Beware of The Toilet

OK, a quick laugh on me.....our host home is great. We are staying with Tanya's parents in Redlands. They have a beautiful home with a modern flare. Well, the toilets are all very special. They are always heated and cozy warm. Laura Bowles first thaught that someone had just spent a lot of time on the toilet RIGHT before she sat down on it making it so warm. But it also has a "front" cleaner a "back" cleaner, dryer for after cleaning, and deoderizer! WOW. So I finally got the courage up to try the cleaner...yup. I hear the buzzing and then the trickling of water but felt nothing.....nothing.....so I peeked to see what was up and WHAM....the water sprayed me right between the eyes! No joke.
:0 H

Redlands Cycling Classic Begins...Revised

A quick update on Redlands Cycling Classic.
Time Trial: I think it was only 5k with two climbs. I thought how bad could this be? I can suffer for 5k....ouch! It hurt. There's a false flat section that had a huge headwind before the last two climbs. I think I cooked myself on the flat section. I got up and over the hills, but not with any umpf. I think I was around 2 minutes back from Amber Neben! She won by about 45 seconds over Christine from Webcor. My question is this: How is it that I was 2 minutes back on a 30K (almost an hour long) time trial last week, and this week almost 2 min back on a 5k course (only took Amber about 11 minutes!)

Road Race 72 miles: This was a fun course. It had three major climbs in it. First we got all the sprint points out of the way on the windy flats. Yeah for Laura Bowles....she took third in a sprint. I almost wrecked pretty bad. I got caught up in some wreck and my bike violenty whipped me and skipped off the ground left then right then left again. I managed to stay upright and had two separate racers pat me on the back for keeping it up. YIKES that was a close one.
Then all the climbs were back to back to back! The first climb was a big California highway climb...it went on and on, but no one got away. The second climb was steeper and had a little bit of a dirt section toward the top. I started in BAD position and had to pass my way up to the top. I was gapped off a bit by the front group but descended like mad and caught back on at the bottom. The rest of the peloton chased and chased and caught on to us a few miles later. A small group got away before the final climb. Katherine Currie was in this group. She attacked the group and got a gap on them. We hit the final climb and the peloton shattered at the base of the climb. I went hard and hung on to the front group for as long as my East coast March legs will allow! Eventually they climbed away from me. The road was full of small groups climbing and suffering together. I was alone for most of the climb. I really thought that I had a rear flat with 5k to go...it was just my imagination I guess. Amber Neben drilled it and caught the break and pulled it to Currie. As soon as they caught Currie, Mara Abott attacked and won! Amber came in after her.
What an awesome win for Mara Abott!!

Here's a link to a YouTube video of the Redlands Stage 3 Sunset Loop that we're doing on Sunday. It's a 12 k circuit, we do it 9 times, it's up and down like a roller coaster, and it's fast.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJyhCcZOYYE

Fast Racing In California!

Wow, that was fast! I completed the first weekend of racing in California. The 30K time trial was brutal. It was 90 degrees and LONG. I felt pretty good and caught two girls on the course, but I was also caught by two different girls on the course. I felt that I was riding too strong for that to happen, so I started to look at my bike and question it. I immediately saw that my front break was locked onto my wheel.....yikes. I opened it up completely and felt FREE. I picked up speed and passed one of the two girls that caught me, Kim Anderson from T-Mobile. I guess riding 3/4 of this course with a locked break took a lot out of me, b/c on the last climb (where I should make up some time) Kim Anderson passed me again! I was cooked. So, I had 50 minutes of HARD training! Good stuff.
The Visalia crit was fast and furious from the start. T-Mobile controlled the entire race pretty much. I was in great position the entire race and was able to cover some moves and help our sprinter, Natalie move up into position two times. Natalie sprinted like crazy and got 7th...I think. She's awesome. Laura and Kirsten worked their butts off as well. Laura covered tons of moves all day, she's very strong and ready for crit racing. It was a great team effort.
There was a little mix up with the lap cards and half of the field thought it was time to sprint when there were actually two laps to go. Laura was in that mix and had nothing left for the second and final sprint of the day. Makenzie Dickey actually threw her arms up thinking she'd won the sprint with two laps to go. None the less, it was a fast wind up for the final sprint!
We leave today for Redlands. It's been an experience here on the farm. We've had cook outs, drove tractors that were built in the 1940's and picked oranges and grapefruits for our travels.
More to come! Hopefully I'll be able to get some photos up soon.
xoxox

OH the SUN!

I finally made it out to California! I'm in Visalia...I think. The weather is beautiful, almost too hot. It's 88 degrees and sunny. Team Advil-ChapStick and some other women's and men's teams met the mayor this morning for a great breakfast and to ride the TT course together. It was a lot of fun and nice to see some of the other racers that I have not seen since last season.
So the TT course is LONG (30K) and it has two nice climbs in it. The scenery is absolutely beautiful. I'm glad I had the chance to look around today so I don't waste time in the race!!
Last night our wonderful host family had a party with 60 guests, a band and cornbeef and cabbage for an army. Very nice!
Stay tunned.
xoxox Heather

The Racing Begins....Kind Of.....

Had a fun weekend of training. I did The HUMP ride/race. It's a group ride that is run like a race...Mike Norton and Bill Elliston (sp?) showed up to make it good and hard. I had a blast and worked my butt off. Sunday was Bethel! Bill and I loaded up a very enthusiastic Maddie for our first race of the season. We all had a blast. We love this stuff...So the race at Bethel was basically me against 7 Target Training girls. I had to pick and choose my battles... got first in field sprint for second place. My legs were dead from Saturday's ride and a small, tiny, lingering hacking cough....I thought all of those antibiotics would get rid of this thing.
Bill is currently jamming my TT bike into a shipping box to be mailed out to California tomorrow. I'll ride my road bike tomorrow and Tuesday and then ship that baby off too. Thank you Wyeth (Advil and ChapStick) for the shipping labels!! Saves a ton of $$.
I fly out on Thursday EARLY in the morning to arrive in San Fran. Cindy Carroll, assistant director, will then pick me up in the team van for a nice 3 hr drive to end my day of traveling. I'll be racing two stage races out there. Quad Knopf (Visalia) and Redlands....the killer race!
Stay tunned.......
xo Heather

OH Mara!!! NOT again!!

What? Mara crashed out in her first race in California....AHH NO!

NO, Mara hit the pavement again on her second day in California.....?

I just can't take it anymore......I think you need my mommy to come out there to protect you from the pavement!

All kidding aside, Mara is fine. Just some bad luck and road rash. She's getting all this pavement stuff out of the way now.
Congrats to Elisa and Reem for hanging in there. You guys are awesome!

Smiling Or Suffering?

The latter! I'm not smiling! This was a tough day on the bike. I'm just finishing an extremely hard VO2 block of training. There has been a lot of suffering going on around here. I even lost my cookies one day....Bill again has a great shot of this. I decided that I wouldn't put that one up! Bill said that he's never heard me suffer like this and he actually had to leave the house one night while I was training. I've been training very hard and now have a little chest infection. I guess it comes with the territory. I break my body down training and then go off to teach 40, yes 40, four and five yr. olds three times a week. It's frustrating getting sick just when I feel like I'm gaining strength and momentum. California is just around the corner. I broke down and am on a strong antibiotic to kick this thing.

Oh yeah....check out the sweet Time bike! Maddie is just fine-tuning the set up for me here.

This is Mara and I getting ready for yet another cold, long ride....but this time on our new bikes. That makes it more exciting. This picture was BEFORE the added 7 inches of snow. It's also an hour south of my winter wonderland.

Good luck to some of my teammates that are out in California racing now! I'll be there soon. Until then....

H