Thursday, August 30, 2007

points racing and quadie measurements!

no wednesday night racing anymore. boo hoo. i really miss my weekly miss 'n out fun, but the points race is a blast too!

the "c" group tonight was fast. lots of dudes who ride road a lot. i could tell they ride road a lot cause they had on spiffy team kits and their calves were cut. i have neither of those things. anyway, i had a different thing i was going to work on this week. last week i wanted to be really aggressive and make attacks, which i did. but it also got me real tired and i wasn't putting it together for the sprint laps as well as i could have. so this time, i thought i'd work on preserving my energy better and catching wheels. that was one thing i was pretty happy about. i was pretty observant of attacks and if i was in good position, i'd be on them. if i wasn't in good position, i was really good at bridging up to cover them. i did a lot of bridging and covering attacks today. that was cool. as for the actual sprint laps, i didn't do that awesome. i kept getting 3rd and 4th, or 5th. alicia led me out on one and i had a good gap, but got passed at the line by julie and tracy, so that sucked and i still got third. i was timing my sprints okay to get 3rd or 4th, but need to work more on putting it down to get 1st or 2nd. it is hard racing with some fast guys, cause it means i need to make my jump earlier, which i didn't do. well, this week i wasn't so aggressive- but that is okay, cause that wasn't what i was working on. i only scored 5 points total-- not too bad. i needed one good lap where i made a break and took a win, but didn't try that this time; that was my big mistake. i think i came in 6th or 7th, so that is okay. to be honest, i wasn't as tired as i could have been, but i wasn't sure how much i had in me because the pace was faster than in past weeks. now i know and next time i can go harder in the sprints for sure, cause i was recovering pretty well. i am happy i had some left for the last lap sprint. the whole race was a blur-- i don't really know what happened it was over very fast. so, i am hoping sabine will write my race report and tell me what happened.

now, what everyone really wants to know about.... QUADS. sabine had a present for us-- IKEA tape measures! sweet. we got a couple of people to report measurements today. Thank you PROMAN for humoring my patheticism.
  • Alicia Arnold: 51cm (she is very short and wanted me to say that there needs to be some proportion cause she is only 4'9". no worries alicia, you got a killer jump, so those quads are doing something right)
  • Julie Granshaw (group C winner!): 58cm (Julie said she got smaller. Me too! What gives?)
  • Nicola Cramner: 61cm (oh yeah! that is why she is so fast!!! nicky was saying, though, that the location she was measuring included some of her butt, but hey, whatever! You totally schooled us this week.....except we don't have Sabine's measurement this week yet.)
  • Tracey Ford: 54cm (but that is 54cm of all power! she was convinced her quads were bigger than Nicky's and there was some comparing-- but the tape measure doesn't lie!)
  • Sabine Dukes: 62cm! (the winner reports in. but down .5 cm from last week. better get on that pie eating.)
  • Me (Beth Newell): 59.5cm. (Mine gets to be a bigger font because it is my blog. Yes, that is a decrease, a big decrease cause I was over 61 last week. Perhaps I measured poorly last week, but regardless there has been some shrinkage. Good? Bad? I don't know. Am I getting faster? Slower? I don't know. This measurement exercise is all about weekly mapping and observing the cycle of quads. We will see!)
Unfortunately, we didn't get Shelley Olds (group B winner- congrats!) or Mary Maroon's quad measurments. Shelley was cooling down and Mary was racing the As. Dude, Mary's quads have got to be pushing 70. I can't wait to get the measurement on those. This will be the underground competition at State's next weekend -- followed by a leg wrestling tournament on the in-field. (i wish. leg wrestling is so cool!)

this would look so much cooler on the infield grass and in spandex, no? who would you put your money on?

12 comments:

Team TWENTY12 said...

sorry, just re-measured and its for real 61cm - no butt in there. i have to say its definately not all muscle, there are bits that wobble.

place_holder said...

20mm smaller? slacker! the last time i saw the number was back on July 16!!

stop doing the freakin' lawn bowling and eat more chocolate cakes!

Unknown said...

aww. no mention about doing the POO ride with us? :)

anthony

beth bikes! said...

promangirl- no worries about the wobble. me too. info on quad measuring can be found in an earlier post, http://bethbikes.blogspot.com/2007/08/q-quads.html q&a: quads. this describes the wobble rational.

tp: i know 2cm, back to july! i need to eat more cake. i hope i am not slower.

ant: the poo was fun, except me being a sissy cornering on the tracks and then getting dropped into the windy part and not being able to get back on. i will go all winter and get better at that for sure!

Itinerant Rick said...

I am so there for the leg wrestling, even though with my puny quads I will likely go down in an early round.

Velo Bella said...

I still don't know how you write these things after the points race. I could barely get myself home. As it was, it turns out I left my shoes and towel there last night. Guess I got too excited at all the quad measurements.

I am 62 this morning. .5mm smaller than last time.

I'm going to make pie tonight.

Team TWENTY12 said...

I knew bella would be bigger than me, she needs the extra to hold that lovely bubble up! You guys are nuts

Velo Bella said...

oh and I'd put my money on Alicia for the leg wrestly. She looks feisty.

Allison Krasnow said...

that's it, I'm taking my 7th grade students out leg wrestling first thing on tuesday morning. and then we'll quad measure. and then we'll graph the data and find mean, median, mode, range and throw in a scatter plot. I mean it is a math class after all. Hellooooo hormones!

Anonymous said...

my friend jenn just did the measurement and she's rocking 69cm. yeah, 69cm. watch out!

beth bikes! said...

69?!?!?!?!?!

is she human? i gotta see this?

does she bike? or does she speed skater. those folks got some sick quads! bring her to the track. i gotta see those quads in action!

Anonymous said...

she rides fixed gear in the city and in marin and is very strong. i've been encouraging her to get down to hellyer and she seems interested, so we'll see!