Saturday, September 01, 2007

mary maroon is the quad queen! oh yeah, and friday night racing....

thanks to sabine we did some more quad measuring on friday night. of particular note is mary maroon. get this--
65cm!!!!!

that is unreal and awesome! Mary had Mark Paton measure his quads and he was really impressive, but not like mary maroon impressive. she had him by 2cm. (he rang in at 63cm) in addition to having big quads, mary is also running for board of directors at the velodome. i read her campaign statement this morning. it was an okay statement; however, it didn't mention her quad size. i have taken it upon myself to make a new campaign statement and poster for her. it is below (included in the poster is the below picture and caption)

vote mary maroon: 65cm.

"these are mary's 65cm quads. next to her is mike hernandez, also running for BOD. his quads are significantly smaller as you can see, but he's a pretty nice guy and kinda fast none-the-less."

we also measured another person running for the board, jim ryan. he rang in at a 58cm. he's kinda young, so we'll cut him some slack, as he has lots of potential for future quad growth, and i guess there are other attributes that will make people good board representatives.

mary's 65cm in action!

oh yeah, so other than quad measuring i also raced my first friday night last night. it was a ..... humbling experience. i was planning on racing with the masters. because i ride with fred so much, i was prepared for the mental challenge of racing with masters. masters are devious, but i am clued-in to their shanangans. what do i mean by shananagans??? let me share you a few stories of "masters tactics" that i discovered this previous year, while riding with fred.
  1. Fred stuck me on a 68" fixed gear all winter and then would yell at me why i couldn't keep up with him. It wasn't until two months later that I figured out different gear inches, and realized that he was riding high 70s/low 80s. Shanangans.
  2. To drop me, Fred likes to speed up through yellow lights in downtown Oakland, so I have to stop at the red and he can get a few blocks up on me.
  3. Another time Fred dropped me, he took me on some "short cut" or "back way" to the Oakland hills through Peidmont. It was 6:00am and it takes me awhile to warm-up. He pulled away from me purposely and darted around a few corners, leaving me lost in Peidmont for the next 20 minutes going up some really steep pitches trying to find my way out. When i finally caught up with him, I got yelled at.
  4. My favorite was another ride with Fred. I had really bad period cramps, and told him I wasn't feeling well so couldn't go hard. Fred goes "yeah, yeah yeah. rough night at work. we'll take it easy." All this time i see a sparkle in his eye and then hear him click down two cogs and start hammering it.
  5. Or the present day shananagans-a smirk comes across his face, "oh bethie i can't wait til this state meet is over and i ride with you in the hills and i will be able to kick your ass for three weeks until you get your climbing legs back." and this always follows with an evil laugh.
Tricky, those masters. So, I was mentally cued-in for the master's shanagans at the track. They are smart and devious. But I am sharp as a whip, so I was ready for trickery. However..... most everyone was in Trexeltown for masters nationals...so I raced with the 3/4s instead. Next time, gadget. Next time.

Yeah, I will just say - friday night was faster than wednesday c group..... I don't know how exciting of a race report this will be, so i will keep it brief.

  • 12 Scratch Race- Hung on for dear life. Didn't get dropped until lap 10 and finished 1/4 lap behind the pack.
  • Miss n Out- Intelligently managed to box myself in and was the 4th person eliminated.
  • 7 laps to Win n Out- Serge, get dropped, bridge up. Repeat. Didn't get dropped for good until the big attack on lap 6 or 7. Then I just rode as hard as I could til they stopped ringing that bell.
  • 20 lap Points Race- Was with the pack until the first sprint. Just after the 1st sprint I had to work to get back up to the pack, stayed with them for a lap or so. Then there was another attack, I got dropped. But I bridged up again. Then it was the 2nd sprint and I got dropped again. Then I pulled some dude for the next 2 laps but made it back on the pack. (I was getting some good bridging practice) Then I was toast and there was another break and I tried to go with it, but was dropped approximately 2 pedal strokes into it. With 8 to go, I was pretty much TTing. I figured with was good practice TTing, so I just went as fast as I could and tried to stay steady. My big accomplishment was the field didn't lap me. That was actually really happy I didn't get lapped when I was by myself for 8 laps.

Last night I couldn't get on the attacks- maybe I was a bit sluggish from Thursday, but probably the attacks were a lot faster than I am used to and I just couldn't hang. I need to get better at accelerating a lot really fast and catching wheels quickly. Oh well, very good practice. I feel kind of pathetic for saying my big accomplishment of the evening was not getting lapped, but it is true. There were some fast people in the race and i was happy I didn't get lapped. Well, I wanted to have a hard workout last night, and I did that for sure.

Well, I believe that is that. 65cm?! unreal!

9 comments:

Allison Krasnow said...

At the track this morning I was handed a tape measurer by the lovely Sabine, so you know where I'm off to after getting of this computer. I want to race track this spring and I hear we live close to one another. I'm all about the carpool
Ali

Itinerant Rick said...

As Alicat said, Sabine did a bit of a quad measuring session this morning. I was puny, as always, but what the heck; I'm old and slow so you should cut me some slack. For now, give me some cake and pie and lets see where I can get these things!

TreBone said...

As I was reading your blog, it dawned on me that the Beth from Beth Bikes is THE same Beth from the Tuesday Sprints! You've done great this year.

Velo Bella said...

65!!!

I am humbled....

chatterbox said...

Holee cow - I don't think I'll be able to get to 65 without some serious "bulking" using booze and sugar.

The good news is that after Sabine's mandatory measurements at the track, I now stand at 61cm! I was probably swollen from 3 hours in the hot sun, but who cares?! It's a bigger number!

Thanks for the reports of the Friday night races. Good job hanging in!

Dino Dante said...

Mary Maroon is THE QUEEN period!!!

Unknown said...

you should definately throw something in that campaign poster about how awesome mary's matching bar tape it too.

... i think 65cm is bigger around than my waist!!!!

mattio said...

hahahaha, fred sounds like quite a pisser.

i think my quads grew from spending monday at kissena and riding my ass all over nyc on monday and tuesday... but i couldn't find a measuring tape.

either way, i have a ways to go until i get up into your range.

Lorri Lee Lown -- velogirl said...

always cracking me up! you're the best, Beth!