Monday, March 30, 2009

sometimes you should be scared.

so this weekend i had two exciting bike adventures. well, actually three. i know three adventures in two days-- who is so lucky?!

saturday morning was the brisbane criterium. i had turned in my upgrade on monday evening at 10pm, and on tuesday morning at 8:30am, casey had sent me my approval. wow. that man is on top of it! so, i registered for the criterium on saturday with the women 3s. on tuesday night, i did about a half a shitload of standing starts on bay farm island. i know it was some good work on my part because wednesday i woke up with matching black 'n blues on my lower forearm, where my bars were hitting my arm. anyway, after my standing starts, i rolled home and saw the team oakland boys sitting in the buritto shop, so i stopped in to say HI, and tommyC and keiran gave talked to me for about 30 minutes about how to ride that crit course. i almost fell asleep, but i stayed awake cause i was eating all of their chips.

so when i showed up on saturday and pre-rode crit the course, i was amazed two people could talk so much about something that takes approximately 2 minutes to ride around. as for the actual race, we had a tiny tiny tiny field. no one had any teammates except the dolce girls, who kept sending people off the front all race. that made it fun. i mostly sat in, except i made one attack, mostly just to stretch out my legs again. the details of the end aren't all that clear, but bev and some other girl were off the front on the last lap. then things got strung out, and i guess we realed one girl in, but bev with still up the road. i followed two girls around the corner and then won the sprint. bev won the race, which was awesome. they gave me some thin mints, which was a bad idea, because i am PMSing and have eaten way too many of them.

saturday afternoon my friend grey decided it was about time i learn to go downhill. except going downhill requires going up, and i didn't feel like doing that after a race. so i think i went about the pace of old dude with a 250mm headtube. i think all in all we had about 3.5 hours of chamois time, and maybe 45 minutes of ride time.

and then sunday i went to the track for some presumed torture, but it wasn't really wasn't bad at all. in fact, i ran my slow poke coach off my wheel. he told me not to blog about this fact. he can tell me what to do all he wants, but i can still blog what i want to. but that wasn't the highlight of the track.....the highlight of the day happened much earlier:

so there i am standing on the infield and i hear some voice on the far end of the track, by the two containers.

"ARRHHHHHHHH" yells some scary man with a beard.

i do not pay attention to this, and continue changing my chain ring. then the bearded man bellows out again, but louder:

"EAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

i am a bit scared, but continue on. but i have preminition that this has to do with me, but i am ignoring it, because i am scared. then another yell comes out, this time much gruffer and more clear.

"BETH!" except this doesn't look very intimidating in print, and unfortuantely, i cannot find the proper font to indicate the tone of voice. it was drill-sergeant like.

so i am shocked and look over and i realize it is john simmons who has the beard now and is yelling at me, waiving a bag in the air. and my heart skips about 8 beats, and i get scared that john simmons hates me and break out in a run across the track infield, and he again yells me:

"WHAT?! ARE YOU A RUNNER NOW?!"

"no sir. thank you very much." and i take the plastic bag from him (which are his old jersies from the cycling team i am joining, veritas- but more on that in another post)

then i see john smile and give one of those "heh, heh, heh" laughs, but i just take my clothes and sheepishly run back across the lawn.

i try on simmon's jersey and again am reminded what big muscles he has. i have a lot of work ahead.

8 comments:

Unknown said...

no more team unattached?

Anonymous said...

HAHAHAHA. He does have that look with that beard.

~ lauren said...

i thought you were a velo bella now. i'm so confused.

Itinerant Rick said...

It''s about time you fessed up to the Veritas thing since all your race results this year seem to proclaim the association.

John with a beard, Marc with a beard ... hmmm, perhaps it is time for me to grow mine back again.

Ben said...

sweet, I'll rebeard and start growling at Beth too.

Unknown said...

You're gonna need to sport more pink.

WarrenG said...

my 81 vs. your 88...? And I was distracted by how much better you look on the bike now!

Go fast and do something bloggable.

place_holder said...

oh cool, you are a 3 now!