24 Hours Round the Clock

Most people celebrate their birthday in a rather traditional way- dinner, party, bar hopping, whatever. I opted to ride my bike in circles for 24 hours. Huh? Back in January I had this grand idea to ride the 24 hours of Spokane..solo. This is actually quite funny because I do not have an endurance muscle in my body- how would I survive riding for 24 hours?

After a brutal 7 hour drive (thank you traffic jam) we rolled into the campground and set up shop outside the VanderWaal family "house on wheels". I barely slept that night- was it from anxiety or the constantly slamming door of the port-a-potty? We woke early on Saturday, made some last minute tweaks to my bike then had an awesome pancake breakfast courtesy of Aaron's mom.

I finally had the "why the hell did I sign up for this" moment as I put on my team kit. And then Rebecca Rusch rolls by and I feel my stomach turn over. OK, I know I'm not here to compete but when the world champion shows up you can't help but feel inadequate. Fortunately for me she was on a relay team...whew!

The race went something like this:
-Lap 1: LeMans start and then I spent the rest of the lap figuring out the course.
-Lap 2: Faster than #1, nothing remarkable.
-Lap 3: I now refer to this lap as the "dark ages". I was hot and getting totally abused by the rocky course. Fortunately Eric found someone to adjust my fork and I am eternally grateful to the guy in the black hat (I never did find out his name).
-Lap 4: Smokin'! I felt so much better.
-Laps 5-7: Ok, just plodding along at my snail's pace. Started to walk some of the hills. Saw a couple teenage guys streak across the course (hey, it kept me awake). When I was done with #7 I realized my goal of 9 laps was in sight. So I kept going.
-Laps 8-9: Nothing special. I rode #9 quickly because I knew a nap was waiting for me back at camp.
-Naptime: I gave Eric strict orders to wake me up after an hour. Ha! After a 5 minute conversation that consisted of "wake up!" (Eric) and "go away!" (me) he gave up and let me sleep.
-Lap 10- This one almost didn't happen. I was kind of happy with my 9 laps but Eric convinced me to go out again. I was feeling a bit ragged and rode pretty slowly.
-Lap 11- Exhausted. In pain. On the verge of tears. When I started sniffling I knew this was my last lap. I pictured Tom Hanks saying "There's no crying in bike racing!". I was SO happy to be finished!!

I came in 7th out of 10 which I'm super happy about. And, I was only two measly minutes behind 5th place. Click here for few pictures!

Crazy Daisy

I've been searching high and low for a perch that Daisy cannot climb down from. Not easy when you own a cockatoo. The nice lady at the bird store just happened to have an old one in storage and gave it to me. Score! Well, not really...as you can see Daisy is already hard at work trying to figure out a way off it. Ugh!

Paddlin'

Eric and Robin are training for the Yukon River Quest and have been spending a lot of time on the water. Here are a few pics from yesterday's paddle.

(Insert ominous music here)

In case you didn't already know, I'm getting ready to ride (notice I didn't say compete) in my first solo 24-hour mountain bike race. Yes, that means riding my bike for an entire day. I'm beginning to think I'm crazy. But, even crazy people must have some goals, so here are mine for the race:

1. Finish 9 laps (135 miles)
2. Sleep for no more than 30 minutes at a time. I feel sorry for the person that wakes me up!
3. No crashes
4. No bonking
5. Remember that I'm only doing this for fun, not to race.

Where in the world are we?

How about Disneyworld?! We just got back on Sunday night. It was a total last-minute trip, with all of the reservations made about 3 weeks ago. Mom and Dad drove down from Michigan, stopped in South Carolina for a few days, and then met us in Orlando. The first night was our traditional dinner at TGI Friday's and then putt putt at Pirate's Cove. Mom actually got a hole in one. We spent the next four days at Disney and spent some time at each park. We even had some new rides to go on this time...the Everest roller coaster was great but Mission Space made us a bit green. We also spent a few mornings at Typhoon Lagoon too. All of us had a great time and we can't wait to go back!

I uploaded some photos to Flikr- click here to check them out.

April snowshowers...

Will inevitably bring May rainshowers. This was just taken a few minutes ago...arrgghhh!

2009 race schedule

I went gung-ho with my training a couple months ago, won two races and now, well, I'm losing some motivation. I went into this season with really only two goals- to race the 24 hrs of Spokane and to prepare for cyclocross. Somewhere along the way I started adding MTB races to my calendar and I'm a bit overwhelmed. So I've retooled my race plans...

-May 3: Indie Series #2- South Seatac
-May 8: 12 hours of South Seatac. Training event.
-May 23-24: 24 hours of Spokane. I'd like to do 10 laps, but that's pretty ambitious.
-May 30: Trioba Sprint adventure race with the guys.
-June 6: Indie Series #4- Bavarian Bike & Brew
-June 21: Indie Series #5- Methow Valley
-July 12: Indie Series #6-Padden MTN Pedal- Bellingham
-July 18-19: Seattle Night and Day Challenge. Only if the weather is nice though!

After that I'm headed to Poland for 2 weeks then it's time to get ready for 'cross season!

Falling behind!

Yikes- I'm falling behind on my posts. Just a few notes:

-www.ericandkaryn.com will cease to exist at some point in the near future. I did not renew our domain name because I am cheap. Not sure what will take it's place if anything. We'll still use our Flikr page for photos though.
-We're going to Disneyworld at the end of the month! Yea!
-The weather really, really sucks here in Seattle. It snowed this morning.
-We're putting out house up for sale in the very near future. And no, we're not moving out of the state although the weather here is making me want to move somewhere warm.

That's it for now!

Movin' on up

Not to the eastside. We already live there ("Eastside" out here means east of Lake Washington). I am moving up to the expert category at my next MTB race. I'm doing better than I thought this year and the move is inevitable...I don't want to be called a sandbagger ("sandbagger" in race talk refers to someone who is racing in a lower category than they should). Today's win will be my last for a long time.

Here are some photos from today's race. I think they're the last 5 or so in the set.



I forgot to bring socks to the race...it kind of sucked!

Seattle Stereotypes

Ever wonder what stereotypical Seattlites are like? Check out this website for a local insurance agency...which Northwest Profile are you? I think I'm a mix of #1 (First Snowflake Freak Out Lady) and #100 (Confused East Coast Transplant). Eric is #5 (Northwest Male Action Figure).

Australia

I'm sure you've heard about the horrible wildfires in southern Australia. I saw this photo online and it broke my heart. Usually koalas are rather mean but this one was desperate for help. From what I read she is resting comfortably in a wildlife rehab facility :)

Sound sleepers

Somehow we slept through the 4.6 earthquake last week. After5 years in California and 4 here in Washington, we have still never felt one. Maybe that's a good thing. Little bird definitely noticed- he had a "flap attack" right around the time of the quake and woke us up. Crazy!

Utahhhhh

Last weekend we travelled to Salt Lake City for 1.) the Outdoor Retailer show and 2.) great hiking in Canyonlands National park. I met up with Eric on Thursday evening and we had dinner at the Red Iguana...no doubt SLC's most famous Mexican restaurant. We headed down to Moab on Friday and took in the great scenery, sun, and tunes of Willie's Place (XM radio) during the 4 hour trip. On Saturday we woke up super early, packed up and drove about 60 miles south to the Needles district of Canyonlands. We planned on trying to find the "All American Man" petroglyph but the 4x4 road wasn't exactly passable with a 2-wheel drive rental car. Maybe we'll go back in the summer. So, plan B was to hike around Chesler Park which was still totally awesome. We ended up hiking to Druid Arch. Check out the photos here!

The winter doldrums

This is the time of year when the winter doldrums hit. We'll be stuck with rain and gloomy weather for the next 3 months. Ugh! Eric and I are heading to Salt Lake City in a couple weeks for the Outdoor Retailer show and hopefully some sun. The plan is to hike around Canyonlands but if it snows we might end up skiing.

Merry Christmas!

So we are having a true white Christmas after all- a couple more inches of the fluffy stuff fell overnight. We opened gifts this morning then headed out for a nice snowshoe up at the pass. Click here for a few pictures!

White Christmas??

Looks like we're going to have a white Christmas after all! We have been inundated with snow since last week. I'm sure there's nearly a foot on the ground. All of this snow has brought the city of Seattle to it's knees...so far I've had two snow days!

Weekend!

Finally- a weekend without a bike race! Friday was the annual cookie baking/decorating night and yesterday we went out for a nice leisurely hike on Little Si. It's weird to see the mountains without snow- it kind of felt like spring weather. Today Eric finished up the Christmas lights and is now topping off the house with a glowing santa sleigh and reindeer. I have compiled a few photos from the weekend here.

What's new?

The last couple weeks have been pretty busy.

-My last CX race was on the 30th of November. I ran over a screw on the 2nd lap and had to DNF. I think it would've been my best race of the year too. Ugh.
-Eric and friends did the fall Beast adventure race near Mt. Rainer.
-We flew back to Michigan for Turkey Day. Pictures can be found here.

Eric's first CX race

No, you're not seeing things- this is a photo of Eric from today's CX race! He finally gave it a try and did OK. No crashes but he did manage to take out a section of the FSA banner...LOL.

SCC #6- Bremerton

I have to say I wasn't really prepared for Sunday's race. A week of travel (which included a lot of eating, drinking and standing around) followed by a week of laziness is not considered good training. Oh well! We got up pretty early (well, after several snooze alarms) and caught the 7:40 ferry to Bremerton. Once we arrived I rode a practice lap and then settled in for a warmup on the trainer. The course varied quite a bit-lots of pavement, lots of mud, and some MTB-style singletrack. Did I mention that we got to ride through 2 barns? I had a bad line going into the first two turns and was nearly cut off both times. I had to work really had to get back in the race and passed quite a few girls on that first lap. Laps 2, 3, and 4 were tough- the singletrack was fast but once I hit the muddy part I slowed to a crawl. On lap #5 I was able to pass one more racer to finish in 7th out of 23.

At the start line: