm more or less, I started counting how many pedal strokes we did per mile. Okay, admittedly we are not climbers who spin our way up hills, but I was surprised at how few revolutions it took to travel a mile. The mile with the fewest had 190-some, and the mile with the mostest had 260-some. They were typically about 220.

While I was engaged in counting to 200 over and over, my captain was keeping his eye on our closest tandem competition up the road. At first it was pretty lonely out there, because all the single bikes ahead of us in GC flew past us on the steeper part of the climb and the undulations in the terrain were close together so that you couldn’t see too far ahead. The second-place tandem started 2.5 minutes in front of us on this stage, and after a while we could see them (but no one else) off in the distance. A few miles from the top, we started to catch the slower riders in other categories. By the Bakeoven summit (turnaround), we had the gap on tandem 2 down to about 20 seconds. And then we lost a chunk of time. After 23 miles of plodding uphill, we had to turn the bike around an orange cone in the middle of a narrow road with no paved shoulder. We didn’t pedal enough and the bike went 2 inches wide. I was watching the front wheel and when I saw it was going to go off the pavement, I figured it would be fine because the gravel shoulder was even with the pavement; there was no sharp lip to negotiate getting back onto the road. Ha. The gravel on the shoulder was soft as mush and our front wheel sank instantly. The bike tipped over and we both hit the ground. The poor official at the turn didn’t know what to do to help us; neither of us could get unclipped from our pedals and it took some time to get untangled. I feel sorry for the rider who came into the turn after us (but someone assured me later than he probably didn’t lose much time relatively speaking for a 47-mile TT). I honestly cannot remember hitting the ground, and I have nary a scratch or a bruise. Mick did not come out so easily and took scar tissue off old battle wounds on his left knee. He was oozing blood by the finish but I couldn’t see this from my “vantage point.”

So off we went, with maybe a little more adrenaline but also maybe a little more apprehension. I vividly remember that last year we didn’t pedal for the first 5-7 miles after the turn. Not so this year. The headwind meant we could just about spin our 55x11, although I think a few times our cadence was, like, 125 (which is brutal on a tandem, going downhill). About a third of the way down, I could feel misery setting in. My arms hurt, my legs hurt, and sitting on the saddle was none too fun. There were some blessed moments of not pedaling and also some short uphill stretches, which used different muscles. I cheered myself by looking up and counting Mt. Washington, Mt. Jefferson, Mt. Hood, and Mt. Adams, a glorious who’s-who of Cascade peaks. Then I started looking for mile markers again, this time to see how much longer I had to suffer. When I finally saw one coming, I was sure it would tell me we had 5 miles to go. No, 9. Ouch. Of course, we were picking off single bikes on the descent like it was open hunting season, and I did have to be thankful that at least I was getting my suffering over with quicker on the tandem.

The last 4 miles of course are down the steep hairpins we climbed on the way out. These are a huge mental challenge for me because the bike is going far faster than I would ever choose to negotiate these turns, and we actually pedal on the straightaways between the hairpins. I did pretty well here this year, and I just about had fun on the righthanders. The left turns still freak me out, but I focused on breathing (as opposed to holding my breath and getting stiff) and not looking over the edge. Last year, we dove past other riders in some of the turns, but this year we were behind a guy who was taking a good line and traveling pretty fast, so we just followed him down to the finish. Although tandem 2 rode away from us after the turnaround, we managed to beat them by a few seconds on the stage.

This is always a fun race, and we knew it would be tough this year. Jim and Heather (tandem 2) are both riding well this season (which is especially great news for Heather), and I still remember being soundly beaten by them in an uphill sprint finish (with a different captain) a couple of years ago. Their “give it everything” competitive spirit helps to boost mine as well. They had the second fastest time on stage 1, and it was kind of fun to shake up other riders’ conception of tandems by having the fastest times on a hilly course. Thanks to Mick for a great race—and I’m sorry you got all the road rash. Thanks to George and Terri for putting on such fun (if diabolical) events, and to Greg for the ride back to the start after stage 2.

Our prize? Free entry into another time trial in Maupin in September. We made our hotel reservations before we left town!

Why no Willamette?

Thursday, 23 April

Take a minute to mourn with me. The bad news came down on Tuesday: this year's (and probably any subsequent year's) Willamette Stage Race was cancelled due to apparent lack of interest on the part of the cycling community. How can this be?

Earlier incarnations of this race had bigger fields than the promoters were able to handle, or so it seemed. Those promoters' versions of Willamette failed because of problems on their end (sponsorship "issues", mainly). This time, the race failed because not enough people wanted to race their bikes.

Where are all those Northwest racers who love a good, epic challenge and know the roads around Eugene are some of the best we've got for riding and racing? The other races on the local calendar this weekend are hardly overpowering draws: a time trial stage race in Maupin (don't get me wrong--DRVTT is an awesome weekend of racing with fantastic promoters) and a road race in Washington on a somewhat unselective course (except for selection due to crashes because of fowl in the road and silt from winter floods on the road).

We keep losing more of the best races on the calendar. I am so sad to see Willamette go the way of Columbia Plateau and HP. You can't blame these Willamette promoters: Mike and Sal worked so hard to think through and provide for all the minutiae in race organization. You can't blame the weather: it can be 80 degrees and sunny this time of year in Eugene. You can't blame local agencies: it is tough (expensive) to get permits out of Lane County, and still Willamette was going to take in some exciting, beautiful road courses.

We can only blame ourselves for letting this one get away.

Number 400

Earth Day

My brother emailed to ask if I gave up blogging for Lent, so I guess it's time for an update. Turns out this is blog entry number 400 for me, so even if I've been quiet for a few weeks, that apparently is not a typical trait for moi.

For about 3-4 weeks (until yesterday), I was working three paying jobs, one of them my regular full-time "real" job. In this economic climate, one cannot complain too much about being paid from three sources, but together they did not leave much time for training and even less for blogging. But now I'm back to just the usual two--and hopefully they'll both continue. My real job is at the University of Washington, and all we don't know is how big the hammer is that will fall when the legislature makes its budget. Rumor has it that the staff cuts in my department will be in the double digits. "Grim" does not begin to describe the work atmosphere.

In the better news department, the peas are up in my garden, there should be rhubarb to harvest in a couple of weeks, more potatoes seeded themselves this year, the parsley is taking on science fiction proportions, the herbs that looked dead after three months of frigid winter have burst back to life, and the fruit bushes and trees are just about to leaf out. I started some sunflowers indoors and will transplant them outside soon.

Bike racing on the tandem this weekend, and plans for epic huge miles during the month of May. I hope I'm up to all of them. Stay tuned!

Elusive

Monday, 30 March

Last Saturday was one of the best road races on the NW race calendar. And it snowed. All day. It didn't really stick to the roads, and hundreds of people paid their money and at least started the race. Not I. Riders who "finished early" came back to the community hall at race registration shivering uncontrollably and lacking their full mental capacities. They were so cold that their bodies were diverting energy to things other than their thinking processes. It was interesting--if not very motivating--to see. Racing and 36 degrees with heavy wet snow are just not compatible.

I had spent the last few days convincing myself I could race in the rain on this course. It poured here a couple years ago, and I survived. So I would overcome the blehs I had in the rain at Mason Lake and just do it. Visualization might work for some people, but you have to visualize the right thing. I did not dial in the snow part of the equation.

So here we are more than a month into the race season and I have completed a sum total of one road race. I never imagined that weather would be a consistently determining factor in getting to the finish line. Needless to say, I am more than a little worried about the prospect of a stage race this weekend. Maybe I should race the masters women's category after all....