Ken Woods...race #1 of MWCMR

Yesterday was the first race of the MWCMR race series (Ken Woods), and 35 women finished the race...truly amazing for a women's Cat 4 field in MN especially given that the weather was totally crappy...raining, cold, and windy!

Let me just reiterate that I couldn't believe how many women were there when we lined up for the race! For many of the women, this was their first road race ever, and for some, their first road race of the season. While I certainly don't consider myself a seasoned veteran (which is probably obvious since I am still a Cat 4), I wanted to make sure I didn't get caught behind all of the newbies right away...I've made that mistake many times before. So when the official said "go", and many women were having difficulties clipping into their pedals, I quickly went up to the front and tucked in behind about six others. There was a nasty headwind, and some GW's seemed happy to block the wind for us, so who I am to argue. As expected, the pace picked up a bit as we rounded the first corner. One of the GW's took a flyer off the front as the rest of us tried to find a good place to stay out of the crosswind...it was a bit sketchy, and the nasty wind wasn't helping matters. I think we had already dropped a group of people behind us and the race was starting to string out, and I was struggling to keep up with the lead group of about 8 women. Then all of the sudden I heard the most dreaded sound in bike racing...the sound of metal hitting asphalt...there was a crash behind me. I looked back long enough to see that it appeared to be only one person (and it wasn't my teammate), but I cringed a little and hoped she was okay (I later found out that she was okay, and she even got back on her bike and finished the race!). When that rider went down, it forced the people behind her to get gapped off, and by the time we rounded the second corner, the group of 8 had opened up a large gap and I found myself with two women from SPBRC chasing. The SPBRC women don't have any cute girly nicknames like Betty or Bella, so I've decided to refer to them as Paulettes. So Paulette H and M and I got organized, and started rotating - the lead group really wasn't that far ahead of us, so we were pretty motivated. And I noticed when Paulette M was pulling, we were hauling some serious ass...at one point, I looked down at my computer and we were going about 30 mph. The strong tailwind was obviously helping, but we were going slightly uphill at the time. Eventually, Paulette M dropped me and her teammate. By the 3rd corner, my teammate Paula had caught up with us, along with Betty Annie and Betty X (okay, I'm going with last letter of their first names now). The five of us started rotating, although we didn't seem to be going very fast, and we could no longer see the lead group up ahead of us. I was actually feeling pretty good at this point. The race was pretty uneventful until we hit the last huge-ass hill. The finish line was about 0.5 miles after the top of the hill, and there was once again a headwind, so I decided to just sit in back while climbing the hill and save my energy for the final sprint. About halfway up the hill, Paula and Annie started pulling ahead and Paulette H wasn't closing the gap, and Betty X wasn't going around her. I thought about attempting to go around them, but was debating if that would be dumb because I didn't want to tow two others back up to Paula for the sprint. So I just stayed at the back and watched Annie and Paula pull away. Paulette H was kind enough to pull me and Betty X all the way up the hill, then at the top, Betty X amped it a bit and went around Paulette H (and I followed), and we dropped her. So then we were down to the final stretch. Betty X slowed up and presumably tried to get me to come around her, but I just slowed down too. I looked back a few times to make sure Paulette H wasn't closing the gap too much...the last thing I wanted was to get beat by someone unexpectedly coming from behind! Given the strong headwind, I was just going to wait until Betty X started her sprint before I did anything...I didn't want to go too soon and blow up, and I didn't know if I had anything left in my legs anyway. Fortunately, Betty X waited until we were close to the finish line before she started sprinting, and I was able to come around her. Actually, it wasn't much of a sprint...I don't think either of us got out of our saddles (unless it was just for a second or two), and we were "sprinting" for 12th and 13th places...but I don't care, it still feels good to come around someone at the end. The funny thing is that I felt the need to apologize to Betty X because I felt bad for just sitting on her wheel and waiting. I know that's just bike racing, and I shouldn't feel bad, but I'd feel a lot less guilty if I really disliked the competition...but that's just not the case...there are a lot of really cool racer chicks this year. It doesn't make me any less competitive, but I really need to get over this feeling guilty shit. So anyway, I ended up 12th out of 35, which was okay, but not quite what I had hoped for. The best part was that my teammate Karla won the race!! And the icing on the cake was that the Cat 2/3 Bellas apparently raced a great tactical race, and Lieselot ended up winning too! There were a lot of Bellas racing in both the Cat 4 and Cat 2/3 races, and I want to give props to all of the Bellas who came out to race in the crappy weather. It turned out to be a great day for women's racing.

I spent the afternoon and evening at Mr. Monte Carlo's house helping celebrate his 30th birthday and stuffing my face with all of their great food while hanging out with the Neslers, NDC, and Greentea. Then I met up with some of my chamois-wearing friends and had drinks (except for Flood, who was presumably enjoying his own little narcotic buzz).

A rainy Sunday is the perfect time to watch NASCAR, so I was looking forward to spending the day hanging out with Karen and Chris and my nephews while watching Talladega. But apparently it's raining throughout the entire country today, so the race was postponed until Monday. But check out the photo - those are the cars lined up in racing order on pit road and Elliot's on the pole and DJ's starting fourth...I'm bummed I won't be able to see the race!

That's all I got. Thanks for reading.
SS

freak of nature OR how I got into road biking

Remember in elementary school when you occasionally had to get checked for scoliosis? I was always the kid that had to go back for a second check-up with the school nurse. Finally in junior high, the scoliois-powers-that-be decided I needed to go to an orthopaedic specialist. And so began my life as an orthopaedic freak of nature.

I always assumed the Lee-jean-makers just couldn't make the legs of jeans exactly the same length...my friends with Guess jeans didn't seem to have that problem. The orthopaedic specialist at the Mayo Clinic shed some light on this jean phenomenon - he determined that my "scoliosis" was induced by a leg length discrepany (LLD). At the time, my LLD was about 1/2 an inch (1.25 cm/12.5 mm). The doctor apparently decided that this wasn't that big of a deal (a decision that would later really piss me off), and that I should just do some back strengthening exercises since I'd likely have back problems. I'm sure I did those exercises about two times...I was about 13 yrs old, I'm fairly certain I had other things on my mind.

I continued to grow, and my LLD became more noticeable, although only to the trained eye. My favorite shorts were "cut-offs"...I could cut one leg longer than the other so they'd look even when I wore them, and it was always funny when my college roommate borrowed them.

By the time I moved back to the Twin Cities after graduate school (when I was about 25), I had started having hip and back problems, and they only seemed to be getting worse as I was becoming more active. I'd end up limping after walking for an hour or two at a time, and running felt ackward and sometimes painful. Oddly enough, I was mountain biking a bit at the time, and I knew I pointed my toes on one foot when I pedaled (to reach with the "short" leg), and I pedaled pidgeon toe-ed on the other side (the "long" leg) and would often hit my knee on my top tube - but generally speaking, it didn't really bother me while biking.

I finally decided to go back to a doctor and have my LLD checked out again. The doctor determined my LLD was now somewhere around 3 cm (that's over an inch for you people who don't like the metric system...2.54 cm = 1 inch). For those of you non-cyclist types reading this, a cyclist can often have pedaling issues (sometimes even injuries) from a 3 mm discrepancy...mine was 30+ mm. The doctor recommended trying a lift on my shoe, and mentioned that there was a surgery for "leg lengthening". Huh? How do you stretch a leg? Or do you shorten the other? Creepy. I tried the lift. It turns out that only really "non-fashionable" orthopaedic shoes can even have lifts put on them - they pretty much have to have laces, mostly because the lift adds so much weight to your shoe that your heel pops right out if you don't have them laced-up tightly. I quickly decided that (a) I had way too many pairs of shoes (including athletic shoes and cycling shoes) to pay to get lifts put on all of them and only about one pair actually had laces and (b) I'm way too vain to wear "lifted" shoes (I couldn't get myself to wear them to work).

I decided to look into this crazy surgey. I met with THE specialist for leg lengthening for a consultation, and he did x-rays and made some measurements. He originally determined my LLD was about 3.3 cm. But x-rays showed that my "functional discrepancy" (i.e. the LLD that my body recognizes due to the differences in my hips...my pelvis tilted to make up for my LLD) was only 2.8 cm. So we talked options. It turned out that I could either lengthen the short leg, or shorten the long leg. He described these options that sounded more like medieval torture than modern day surgical techniques. After about two years of hemming and hawing and weighing my options, I scheduled surgery for October 7, 2002. I still didn't know if I was getting lengthened or shortened, but I knew my height was changing one way or another. I took my older sister with me to my last consultation appointment where I needed to decide which surgery to go with...after chatting yet again about my options, I asked about the pain levels associated with each surgery...and here's how my doc described the two surgeries: (1) the lengthening - "since your leg will be getting stretched approximately 1 mm per day, the pain is more of a sustained pain over a longer period", and (2) the shortening - "since your leg is shortened in one surgery, it's more of a gruesome pain, but over a short period". My sister and I looked at each other - "did he just say 'gruesome pain'?". Umm, yeah...Waiter, I'll have the lengthening with the sustained pain, and a side order of painkillers please.

Even though my discrepancy was split between my femur and my tibia/fibula, I had surgery to lengthen only my femur by approximately 2.8 cm. My first surgery involved cutting my femur in half - actually, they don't cut it - first they drill a bunch of little holes, then they use a "bone chisel and a mallet" to split it apart. The idea is that you want more surface area for healing, and a clean cut gives you the least amount of surface area. It's really carpentry...my dad liked to joke that his Craftsman tools would have done the trick, and he's probably right...except for that whole sterilization issue. So they cut your bone in half, push a titanium rod down the middle of your bone, then attach what is called an "external fixator". The fixator is attached to the two different bone segments using some serious screws (or "pins" as they call them) and has a little battery pack on it. I was really lucky...normally they use 3 pins for each bone segment, and that's what I had planned on...but at the last minute, my doctor decided to only use two on each segment (I think it's based on body weight because the fixator essentially becomes your bone and must support your body). The less pins you have, the less chance of infection...so it's very desirable to use less if possible. The battery pack gets programed to stretch the two bone segments apart by approximately 1 mm per day. The battery pack on the fixator was actually new technology when I had this surgery. Patient's historically had to turn a bolt in the fixator a quarter of a turn (1/4 mm) every 6 hrs using a hex wrench. There is a rhyme and reason for the 1 mm/day, but I won't go into more details...this is getting too long already. So I had the first surgery, was in the hospital for 4 days, then went home to spend the next 1.5 months on the couch.

As you could imagine, I was taking some serious painkillers...sometimes they helped, sometimes they didn't. After about 1.5 weeks, my doctor decided to "turn-up" my fixator so that it would stretch more than 1 mm a day (again, no need for details). But this made it hurt worse.

It wasn't much fun to leave the house...I was on crutches, I looked like a total freak so people were freaked out by me, it was hard to get around even though I was theoretically supposed to be trying to walk on my leg in conjunction with crutches, and I couldn't exactly wear normal clothes. My family and friends were all absolutely saints in my eyes - they stayed with me, came to visit, cooked me meals, did my laundry, helped me bathe, took me to doctor appointments every week, did my Christmas shopping...you name it, they all helped! I still get teary-eyed thinking about how lucky I am to have such a great support network in my life. I seriously could not have done it without them.

I was finally able to schedule my "fixator removal" surgery for Nov 11th, the day before my birthday. I was going absolutely insane from that fixator and being holed-up inside my little apartment, and I was no longer sleeping or eating much (go figure, you don't really have an appetite when you're not doing anything) and I couldn't even concentrate while watching tv (damn drugs). I'd also developed an allergic reaction of some sort to the pins in my leg and I had hives that were driving me crazy...so getting the fixator removed was truly the best birthday present ever.

The removal was a much more simple surgery of course...they take the fixator off, then lock the titanium rod (i.e. my temporary bone) in place with a couple of huge-ass screws, and I was good to go. Within a day, I instantly started feeling better. It was very liberating, to say the least. And it was exciting to get to wear my normal underwear! I couldn't really wear my normal jeans, because I'd lost about 15 pounds, and I had lost my legs and butt to atrophy a month earlier, so I had to purchase some "interim pants"...although I knew I'd quickly pack the weight back on. I spent another few months on crutches....two crutches for a while, then down to one. I was on crutches for a total of about 4 months. I had to go to physical therapy because I had a limp - it turned out my glute had stopped "firing"...so I essentially had to re-train my ass to "fire" so I could walk correctly. This was actually when I got my first road bike...my Croll that I used on the trainer was my only form of exercise - I was actually able to ride the bike on the trainer before I could walk without crutches. Getting on my bike was difficult and humorous, but once on it, I could spin all I wanted. I decided I really liked my road bike, even though it had yet to see the outdoor world. And that, my friends, is how I first got into road biking. And by the end of May, I was biking in Moab using my titanium-reinforced leg while the bone was regenerating. The following October, I had the titanium rod removed mostly because the big screw in my hip was bothering me, and I couldn't sleep on that side, and I really didn't need the rod anymore.

I now have about a 5 mm discrepancy...and one really long femur. As you could imagine, it really complicates my bike fit. Up until now, I haven't used any splints or shims on my cleats. But since I've been riding way more this year, I seem to have developed a slight IT band issue that may very well be related to all of my orthopaedic issues. I'm trying to get that taken care of before it gets too bad to race. Time will tell.

On a side note, I thought this story would be way more interesting than a Durand race report which would have gone something like this - warmed-up, got cold waiting for 30 minutes for the race to start, got dropped on the first steep hill, knee hurt, finished, then sulked since I got dropped so early. Lieselot got 3rd though, so that was cool.

SS

The return of Opus

There were so many Bellas at Opus last night, it was so impressive!
Those who raced included Karla, Margot, Shirley, Manda, Lieselot,
Sheryl, Paula, Maria (for the U of M) and myself.  And there were a
bunch of Bellas there cheering us on -  Sara(n) and baby fella Leo,
Angie, Laurel, Marjie, Dana, and Jodi.  And Stacia was there
officiating (thanks for the ride home!). Thanks to everyone who
cheered us on!

It was seriously a sketchy race, and I hope I didn't add to the
sketchiness! There were a LOT of women there...22 I believe.
That's about 10 more than normal. My goal, as usual, was to
avoid getting dropped.  For the first fewreally sketchy laps,
I hung in there.  But since there are sprints every 3 laps,
things really sped up on lap 3...I started to fall behind, but on
the downhill, I saw the people in front of me sitting up a bit,
so I hauled some ass and caught back up.  And then, much to
my surprise, I was able to stay with the pack for the rest of the
race. (It was so exciting...it was a little personal victory for me.)
Lieselot, Betty PP (Birchwood) and Gopher AH (U of M) had
gotten off the front early in the race, so they sprinted for 1st,
2nd, and 3rd (Lieselot was 2nd to Ann).

Since I know it's hard for some of you to believe that I actually
was able to stay with the main field for once...this photo
(from www.skinnyski.com) is proof...see the lap counter...
two laps to go, and that's me just to the right of the "2".















The rest of the pack had to sprint for 4th.  Coming into the final
sprint, there were still a lot of women in the main field (10 to 15
maybe?).  I was just so happy to have been able to keep up (and not
crash) that I decided to not even test my luck during the sprint...I
just sat up.  In hindsight, I guess I shouldn't have done that...I'll chalk
that one up to lack of experience. I know my teammates Sheryl, Margot,
Maria, and Paula were all in that pack though, so they were somewhere
between 4th and 12th probably?  Karla had a dropped chain which led
to her missing a lap, but otherwise she was in there mixing it up too.

Super big props to Bellas Shirley and Manda for doing their first crit!!

Unfortunately the men's Opus races were cancelled due to some
complaints about illegal behavior of some sort. Plus, it started storming.
Hopefully Opus will be back next week, but we'll see. 

There are a bunch of photos at www.skinnyski.com

Next up...Durand this weekend. 

burning the candle at both ends

This has been one hell of a busy week. Last saturday was the MWCMR clinic. It was totally cool because 30 women showed up!! I'm really looking forward to racing this year! After the clinic, I did my first velodrome ride of the year. What started out as an easy training ride quickly turned into interval training (since I couldn't keep my heart rate down)...dang, it was a lot harder than I remember. Going from gears to fixed gear was a bigger transition than I thought, but it was so fun to get the Peacock Groove out groovin' again! It's always scary riding the track for the first time of the year.

Sunday was the Opus clinic that was a follow-up to Saturday's clinic. Thanks to Skibby and the Loon State guys for letting MWCMR be involved and organizing a great clinic.

Sunday night, we headed over to Snide's to watch Paris-Roubaix (thanks to Snide's Tivo). All I have to say is poor Hincapie...he finally had the perfect situation, and his bike breaks, followed by a few of his bones. It was hard to watch. And then there was the whole "waiting for the train to go by" incident that led to those guys getting DQ'ed...that's not your usual bike race.

This week I've spent my time working, riding, and doing my taxes. I usually don't wait so long to do my taxes, but this year I just haven't had any time. Yesterday I did my first bike commute to work for the year, then followed it up with a long ride after work. I ended up putting 50 miles in for the day, which turned out to be a few too many for a school night...I was dragging ass today and was pretty much useless at work.

Jana had a baby! Anna is a proud big sister to Ellie Jane who was born last week! Someone needs to get the Schilmoeller-Blohowiaks hooked up with some high-speed internet so they can send pictures.

MN racing starts next week...my life is officially hectic.

Happy Easter!

SS

let the racin' begin

Here's the short version of last weekend in Iowa:

• Stayed with Anne, Eric, and Brady ("Brady funny")
  
• Raced on Saturday morning, watched Pete's race Saturday afternoon
  
• Went to Ames, had dinner at one of my favorite places, Hickory Park, with Anne, Eric, Brady, and Nathan (who's in school at ISU)
• Raced on Sunday morning,watched Pete's race Sunday afternoon

Hickory Park meal before and after:









And here are my short race reports:

Altoona Road Race (near Des Moines): 4.5 mile loop with a very steep hill at the end...I stayed with the group for the first lap, then got dropped on the hill and couldn't catch back on. I quit after riding the next 2 laps by myself...it just wasn't fun anymore. That wasn't how I wanted to start my season, but I learned what I needed to. Oh, and check out that photo of some clueless chick running over the wheelpit...unbelievable.














Waterworks Park Criterium (Des Moines): I liked this course. It was a flat, large loop with only one slightly sketchy corner (mostly just due to some standing water). I made some very poor tactical decisions from the gun, and spent the entire first lap fighting for a good position in the pack. On the second lap, I got shuffled out of the pack, and suddenly found myself dropped (yet again). However, I was surprised to find out there were actually others dropped behind me (one was a Birchwood rider, Betty G), so I had two others to ride with, then Barb got dropped and rode with us too. So that was cool, it actually made the race somewhat enjoyable. I think in the end, I was 15th out of 18th or something like that. But I actually felt pretty good...if I hadn't made such poor decisions, I may have been able to hang in for a few more laps, but who knows. I think Betty A got 6th, which was pretty impressive because most of the women in the races both days were Cat 2/3s. If you want to read how the race went from inside the pack, you'll have to read Betty A's race report.

I learned a lot this weekend though...so now I know where my weaknesses are, and what I need to work on before racing starts here. And somehow, I need to learn how to be more aggressive so I can maintain better pack-position.

It was nice to have a teammate (Barb) down there, as well as the Bettys (A, G, and AL) for my first few races of the season...it's always nice to see a few familiar faces and have some people to chat with after the races.

As usual, Pete did well racing this weekend. His team won the race both days, so they're off to a good start.




Thanks to Anne and Eric for housing us this weekend!

SS