"even though you can't drink beer, you still look good"

this is what karla told me today after i sent her a video of the final goldsprint. (i am not putting the link at the top of this post to lure you to read to the end.)

so i will back track because i can't tell a short story and like to give superfluous information. some people hate this babbling nature about me. but those people don't talk to me anymore.

saturday were qualifiers for goldsprints...let me just say, i made my way down to the bike expo on DebbieB. (now my track bike that used to go fast in circles is now being ridden around town cause my commuter frame was stripped.) riding DebbieB with tennis shoes on flat pedals totally sucks balls! fixed gear riding down hills without toe clips is not very fun at all and i looked like a big slow spinning panzy getting to the bike expo. but, i posted a so-so qualifying time of 22.4...(far off my sports basement best of 21.5 last march) . finals were the next day. sunday i went to the track in the morning and did a shitload of jumps which was perhaps not the best preparation for my goldsprint finals. but, back to the title of my post.

sunday as i am making my way to the bike expo, i am crossing the street and a bunch of dudes are being dudes and hanging outside the liquor store and start jeering me, as i am wearing stretchy pants cause i can't do those goldsprints in jeans (obviously!). generally speaking, jeering is quite uncomfortable.....especially when it is 6 dudes standing outside a liquor store at dusk. but this time it was actually pretty hilarious, as some guy hollered at me that "you must run a lot" and i just kind of awkwardly laughed as i was waiting for the stop light. then the guy goes...."cross country or sprinter?" which really made me laugh, to which i responded: "sprinter" and he goes: "yeahhhh, i could tell." then the crosswalk thankfully turned and i made my way into the expo. typically, i know, it is best not to engage with such jeering on street corners at dusk in front of liquor stores...(hi mom!)...but compliments are pretty few and far between these days, so you gotta take what you can get.

so there were sadly only 4 of us girls in the finals. we had an elimination so we did three rounds. rubi, maurice's super cute and sweet girlfriend, and i went first. she was a total sport for doing the goldsprints and had a good first time showing. the next round it was me, karla, and arena-- a super cool cross racer with sheila moon's team. she still had on her hot-t-t-t skinsuit on from the race earlier in the day. i was feeling super slow and sluggish from the jumps at the track in the morning, and was going about a second slower than the day before-23s blah...but had enough juice to get me to the final with karla. the final i knew i was done for, as i didn't have my spin...and it was going to be 1000m instead of 500m. but i was still going to put up a fight.

i had never done a 1000m goldsprint, so i figured i was going to ride it like a match sprint and let her take an early lead...(cause you can see the dial measuring your distance) and then with 250 to go punch it. tactics are real important in goldsprints, as is the draft effect. so i did just that and with 250 to go i punched it and made up a bunch of time and saw our dials overlap just for the finished. and by golly, we tied. 47.99 seconds. this was pretty remarkable and horrific, because tying in goldsprints means beer sprints. amanda seigle killed me last time i had to do this. and i karla was going to kill me too.

but this time instead of chugging the beer, murphy made us shotgun. now, i have never shotgun a beer in my life...

now, i know what you are thinking. "what?!?! have never shotgun a beer?!?! you are from the midwest! why are you such a disappointment to your geographic region?!" i know. i am a disappointment. a huge, huge disappointment. i am even embarrassed for me. and sadly, i have to live with me. every. single. day.

some people might blame this on why i never learned to chug beer in high school....

maybe true. but i do not want to alienate people of the cloth... and i don't really need any divine backlash right now, so i am going to stick with to my typical scapegoat for why i am so lame:

(but look at those cool pinwheels we did!)

so long story short is murphy had to give a little lesson to me on how to shotgun... and karla handed my ass to me with a cherry on top. ready for the photo essay of how that went?

preparation.
beth: i am screwed.
karla: mwhaha

karla: some killer shotgunning form
beth: some terrible shotgunning form

karla: finishes beer, begins 500m sprint
beth: about 1/4 done with the beer.

karla: what the fuck is wrong with you?
beth: still going.

karla: almost done with the sprint
beth: oh my god i am going to puke

karla: this is funny how much you suck
beth: this is funny how much i suck

as promised, here is the video of the whole shenanigan.

so to decide who wins the bike, the best man (maurice) and best woman (karla) had to shotgun a beer. karla was totally going to school it. because she is a rock star. but just so you can see how awesome karla is, please observe the amount of beer maurice got all over himself.


here is the video of karla being an expert shotgunner. because karla is super classy and wonderful, she gave maurice the bike. in return he promised to get us tickets to see him in the nutcracker ballet in december.

and like karla said: "even though you can't drink beer, you still look good." but i think the moral of the story is karla is definitely 100 times more date worthy. (and for that reason, i slipped her number to the guys at the liquor store on our way home.)

edit: thanks mark c. and annamarie for the awesome pictures. their full flickr set can be found here. thanks again!