Sunday, December 24, 2006

i used to like running.....

so i am back in glorious oHIo for christmas. i am missing my bike, so i thought i'd go for a happy little run. like the good old days.

i go out my house in barberton, ohio...run down hopocan street, pass the beautiful scenerey -- the recycling factory and train tracks. then i go up the hill...that i use to actually think was a hill, but it really isn't. i pass the sokol club (the dodgy sign where there is a slovakian center...with a supposed bowling lane inside....but i have like 4 bowling alleys within a 2 miles radius of my home, so i haven't ever visited this one). then i pass the hopocan gardens; it is a restaurant that is hungarian and they say they have "chicken paprikash" (which makes me laugh because in hungarian it should be spelt paprikas (no h) but pronounced with an h...nitwits. anyways, that place sucks.).

But I digress.... My run. It is about 9 minutes into my run. It is cold and I am already getting the winter ear ache from running outside....i am becoming a california softy. :( At 15 minutes I turn around. At 17 minutes i get so tired i have to stop. I usually am stubborn and never stop, even if I am puking on myself...but it is xmas and i wanted to have a fun run, so stretch a bit. Then i run 2 more minutes...then i get a cramp. then i walk more. Then I suck it up and run all the way home. The longest 30 minute run ever. How am i so weak? I have been a biking a ton!

Next day: i can't walk. i mean, i really can't walk. i am bracing myself going up and down the strairs. my calves and shins KILL and my hamstrings can't even be straightened. this is the most pathetic thing ever. i am sooo sore. i know i haven't run since july and I was booking it for the first half...but, i have been biking a lot i shouldn't be so sore.

Moral of the story: i am not ever running again.... unless i am late for the bus. that will show that stupid sport. i used to like running.... that is until i discovered i could roll everywhere instead! stupid crap.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

saddle sore? I think not.

so I had a minor freak out moment in the bathroom today when I felt a large lump on my butt. my roommate looked at it and it was kind of blue. Was this a saddle sore? I was freaking out because it seemed like it was a weird spot... but who to ask? I can't call Fred. And I don't know many women bikers. I called every woman cyclist I knew - which was about four people. Some who I have only ridden with twice... awk-ward.

Narda called me back. She is a sweet masters time trialist - and an awesome women. But I definitely don't know her well enough to be talking about bumps in my butt hole. But she was awesome and gave me the diagnosis. Not a saddle sore -- a hemorrhoid. HEMORRHOID?!?! How do you get these?
  1. being overweight. (nope)
  2. inactive. (nope)
  3. sit a lot. (not really)
  4. pregnant. (nope)
  5. eat lots of meat and not enough veggies. (nope)
  6. have trouble pooping. (definitely nope)
I determined it must have been over straining myself from going on a ride with the juniors. (bad idea) Crazy shit. I bet Narda is having a good laugh out of me now.

Monday, December 18, 2006

juniors are ass kickers

So I have been off the bike a bit cause I was on vacation- so I thought on my first long ride back I wanted to do a nice ride with the Duros, expecting not to be able to keep up and fall back. Fred and I BART into Walnut Creek and get there early. The Tieni Duros - a junior development team - meets earlier and leaves. Fred is friends with this guy and they invite us on the ride with them, so we go... and let me say, I am not so excited cause high school boys are fast.

You don't even know. I think we started off the easy paceline going down San Ramon Blvd super fast-- then we go up Dublin Grade and of course I feel like I need to stay in the front and I am just killing myself trying to keep up with these boys. Then we start going down and I realize we're doing some crazy rotating paceline down and I think I am going to crap my pants I so scared cause I have never done this before and we are going so fast. Thank god I make up. Then we go up redwood and I hang and hang and probably about a mile to the top, the top group goes in front of me...I was feeling a little sorry for myself, until I realize some of these juniors are like national champions and have pro contracts with Lombardi. (But this was their easy day in the off season). I came home from Pinehurst, instead of going back to Walnut Creek with them. I passed out I was so exhausted. Teenage boys are ass kickers for sure.

Best conversation of the day, while in double paceline.

Jr.: So what school do you go to?
Me: Uh, actually, I am graduated....from college. (And of course, I feel like a loser.)

Monday, September 11, 2006

my first "century"

Bike Against the Odds

The bike club I am a part of, the Oakland Yellowjackets, sponsors a century fundraiser for breast cancer. I raised a bunch of money and figured I would train for my first hundred miles! It was going to be a real hard course-- with 10,000ft of climbing! Whoa. I was very excited to try such a challenging century for my first one. Sadly, though, I ended around mile 85 cause I had a bad fall... Here is the re-cap.

  • Started my first 100 miles little before 7am with encouraging words of "of course you'll finish!" by the best cheering squad ever at the lake. Yellowjackets rule!
  • Got through the fog and through the zoo - which was cool. I had never done that part of Skyline.
  • Coming out of the zoo, a dutchman (name Bart) caught up with me and we rode together for most of the rest of way. It went like this. I would kick his ass on the uphills and he would catch up on the downhills. He was really cool, and gave me a bunch of pointers on downhill riding. We drafted and took pulls for almost all of Moraga Rd/Camino Pablo/San Pablo Dam Rd. It was great to have someone to ride with.
  • I got to the top of pig farm and the women at the top were very nice and gave me a green popsicle and told me I was the first woman and the fourth person! I couldn't believe it!
  • Then I stopped for lunch a little before 11am. I couldn't believe how fast I was going. I felt great.
  • Probably around mile 70-75, I was starting to feel fatigued. Deerhill felt pretty hard, it was short, but brutal. I knew I still had Happy Valley, Papa bear, and Wildcat to go. Going up Happy Valley was okay....
  • The coming down was the problem. I even said to myself: "slow down, this is hard." And I braked as hard as my arms could go, but I just couldn't on that last switch back and fell in and skidded. I must have fallen on a big rock, cause my knee looked pretty nasty cause I could see all the way to my knee cap. I figured it was best to keep moving. Plus, adrenaline and shock had kind of kicked in so I just made a left on bear creek and went up papa bear to the rest stop on San Pablo Dam Road. I was bleeding a bunch and it didn't look so good.
  • While riding up papa bear, I contemplated finishing... but I knew that was probably a bad idea. My brake hoods were all fucked up, and I knew I had some big hills to go down. Better judgment took the hold of me once.
  • When I got to the rest stop Chrissie and some other yellowjackets were there, and were really nice. They called the paramedics and couldn't believe I biked from happy valley...but the whole thing was kind of a blur to me.
  • On the ups, the parademic was really cute. I was talking a lot of shit in the ambulance, like about my pulse rate being really low and beating the dutchman.
  • In the ER, I had to wait on the gerny a long time because things like "blood clots in the brain" and "heart attacks"get triaged first.... I was waiting awhile (like a couple of hours), and then it started to hurt and I wasn't very happy. I kept getting "ooooo" looks from nurses walking by.
  • It was my own fault, cause I was being such a tough girl. When the doctor asked if i needed painkillers, I said no. And when they asked how bad it hurt I said a "3". I could see all the way down to my knee cap! Doctors shouldn't listen to idiots like me in the ER.
  • I was pretty bummed cause I was laying in the hallway for a couple of hours. Then a guy Malcolm took my xray. At that time, I was hurting a lot cause then it had been several hours and shock wore off and I was sad I didn't finish the ride, and probably wouldn't be able to go to Monteray ride with the yellowjackets. Malcolm, though cheered me up by telling me, "Lance Armstrong won the tour with only one testicle. You are only missing some skin."
  • Once I got morphine at 4pm I was feeling great! My nurse, Noreen, was great and so was everyone else. Morphine is great!!! I kept chattering away about the dutchman who I was beating and was very excited. I was a trip.
  • Noreen cleaned me for over an hour, flushed me with a bunch of fluids. She was really cool. She was going to cut off my bike shorts. But I only have one pair, so I talked her out of it, and she slid them off. When this was happening, the morphine kicked in and i said: "Noreen! My mom always told me to wear clean underwear in case I go to the hospital....but I am not even wearing underwear!" Man, I was crazy.
  • Then the general surgeon came in to sew me up. He was cool. He was worried about infection, so he cleaned me again. Another bag of fluids. Then he decided he wanted an orthopedic consult cause I might have bone exposure and would need to go into surgery.
  • I waited a loooong time. And still no IV! I was very thirsty and hungry. At one point I nearly fainted cause I went to the bathroom and all the blood rushed out of my head.
  • When the orthopedist came I told him not to mess up my knee because I am training for the 2012 olympics...but I don't think he thought I was too funny. In fact, the orthapedist wasn't too funny in general. He said he was going to operate. Then said he didn't need to. Then he scraped at my knee with these sponges and it hurt a lot. I was trying to crack jokes while he was doing this, but he wasn't having it. I mean, he was scrapping away in my knee-- he should have been happy I was cracking jokes and not screaming out in pain...
  • The worst part of the hospital visit was that they wouldn't give me an IV. I think the nurses thought I was joking when I kept asking for one-- but all I really wanted was an IV because I was so thirsty after riding 85 miles...and very hungry too-- but they wouldn't let me eat or drink anything.
  • I didn't get home til 9:45pm. Long day!

Long story short is I have some loose stitches in my knee that will come out in a couple of weeks. I am in a brace and can't bend my leg until the stitches come out. But they think I can be back on the bike in three weeks or so -- just when the stitches come out. I am not too worried and am just enjoying my Vicodin.