Finny Arm and Tzou Date

Yup!!! That's mine :-)

Yippee, feels so darn good to be home and riding outside!!!! This past weekend I caught up on a lot of great riding that I've been missing. Saturday I convinced Pro City Sistas riders Jen and Sylvia into doing the infamous Finnlyson Arm climb!!! For those of you who haven't ridden it, or don't know what said ride is, it's a wicked steep climb sometimes hitting 26% grade at stretches, climbing over 200m in around just 2km!!! Thanks to all the boys of the Pro City Racing team for joining us, and awesome job to Syl and Jen for crushing that one off the bucket list!!!

Oh ya, and all this on my sexy new Trek Project One! Thank you so much Regan for this amazing surprise and for Bill Fry for making it happen! I go in to the shop to pick up my winter cross bike ...... to find the bike I've wanted since it first came into the shop. I LOVE IT!!

On Sunday Regan and I went up and over the Malahat to Duncan, BC to ride at one of my favorite places on the island....one of many that is. Shortly after starting our climb up out of the parking lot we ran in a large group with local riders David Huntley, Kevin Knock, Trevor Jones and a couple others. Regan and I latched onto the back of this ride and ended up hammering out a solid 2 hours of awesome trails....including some locals only knowledge. It's always a great ride when you're pinning a super fast fun downhill for over 5 mins and hit the bottom with the biggest s%$t eating grin!!! Then climb back up to hit some more, and realize that you're heart rate on the decent is almost as high as it is on the climb. We had a great ride and didn't get rained on at all.....finishing ride temperature of 13 deg C certainly helps :-)

Thanks Guys!!

Knackered and Happy!!!! Need a Pioneer Burger

Post ride carrot.....until we got our Pioneer Burger!!

I'm definitely feeling a little worked today, after 2 months off the mountain bike (since my hernia surgery) and almost a month on the trainer, I've lost a lot of my punchy power endurance. But watch out, cause I think it's coming back!!!

I'm Back!!!!!

Well, almost...once I get done my work term up here in Fort McMurray, watch out I tell you. Just finished my first "workout" that consisted of intervals that raised my heart rate higher then just endurance pace!! It felt really good...and really bad all at the same time.....being a little out of shape doesn't help with the feeling bad, but hey, got to start somewhere.

Skiing, running and trainer intervals all in the same week....yup!

Quick update on recovery:
Hernia...I was 6 weeks on monday, so I'm officially allowed to lift heavy objects and exert myself. Things are feeling good, it's still a little sore and a little stiff, but starting a little core work to build up my strength and stability again.

Shoulder - well, it's going a lot slower then I'd really like it to. Trying to get into to get either an MRI or an Ultrasound is proving to be a lot harder then I was hoping. Doing some strength exercises are definitely helping, but I am still getting the "I'm going to throw up pain" when I forget and move it too quickly or too far. I found as long as I don't fall, I'm comfortable XC skiing.


Sponsorship side of things....wow, I really am not very good at this. Some people just have the right words and the right contacts and the right....I don't know. But yes, right now I currently don't have a bike or a full on plan for the 2012 season. But I don't give up that easily!!

That's all for now....when I'm done with all my trainer sessions up north here....watch out, I'm going to be an animal!!!!!! Just about done my first 3 week rotation, really excited to go home from the cold snow to the cold rain for a week :-)

Here I go again

Back in the good ole great white north…only it's not too white and not too cold this year!! No such thing as global warming, really??

With camp life comes trainer time!!! I'm used to coming up north in really good shape and just maintaining. But due to a separated shoulder (which is now thought to be torn) and recent hernia surgery, I'm starting the year off in relatively bad shape.

Soooooo trainer time!!!! First couple spins my legs are burning and my but…well, it's gone a little soft in my sedintary month haha. My goal for my first rotation, get myself back in shape!!! So with the 3 week rotation they have me doing this year, big yuck, I've got lots of trainer time.

I do have my skis up here again, but with the amount of snow I'm seeing, I'm not too sure how the trails will be..... And not too sure how my shoulder is going to like that.

Here's to hoping my broken body heals and starts feeling good!!! Back to the trainer for now.

Back in the Saddle

Nearly 4 weeks after surgery, I finally managed to ride outside.....for longer then 4 minutes!! Thank you Robin Farrell for riding with me and waiting for me on all the hills and feeding me with enough coffee at Starbucks to get me home. Wow, it's amazing how much fitness I've actually lost!! My walking kept me sane, but it's really no where near the same as actually riding. 2 days of riding easy and I'm sore all over!! It's only going to go up from here...hopefully.

Recovering

2 week post op appointment, Doctor says things are healing remarkably well!! This sitting on my ass is paying off. She even okays an easy ride...yippee...it'll be good to get out and start using those muscles again, just "Don't push it!".

So yesterday I make a big batch of spicy chocolate peanut brittle for the boys at the shop, get all geared up for the first time in weeks!! I'm so excited, plan is to spin for half an hour, it's sunny out and beautiful! In the 2 minutes it takes to ride down to the shop to drop off the brittle, I make the decision that it's not a good idea to ride yet :( Not quite pain, but it's definitely uncomfortable, and the chamois is hitting my incision.

So, coffee it is instead, then spin home....my first ride in 2 weeks totaling 4 mins!!!! It took me longer to get geared up! Grrrrrrrrrrrr....and it's sunny and beautiful out again today. Couple more days and I'll give it a try again...fingers crossed.

Sorry I've Been Lazy

Yup, I'm a flake.....where the heck did my blogging motivation go???? After my super wicked awesome fun trip to Louisville, I kind of hit a wall with the season. What you say?? Yup, long season, plus some colder weather, and a couple cans of CIL paint and I was good and ready for fat and sassy season.

The weekend following Louisville was Island Cup finals, none other then the Ricky Bobby at Western Speedway right here in Victoria. Oh my, how nice it really was not to travel. The course was muuuuudddddy, and it was gnarly cold.....but once I got rolling I had a great time and a great race. Raced with the Expert again, keeping myself in shape for Provincials and the USGP finals in Bend.

At this point I had decided Bend would be the end of the season for me, with my motivation waning for the year and my budget completely spent, it really wasn't looking very positive in terms of being able to go to Worlds in Belgium in January, and being able to train properly until then as well. But I was pretty confident I could squeeze a couple more weeks out of myself!

The following Tuesday I recieved a call telling me to be ready for surgery for my hernia on Wednesday! A hernia you say...haha, yup I've got the old man hernia!! Happened about 5 years ago from a little crash on a recovery ride, and it had finally gotten to the point that it really needed to be fixed. I guess the wait list for this surgery is 14 months, but you know, when you bat your eyelashes at the Dr...haha, noooo, due to being an athlete and going back to work up north (this Friday...uggg) I had a really small window in which I could get this done so I was put on the emergency call list. And when you get put on that list, things happen fast! So I was in full on shut down mode, one last big ride on tuesday.....only to get another call saying that an emergency, a real emergency had come up and I had to wait again.

Well, let me tell you, it's really hard to go from full shut down mode, then turn around and tell yourself you've still got a couple weeks to go....playing mind games with myself. We skipped BC Provincials, just not being really excited about traveling and the cold mud forecasted. I ended up taking a couple of days really easy and come monday I was really excited and rejuvenated to race and ride, completely ready to finish my season off! Half way through a 3 hour ride on Tuesday I get another call!!! Scheduled for my surgery now on Monday, Dec 5th....geeeez. I'm going from up to down to up to down!!!

So here I am, just over one week after my surgery and I'm dying to get out and ride or do something!!! I am really, really surprised how much this little operation has kicked my butt. I figured 2 maybe 3 days of couch time and I'd be able to function normally......nope, I'm just finally starting to feel like "normal". You'd be amazed how many movies and how much TV you can watch in a day. I haven't ever taken time fully off of doing anything, so I'm really hoping that the rest does me good. 1 week of recovery down, 3 more till I can get back on the bike.....I'm determined to let this heal properly, because I sure as heck don't want to do this again!

Not the best way to cap off the season, but it's done. I've had some good time to look back over my season, the ups and downs. I'm not really happy with how my cross country season has gone, besides my stage racing, but I really think that I've learned a lot this summer. I'm thinking next year that I may take a slightly different approach to my racing. It's always been a life long goal to go to the Olympics, but with 3 Canadian women in the top 7 in the World and Canadian women being the top ranked in the World, it's a really lofty goal, but it's absolutely amazing for women's mountain biking in Canada. I can honestly say that I gave it everything and I don't have any regrets about my career....And no, I'm not saying it's over, but different.

I've found that I'm excelling in and falling in love with the multi-day enduro races and cyclocross races....2 very different extremes!! My focus for 2012 will be races such as Transrockies and Furious3, and if I can learn how to swim better some Xterra events, with the odd Olympic distance race thrown in like Nationals and Canada cups. And I'm going to use all of this as training for a kick ass Cyclocross season!! World Championships next year are in Louisville, first time ever on North American soil!!

So again, I'm hitting the pavement looking for sponsors for the 2012 season...it'd be really cool to see just how far I can take this Cyclocross racing with some support, especially when I'm doing half decent as a fully self funded racer against those fully funded racers.... :)

Hurry up 3 weeks!!!

Louisville second day of racing

After a night of relaxing, stretching and eating, I was slow getting out of bed in the morning. Day 2, whether it be a stage race or just a double header, never fails to hurt. A couple minor changes to the course made it, in my eyes, even more challenging and more exciting to race at the same time.

My third row call up ended up being a second row due to a no show ahead of me, so I lined myself up behind Merideth Miller and Caroline Mani (impressed to see her out here with her wrist all wrapped up). Off the gun my path opened up nicely, but I had my worst start in a long time and couldn't capitalize. Slipped the pedal, OUCH, got myself sorted out and worked back up, then found myself pinched into the fence about halfway down the start straight.… but I still found myself near the top ten going over the barriers, so it couldn't have been that bad.

The race stayed closer together today versus yesterday. Yes, Katie Compton did solo away for the win again, but her attack didn't come till later in the race an it was really neat to be in a train of 10+ women through the first lap and a half.

It's also really exciting going through things like sand pits with 10+ other women at one time. Mayhem can happen then, like a big crash and you could find yourself jumping clear over someone sprawled out in the sand. Something like that really can happen!!!

Personally I don't feel I had the strongest of races (maybe I need to do more Xterra training again....haha). After working my way up to I think 5th was my highest spot, I found I was in trouble and just a world of hurt from lap 2 on. You know your working hard when your arms start going numb, and not just the rough bumpy ground kind of numb.

A small battle with Chloe, but she slipped from my grasp. Then a very small battle with Laura Van Gilder, I mean she almost passed me like I was standing still. My longest battle was with Sue Butler, I always find myself around her. I was able to claw my way back onto her wheel and stick with her for a lap, but slowly she created a gap I couldn't close.

The 5th and final lap, I'm pretty sure you could have seen the mushroom cloud go off over my head. Teal Stetson Lee had a great last lap, and caught and passed me handedly. Through the last technical section I closed the gap slightly but not enough to make contact. But I did manage to just hang onto another top ten :-)

And Regan killed his category!!! Taking his first USGP win. Redemption for who ever took him out the day before. Amanda had an awesome race finishing just outside the podium in fourth!!

Stupid appointment!!!! Don't even get to enjoy my last night in Louisville. Packed bike and showered, then caught the 6:40 to Chicago (swore I would never fly through there again, but it wasn't too bad) then onto Toronto. Now I'm spending a great night in the Toronto airport (not enough time to get a hotel) then early morning Vancouver flight, followed by the little puddle jumper back home. Yaahh! The exciting life of an athlete, airports, airports, airports…but I'm not complaining…well maybe a little, this floor is cold and hard!!!

On the agenda! Island cup finals this weekend in Victoria, BC Provincials in Vancouver the following weekend, then the last USGP in Bend in December. So I've got under a month to find my "pop"!!!