Tall & Lean

BRS in the news:

http://bellevue.komonews.com/photo-gallery/events/749863-cyclists-stop-bike-work-station-bellevue?page=2 

April 28-May 12

Part I: Eugene Marathon– Running with Ventoux, April 29, 2012 I was very excited to hear that Ventoux was going to run the “full” this time. Got to see View and Anna (turning 2!).

Didn’t even consider “Anna Montana” when I got her Montana souvenirs from a recent trip there. Sammy was looking distinguished with a grey fringe.

Too bad none of the other Cutters could come (see April 2008 entry), though Jay had an excuse (taking photos). He came by to help complete the BRS pre-race regimen which started with lunch of deep fried chicken fingers and pickles with fries and beer, followed by staying up late chain-smoking and drinking more beer. I being an old lady retired early. Race day weather- perfect. Brought my camera so that I could take a picture of Ventoux at mile 22 as a favor to Ocean Man, though I thought 50/50 Ventoux would be way ahead of me by then. We were on pace for a sub-4 through the half, but then my Death Zone kicked in. Ventoux was looking strong so I urged him on; I’d live to run another day (like next week) but too bad I wouldn’t get my mile 22 photo. I took one of the sign just for posterity….

Then I picked up speed as my death zone went away and I caught Ventoux shortly after mile 24.

At least I got a finish line video, damn greasy thumbprint as I fiddled with the camera, and even a photo with the Krusteaz Pancake man!

Followed by some awesome homemade soup containing pulled pork. But damn I’m never running in that shirt again, I’m sure the horrible chafage had nothing to do with my overhang.

Part II: Bye Bye Spokane, Hello Leschi

Bye Bye East Side, Hello (again) West Side (Seattle -> Spokane -> Seattle) Got back from Eugene, pulled an all-nighter packing for my move, then had my last day in the office. A year ago today I thought I had found the Quiet Life in Spokane.

People seemed to find that bizarre, and some placed bets on how long I would last there. It seemed an ideal to me, escaping the politics and pretentions of big city big institution. How could it be more isolating than being surrounded by people here, yet not belonging anywhere? Is there such a thing as too much peace and quiet? Maybe it’s my amnesia, I’ve forgotten how much the winters suck.

Human beings can get used to anything, and as soon as they do, they miss it. I wished I could run just once more the bluff trails less than a mile from the house I was renting. But as I drove through Snoqualmie Pass I was amazed to see Seattle again. Looking forward to being in a house again. Ocean Man came to help me unpack and Dyno rode by on his way back from work. They've got this thing going on with pushups? (The pic is so blurry because they're moving so fast!)

Part III: Miwok, a classic 100km trail run just north of San Francisco, so popular you have to enter a lottery. I pretty much knew before I got there that I’d DNF (nearly the same course as the Northface 50mile which I DNF’d in December but longer- 64 miles- and harder- 13,000 ft vertical), not to mention I had a 45 mile trail run in Germany the following week, but I’d already bought my plane tickets. I crashed a house rented by several Maniacs in Stinson Beach, thankful I didn't have to drive that windy road at 3 AM raceday.

>25% of the runners DNF’d, and even the last 25 finishers failed to make the 16.5 hour cutoff. The winner finished at 9:20 but I dropped at mile 33 at 10:20+.

Part IV: St. Gallen never gets old.

I miss the Bougies (the 3 nieces) terribly. This is her back yard.

Part V: GutsMuths Rennsteiglauf is the largest cross country race in Europe with about 1500 runners in the Supermarathon (72.7 km) alone, in its 40th year. It is has a modest 5138 ft of elevation gain on wide, non-technical dirt trails through the Thuringen Wald, in the former East Germany.

I’d been wanting to do this one for a couple of years, but the logistics of running an ultra in the middle of nowhere Germany alone was intimidating. Luckily Jenny had a gap in her concert schedule the same weekend I had free before starting back at the Mothership. Travel is better with a companion and even better with someone who speaks the local language. It had taken me 3 days for my brain to recover from the move and jet lag, and 4 days for my quads to recover from Miwok. Friday we started our train ride from St. Gallen Switzerland to Eisenach. Jenny was flipping through a travel magazine she found on the train, with pictures of a tropical beach. When was the last time you’ve been on a beach? she asked. I had to think about it, probably before I started running. Lying around on a beach sounds like a complete waste of time. I’d much rather ride 4 trains for 8 hours to east Germany just to run a 45 mile trail run. Apparently Eisenach was the birthplace of J.S. Bach,

and Telemann also lived there. Lots of baroque history.

The race was huge, like a Rock n Roll marathon but in the German forest. I was pretty bummed that I couldn’t find my camera so was stuck with iPhone which takes crappy pics, for my one chance to see these sights which are so different from western Germany.

They had buttered toast with chives with hot tea at the rest stops,

which were every 5k. Caught a guy running his 32nd GutsMuths! There was bratwurst and beer at the half (38k)

and lots of beer at the finish in Schmiedefeld.

Was glad to have my tunes since 99% of the runners were German and I had no one to chat with. I finished in 9:20, got on a 1 hour+ bus back to Eisenach and met up with Jenny who had done the 17k walk. It was still light out, so we took a taxi to Wartburg, the castle where Martin Luther lived, just at dusk.

Next morning headed back to Switzerland, then arrived in Leschi the night before my return to the MotherShip.

Don't Visit Brian if You Hate Writing Blogs

I stopped by Davis' house this past Saturday and you can't tell me he's doing something wrong when he has a driving range and a putting green in his living room. Plus, he doesn't have to mow his grass and that's pretty cool. It takes time to mow a lawn and Davis would rather take that time to ride a bike to a liquor store(along a sidewalk, mind you,) to buy a memory for a friend. The kind of memory you find on the bottom shelf of the whiskey rack...

That's all I got... there's my addition to the blog... you play a god game of pool fat man

Bitter Bite

When Ocean Man wrote about the grapefruit challenge I few weeks back I knew I wanted to come up with something similar. Whidbey Island is a fun ride but it’s farther from me than it is for Crash, and doesn’t have the same draw. It’s fun, I enjoy every ride there, but it’s more than a grapefruit for me. It’s more like baking bread, just takes that much more time and planning. Instead I spent some time thinking about what my grapefruit should be. My first thought was a ride I like to do through Echo Lake/Lost Lake area. But that ride was problematic in a similar way, it’s a big commitment and not something I have any compulsion to do every month. I thought about riding towards Lake Roesiger too, I like that ride even more but it’s farther still, too much to bite off as a grapefruit challenge. For me this grapefruit has fit perfectly into a bowl. It can’t be too big or I just won’t do it, but it can’t be so small and pathetic that it’s got no benefit one way or another. After thinking on it for a week or so I knew what it was to be: St. Andrew’s Blvd. It’s not very far away, and I can approach it from my house or on the way home from work. It’s not a big ride, really only the hill matters, anything else I do with it is just sugar sprinkled on top. Just six minutes of puckering my face, putting my head down and gutting it out.

And the payoff is huge. Once I know I can get through that single climb I don’t worry about too many other cycling challenges. You’ve got to be in decent shape physically to do the climb well but the payoff for me is largely mental. It’s like a ruler I can just hold up and gauge my current strength with.

I’m not sure when the last time I climbed St. Andy was, it’s been about a year. Maybe not since the last TdM even? Since deciding that was the goal in Mid-April I’ve been somewhat apprehensive about the first attempt. I was a little scared of it and didn’t know how well I would do. Anyways, after putting it off, I decided I would ride my bike home from work and veer off towards Muk on the way and yesterday would be my first grapefruit of 2012. I dove down toward Picnic Point so I’d have the full experience of rises and falls through WindAndTide too, might as well make an event of it. This grapefruit was sweeter than expected! I felt really great going up The Switchback, even had a couple clicks on my cassette in reserve there, at that point I knew I could get up St. Andy, but with how much finesse? That was the question. Now I tracked it on my smartphone but I didn’t pay attn and give me hard numbers. I think my record for the climb hovers somewhere right around 6 minutes. I don’t think I beat that but I didn’t feel the need to circle in the sidestreets or switchback across the double yellow either. It just felt like a good hard climb. Not much different from any other I’ve ridden lately. And the payoff is easy to name: Reassurance. I’m strong, I’m in a good place mentally and in a good place physically and it feels good to eat a grapefruit sometimes. I’ll see if I can’t even do this a lil more often than monthly now.

I stopped in to say hello to Ocean Man at the top. We chatted, talked about revelatory worldviews (AGAIN, sheesh). Then I took off. I flew down the goat loop, so much fun! I don’t think I’ve been down there in about a year either, weird. Took the boulevard home and just as I was arriving in N Evt I flatted. It was one of those GUNSHOT ones. The tube was toast but a quick change and I made it the rest of the way home. Maybe those are the allegorical grapefruit seeds? I dunno, probably just shit that happened I guess. That’s why my gps route stops about 4mi shy of my house though.

May's Movies

Watch this movie. (The Hustler). From beginning to end.

It'll put furr on 'ya. T- Ennui.

Pointless Ingenuity

There have been a few times when I’ve wanted to haul one bike with another. It’s never been a real need but more a stunt--just to do it. Like If I worked on a bike for a coworker, for example, and needed to deliver to them at the office, I’d imagine hauling that bike with mine in order to maintain my own bicycle commute. Sure I could drive to the office, and probably save myself a lot of time and hassle, but that’s no fun. I’ve had some ideas about how best to do this but never came up with a very good solution. I’ve seen it done with cargo bikes, the easiest method is just strapping or bungy-ing the front tire and cockpit of the towed bike to the side of the rack of the cargo bike. But I don’t have a cargo bike or rack big enough that I could safely lash another bike to it. I had another idea at one point of mounting a fork mount (like you find for a car roof or truck bed rack) onto the top of my cargo rack on the back of my bike. It’s got a wooden skateboard style deck so sinking a few bolts into it would be no problem. I bought a cheap fork mount but before I even got very far I quickly realized that solution was not going to work. It puts far too much stress on the connection and the fork would pop off if it didn’t tear the rack apart first. Oh well.

This last weekend a buddy from work wanted to go riding with me. He has a mountain bike that he recently bought. He’s been getting a fair amount of mileage out of it too, mostly exploring the forestry roads that are so numerous in East King Co (jealous, there are relatively few of them nearby in Snohomish Co..or at least they are far away). Anyways, he wanted to ride a road bike, see what that was all about. He’s been hearing me talk about it (I talk about bikes sometimes, you may not know this about me) and wanted to see what drop bars and skinny tires had to offer. We planned to ride the length of the Centennial Trail starting in Snohomish and back (we actually rode all the way to Arlington) a little over 20mi each way? Not bad for his first time out!

Again, I should have just driven the car, but Skirtsteak mentioned she might want to hit the swap meet this weekend and I was going to leave her the car as an option. At some point I came up with the brainstorm of trying to mount the trunk rack I have for the back of the car on top of the kiddie trailer (that the kids are too big for now anyway). Well, it worked. I didn’t snap any photos of the details for the mounting as they were messy and questionably stable at best. But it even held two bikes just fine and I rode it all the way to the Snohomish trailhead (8mph average, fuck yeah), then back home when we were done. Metric century for me!

Leschi Cribs

Yesterday, met up with Gerald. Watched the movers unload. Then we unpacked. Swigged. Unpacked. Swigged. Actually did a decent job of setting up the kitchen.

Then Dynomite biked over from the Eastside. Then we swigged. Talked. Swigged. Talked. Swigged.

The band is back together! Oh, and here's a shot of lovely Leschi: