i don't want the pop tart

"did you race this weekend?"

"yes"

"cherry pie?"

"no"

"??!!"

so, how exactly did i do a race this weekend? well, you see, it was my first team ride. [which team you ask? bell lap racing. me and some masters men. that's how i like it. (p.s. please be our fan on facebook)] now, how exactly does team ride=race?

well, it does.

for me.

the last three weeks i have been prepping for my race. i do my intervals and all i have been thinking when it gets hard is "petersoooooooooooooon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and then i go faster. last week i did the cal aggie "race" for the mere reason that i needed to get some speed work in before the real race this past saturday.

on monday, i start my peaking for the big day. and, mostly importantly, i let the shit talking begin on the team email list. not many engage in my shit-talking, except tom fahey: telling me that for every city limit sign i lose, i have to do pushups.

then people start bailing on the ride.... pelaez cannot come because he is 'moving.' while i would love to crush pelaez-- cause all he does is eat my food-- that will have to wait for another day. the real person i wanted to crush on saturday was brian peterson. "petersooooooooooon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

the morning of the ride, i receive a text message on my phone that peterson cannot come because he is 'getting sick.'

scared of getting sick? scared of the rain? or scared of beth newell! it's the later, clearly.

i send him a text message telling him that he is scared, and he told me tom fahey would beat me in all the sprints. of course peterson would instruct his crony to uphold his honor. peterson is a pretty shitty shit talker.

so we meet at philz coffee in palo alto and i am ready for the tour de peninsula ride. bebe and burns show up and we talk about how weak peterson is. and we decide we want to start a list of reasons brian peterson sucks. i decided i was going to collect these on my blog and publish on every subsequent post for awhile-- so please leave your reasons in the comment section, or email me, or send them to me on facebook. but here is my reason #1:

REASON #1 BRIAN PETERSON SUCKS: THOSE STUPID GEEK WEEZER GLASSES-- DARK FRAMED GLASSES WERE SO 2001, BITCH.

when tom shows up we stop shit talking peterson, obviously. and then the ride started and it was ON.

well, it was ON for me.

i don't know if it was ON for anyone else. but i thrashed my bike. city limit sprints aren't very fun when you don't know when they are coming. but it didn't matter so much. the last one, tom even gave me a rundown of the sprint before it was going to happen because i was such weak sauce. - and then we were going down the road putting out approximately 2500 watts in the sprint windup, and then i couldn't do it any more and fell off fahey's wheel well before the line. and there you have it. newell: 0. fahey: 5.

and goddamnit, it is so on now. now i am going to be thinking "faheeeeeey!!!!!!!!" while doing my intervals" that is way better than peterson. because tom is a better shittalker. and he doesn't have ugly glasses, just a lumberjack beard.

and that is how it supposed to be right? trying to tear apart your own teammates?

i must say, i think tom fahey is a very worthy opponent, for more reasons than him being a good shit talker. you know why? he has excellent coordination of his bike. blue bar tape, blue tires, blue hoods. now, i'm not so into blue-- but i'm into making your bike have a little pazaz. something far too few people do-- with their boring black frames, black bartape, black hoods, and black tires. i mean, damn. what gives? even if you have a fugly frame like mine, you can at least make your bike look cool with some awesome bar tape, hudz hoods, and sweet sidewalls. and fahey is all about that. so i have mad respect for that. that and he told me i should do pushups for losing.

anyway, fun teamride. but i don't want that damn pop tart, okay?

ding dongs and donnettes

one must prepare for the first race of the season correctly. this could perhaps include a night trip to 7/11.

now, i am still kinda mad at 7/11 for never writing back to my most excellent letter about the slurpy incident. but we were walking home and wanted to get dessert, and the option was 7/11 or whole foods, and 7/11 seemed like the more logical choice.

there is a wide selection of sweet treats at 7/11. this includes, but is not limited to: candy bars, slurpies, and a wide variety of hostess and generic cake-like snacks.

let me review hostess snacks.

• fruit pies: those cherry or apple pie gooie things...to ones that look a bit more questionable filled with chocolate pudding. the cherry one is quite yummy and good on long rides. although it has been known to get wiped all over my face, which can be both endearing or gross, depending on how you look at me.
  
• the chocolate cake filled with cream variety. these include hohos, ding dongs, cupcakes, suzy q's. all the same, just with different packaging. chocolate cake, cream, dipped in chocolate. now, let me just say, i always preferred the little debbie cakes, to the hostess. the little debbie swiss roll is far, far superior to hostess ho hos. unfortuantely, little debbie does not sell singles (like hostess does) in gas stations and 7/11s. it is a shame, really, because little debbie would certainly have a corner on the market, because they are far superior in quality.
  
• twinkies and snowballs. not a huge fan of these, but they should be included, as they are classics.
• donnettes. in my opinion, donnettes are really the hostess product worth buying. this goes for both the ones dipped in chocolate and the ones covered in powder sugar.

now, how did i get on the dissertation of hostess snacks?

oh yes, what i did the day before my first race of the year.

stopped at 7/11 for a late night treat, and i picked up the hostess cupcakes, and my boyfriend got the donnettes. actually, he didn't get the donnettes, he picked up the generic 7/11 version of donnettes, of the glazed variety, and they were nasty. soggy and nasty. and speaking of nasty, my hostess cupcake was not good either. hostess really needs to work on their chocolate cake/cream snacks, and should take a lesson from little debbie, in my humble opinion. i did a quick google, and found this awesome blog, that confirms my core belief over and over, that in fact little debbie is better than hostess. (this blog is pretty interesting, because does comparative taste testing of pre-packaged snacks). why, little debbie, i ask again, don't you wrap and sell individual packages?

anyway, the short of it was the late night dessert run was pretty much a big disappointment.

so fast forward to cal aggie criterium. let's see, i'll give the couple of sentence obligatory race report. [start] the race started. i missed my foot clipping in. an attack went off in the first lap or two and two girls got away. i decided to try and bridge across. except then i hung out all alone for over a lap and thought i was going to die. then two girls blew past and i almost got myself dropped, but by the grace of god i latched on we then had a group of five for the rest of the race. i kept thinking: why are criteriums so long? then it was the last lap and i was lame in the last turn, fa la la la la. [end obligatory race report]

so after the race we stop at the gas station and michael says: "can i have $2" and in he goes, and out he comes with some donnettes (of the good variety) and some ding dongs.

hostess ding dongs look myseriously like hostess cupcakes. please observe:

hostess cupcake

hostess ding dong

to me, the only difference appears to the white swirly pattern on the top. hmmmmm.

anyway, are hostess ding dongs just as gross as the cupcakes? i don't know. i decided not to partake, despite post-race hunger. the night before was such a disappointment, i couldn't handle it again. i did, though, eat some of the donnettes, even though i know he intended to eat all the donnettes and for me to eat the ding dongs. we did not discuss this, i just knew his intent, and decided independently to eat some of his donnettes.

so what is the result of the hostess splurge two days in a row?

let me tell you. it involves stopping at the "produce market" in dixon on the way home-- where the excellent deals are advertised on the billboards.... and then somehow spending FIFTY EIGHT DOLLARS on produce...and those stupid wasabi peas i just had to have. unfortunately my prize from the crit was a "one free drink of choice" coupon at peet's, so i can't even deduct prize winning from the shopping spree to make me feel better (i.e. effectively saying i only spent $48 or $38 on groceries).

lesson learned, don't just eat 3 donnettes after a race and then go grocery shopping.

blame the interval

tonight i came to an important conclusion: never do your last interval.

now, i know that some people are of the 'do an extra interval' school. and perhaps on occasion i would opt for extra credit, but mostly no... tonight i needed those 12 minutes.

so maybe i went on a night ride on wednesday for 2.5 hours....
and maybe it was 4:45pm today and i realized i forgot to plug in my light
and maybe i just did a 15 minute "quick power charge."
and maybe i didn't even give a second thought to that maybe being a problem...

so i finish my intervals and am riding along redwood road and going so slow i can barely bike straight. and it is foggy as hell (...well, hell isn't probably foggy, but trust me it was foggy), and i am thinking about how happy i am i have this bright light and thinking about how cool bot-dots are, because they are the only thing keeping me from steering straight....and i think about how i could write an ode to bot dots. and how funny that would be, because when i was a cat4 (waaaay last year) i hated bot dots, and now i was getting all sentimental of how much i love them for lighting up the road.

and as i was having this sappy thought about writing a sonnett to bot dots, it looked like my light was turning red.

'whoa, those must have been some hard intervals' i thought to myself, assuming that blood vessels in my eyes were causing optical illusions.

and then maybe i kinda remembered that my intervals were a good 10 minutes ago, and i shouldn't be seeing funny.

and then maybe i thought: wow, my light is going die. and this red thing is probably some super fancy pants technology like the "gas light" on a car.

digression. now i love the gas light on the car. how far can i go til i run out of gas? yeah, i know this is bad for the engine... but the adrenaline rush is kind of great sometimes. getting all panicky driving and not knowing when the gas station will come, and then the relief. note: i've never /actually/ run out of gas; cause i am very lucky.

but this light situation was a bit different. maybe....

it was dark. and there were mountain lions out there. maybe....

and so i maybe start another interval and pedal really fast for 2 or 3 minutes. and then maybe my light starts getting dimmer and dimmer. but not out. maybe it is reducing itself to a different setting. the orange "on" light turned red.

so how long do i have? i wonder. maybe i shouldn't have done that last interval.

and i start thinking.....

maybe i should call someone. who should i call? and so i make a little list in my head: karla, ben, sean, mel. that was be my list. because i know they we all pick me up. and they all live kinda close to where i was. and they will all make fun of me terribly. but lovingly.

then i think: maybe i will call them when my light actually dies.

so i keep pedalling and come to the pinehurst/redwood intersection. and then i know i only have 2 miles uphill to go. and i feel like i will make it.

and then it dies. but right in front of a driveway with a light. wow, i am lucky.

so i pull out my phone to call karla, and ...there is no service out there. maybe i'm not so lucky.

so i start pedaling. people say "your eyes adjust to the dark." adjust to what? dark is dark! i still couldn't see jack shit.

and the thing is when it is dark dark, you start hearing things. animals. like maybe mountain lions.

and so i start the plea bargaining. 'just let me get to skyline blvd, because then there are street lights, and then i know i can make it home.'

and then cars come by and i make up my 'car interval' game.... which is close your eyes as they approach so you don't get blinded by the headlights, then go as fast as you can when they pass you to use their taillight for a few seconds.

and as i was biking in the pitch black i thought about how this ride is going to make a great blog post. and then i started thinking about how many of my blog posts are about bad things happening to me or me being stupid. and i wonder why i only ever feel inspired to write when something bad happens. and i wonder if i make bad things happen so i can write blog posts. and i thought about how all the people who read this blog must think i am a big nitwit.

and then i started to see the street lights at skyline. and i thought about how lucky i am. honestly, i am very lucky. in 5th grade i won an american girl doll in a raffle. in college i won a $500 gift certificate to roadrunnersports.com where i bought lots of running shoes. and then how a couple of years ago i got picked out of hundred of people to be a juror on a murder trial. maybe not lucky, but chance. and then i hoped luck would get me home. and then i hoped that luck will extend to make me a redistricting commissioner.

and so my little bowt in the dark make me feel pretty good about my lot in the world.

but it also scared me enough to teach me a very valuable lesson.

charge my light early.

no, silly! clearly it was the final intervals fault! i would have *just* made it to skyline if it wasn't for that last interval. never do it!

open letter to 7-eleven

dear 7-eleven,

i am having a hard time figuring you out. your relationship to biking that is. as someone who rides bikes, should i consider you an friend or foe?

sure, i do realize that you supported a kinda big deal cycling team awhile back... and i do realize that sometimes your store comes in very handy... like when you are out on a long ride and bonking and really need a stale doughnut or piece of beef jerky....

but, i really have to question the slurpee.... making me believe that 7-eleven is really a biker's foe.

what am i talking about?

january 7, 2010. 9:00pm. i am biking home from the team tufunga gym, heading east on 40th st, just crossing telegraph avenue in oakland, california. there are some young men idling on the corner, all drinking slurpees. as i bike by, one boy removes the lid of this 44oz slurpee and tosses the contents of the cherry flavor all over me and my bike.

now nothing makes someone feel quite so lame as getting a slurpee thrown on them. not to mention, this then resulted in me having to: 1) clean my bike, and 2) shower -- two things i *really* hate doing. (although i do admit i did have a few tastes of slurpee off my top tube on the way home, and that was quite yummy)

so why am i blaming you, 7-eleven, for their behavior, and not their juvenile delinquent selves...or the cheap-ass weed they were probably on that caused them to buy the slurpee in the first place?

that point is clear in my mind, 7-eleven.

c'mon -- 44oz of slurpee? why do you make a 44-oz cup? it's like 2 bucks for that much slurpee. and you know people won't be able to drink it all. thus, bad things are likely to happen with that extra slurpee... and moreover, let's be honest, that amount of high fructose corn syrup causes crack-like behaviors in individuals. at some point, throwing slurpee remnants at passer-byers does become the logical course of action.

so, 7-eleven. what's the deal? 44 oz cups are only created for trouble. and of course you buy that size and not the 12 oz size because it is only like 55cents more.

as compensation for my emotional scarring, i would very much like a life-time free slurpee card, usable at any 7-eleven establishment worldwide. thank you for this consideration.

with warm regards,

beth

hair cutting gone wrong...again

so last year at christmas i went home with ratty hair. i also had a pretty rockin' acne breakout, so you could have easily mistaken my 2008 christmas pictures with the fam, from ones when i was sixteen.

so i made two promises to myself. one, i was going to clear up my acne. that was my new years resolution. i think it was the only resolution i have ever followed. my friend mai-stella's friend, dan kerns, started some acne company-- acne.org where he has the three step REGIMEN. so i started it and followed it religiously. i love dan kerns. you can watch his cute little videos about how to wash your face and stuff. anyway, it worked! my skin was looking like a non-adolecent until this fall time, where i took a little backtrack because of some stupid i.u.d. (hi mom!) my second promise was to get my hair cut before i go home, so i don't look like a ragamuffin. which (hair) is the topic of this post, not my acne.

so i go to the hair dresser and say: "i want my hair length between my SHOULDERS and my CHIN, so i can put it in a PONYTAIL. and, yeah, you can make it look cute with some layers if you like." i am not too picky. i feel like we had an understanding. she pointed to the length of my hair. then, you know how it goes. she asks me when the last time i got my hair cut was, and i say: in july i cut it myself. (i left off the part about how i just chopped my pigtails off, so it was all crooked...) and instead said: "i cut my hair about twice a year."

so maybe she took that small talk as liberty to cut a little more than our initial agreement. she started in the back and i could tell something was going terribly wrong. but i felt funny interrupting her so i just sat silently knowing it was going to be bad.

and it was.

i mean, it didn't look that bad. kind of bowl cuttish. ya know, CHEEK BONE length. i was definitely going to rocking the bike helmet mullet, i could tell. and i knew i'd look dumb for the xmas pictures again. i guess the only good thing that i can say about it, is that it was going to require the use of hair gel. and there was a period of my life, while i was residing in the eastern bloc, that i got a little bit into hair gel. like re-apply a few times a day, into hair gel. like, crunchy hair, into hair gel. and i could dig that again.

but, the hair cut is totally impractical. no ponytail. i can't even two little ponytails. so come monday, i am going to put my helmet on, bike to work, and be stuck with sweaty, matted down, weirdly cut helmet hair at work all day. with things flying up all over. and i won't even be able to put it in a ponytail to hide my sweaty yucky hair. and i don't really know how going to the gym is going to work, cause i can't put it back, and the hair just flops around in my eyeballs and is going to be a pain in the ass jumping rope. i think i am going to need to get a sweat band or something, but that won't help that flop in the back, so maybe a swim cap is a better idea.

despite all this, i was trying to be optimistic about the hair cut. until i woke up this morning. "this hairdo will be easy, you won't have to do anything to it" hair dresser lady says. bullshit. i should have rolled out of bed and went right back to the hair place in my pjs and ask her what does she mean by "not do anything."

so i did what any logical person would do.

i got scissors out of my bottom drawer and took matters into my hands.

i tried to "thin it out" by doing that flutter cut you see people do. i think i got the hang of it eventually, but cut some chunks in my hair a few times by accident. oh well. i thinned out a lot of hair. the trash can was pretty full. then my hand got tired, so i stopped. except i only cut the left side, so now i have two different haircuts on each side of my head.

it's super post-modern.

so, in conclusion, i decided i am just going to wear my helmet all the time. my boyfriend just got me a new helmet. except i am not wearing it-- except when he is around-- because i don't want to ruin the new one. so i am just going to wear my old helmet all the time. you never know what is going to happen in a cubicle. the building hasn't been seismic retrofitted yet, so i can just pull that card for the next few months until my hair gets to be ponytail length again.

talk about a sucker punch

i'm tired just thinking about that!

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/uci-announces-beefed-up-olympic-omnium-format

and was i right or was i right about the miss 'n out?!

"It used to be that computer viruses attacked only your hard drive. Now they attack your dignity"

that quote, my friends was in today's front page article of the new york times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/14/technology/internet/14virus.html?hp

Malicious programs are rampaging through Web sites like Facebook and Twitter, spreading themselves by taking over people’s accounts and sending out messages to all of their friends and followers. The result is that people are inadvertently telling their co-workers and loved ones how to raise their I.Q.’s or make money instantly, or urging them to watch an awesome new video in which they star.

“I wonder what people are thinking of me right now?” said Matt Marquess, an employee at a public relations firm in San Francisco whose Twitter account was recently hijacked, showering his followers with messages that appeared to offer a $500 gift card to Victoria’s Secret.

really? is this the crappy example that the new york times finds?

i can do much better.

so my facebook account got hacked last week and i was sending people chats about this awesome new diet program i am on.

but, the real embarssing one was this one:

"75% of girls are bisexual. are you into 23yr old girls into cumming?"

apparently that is what i was chatting with folks about on facebook. only two people told me about this.

1. my friend andy from minnesota who just got married. in fact him and his wife were staying at my place when they got engaged this spring. talk about embarrassing, when you get a chat that says something: "so you sent me kind of a weird message the other day..."
2. or how about that i also sent this to adam duvendeck, ya know like the olympian. so i never actually really had a conversation with him...other than saying hi in passing. but he was nice enough to respond-- not cause he is into 23 yr old girls cumming-- but because he told me he wanted to tell me i was hacked.

now, after reading the nytimes article, i realized i didn't take the appropriate action. nytimes instructs:

After discovering their accounts have been seized, victims typically renounce the unauthorized messages publicly, apologizing for inadvertently bombarding their friends. These messages — one might call them Tweets of shame — convey a distinct mix of guilt, regret and embarrassment.

yeah, i didn't do this. i mean, i just thought i'd let it slide. who knows, maybe my facebook account is still sending out these chats. guilt, regret, embarassment? well, i just kind of thought it was funny.

anyway, point of this is not about my hacking... but come on new york times! is this best example you can dig up for your article "embarrassing" hacking about about telling your friends how to up their iq ... or getting a $500 coupon for victoria secret...? i could have provided a much more interesting antecdote.

but may it is that your editor just won't let you write 'cumming' in news print.

thankfully, i can write whatever i want on my blog. (hi mom!)

stolen idea

(citation: brian peterson)

so as many trackies have heard, the pursuit and points race have been eliminated from the olympics. i will save the political analysis of such a decision, because my blog is not a source of useful information, nor a statement on cycling politics. snore. let's just say i think it is dumb.

upon the announcement yesterday, the olympics will instead hold the international omnium, or kind of like the pentathlon of cycling. five events, one day. excellent for people who succeed in mediocrity. like me. that is why i like the event. but, i also like the miss 'n out, and don't think that should have an olympic event. anyway, statement came out yesterday that they are thinking of making the five event omnium into a six event omnium.

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/uci-wants-sixth-event-in-olympics-omnium

now, anyone who has done the event, knows that that is pretty much a bitch slap to both the athletes and the promoter. poor promoters-- a six hour event suddenly turned larger. and poor athletes-- that is just cruel.

but this begs the question of what is the sixth event?

article says that they are adding a sixth to make it more 'endurance friendly'. omnium already has a points race, scratch race, and a pursuit-- so what would the sixth event be?

let's do some brainstorming. please pitch in the comment section.

1. keirin- the omnium is rich on time trials-- having three. but only has two mass start races. it makes sense to add another mass start race, and of the "championship" events that the omnium /doesn't/ have, this seems to be the only one... minum match sprints, although that seems quite unlikely, given the already long nature of the day. however, because there is criticism that the omnium is already to sprinter focused with a 200m, kilo/500m, and scratch race-- this is pretty unlikely.
   
2. another scratch or points race-- possible. but i think this would be pretty dumb to have the same event twice. it'd be like making decathletes do the mile twice.

thus, the events must be some more crowd pleaser track events.

1. miss 'n out- of course this would be sweet. the loser would get an extra long rest for the next event and the winner would get no rest, but low points. it adds another element of strategy to the game.
2. chariot race- jenny oh suggested this one & peterson commented whether or not you could bring your own beefy holder.
3. tempo race or snowball- this would be a blast for all the competitors and a sure way to put the extra nail in the coffin
4. unknown distance- it is my opinion that the 500m/kilo should be moved to the second to last race, and the unknown distance go last. that way, if it is close, the results of the olympic champion could depend entire on luck. what is more fair than that? me, i am pretty confident i'd become olympic champion by attacking just at the right moment, come around turn 4 to hear the bell ring and ride in solo for a first.
   

other thoughts?