Hey kids. So sorry for the lack of attention to DGD. Wedding planning sucked the life outta me but we made good of it. Had a absolutely beautiful and fun wedding. Weather held for us and made for great s'more makin.
Over 200 guests made the pilgrimage. Ryan and I were, to say the least, humbled and amazed. The sight of most of our beloved in one place left us in awe. The photos will give you a taste of the event. We had a dessert bar instead of a cake, along with s'mores. Karaoke was the entertainment of the evening and I have to say, it was a huge hit, thanks to all those who participated! We danced to Crazy and At Last, sung by our good friend Jenae. A lasting memory. What a gift.
To incorporate our love for the bike, I had number plates made for us and the bridal party. Each number had a significant meaning: #of guests (225), the date Ryan proposed (517), the date of the wedding (103), # of beers purchased (624), etc. Then we rode a tandem that had a huge basket of flowers attached to the back. As we rode it, the clouds parted and we had a sunset to ride into.
Sigh...
It was truly magical. I'll never forget it. Enjoy the pictures!
(Also, honeymoon slideshow now in the lower right column of this blog).
Geez, I suck. It's been three weeks since I posted. Funny, that's how long I've been off the bike. Yes, I have a life and it's been packed. Since my last post I've moved into a new house so you can imagine how crazy it's been. Plus, we just got internet last week, so I couldn't post anything.
Enough with the excuses already.
But I have a conundrum. The Women Who Ride blog is now up and I have a contract that says I must post on it until the end of the year. My life is crazy enough with just one blog, but two? I don't have THAT MUCH to say. So, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm going to post there and link the posts here. I don't want DGD to go away. If something seedy and evil happens that would make the corporation upset, I'll post it here. Don't wanna rock the boat. But check it out. The other winners post cool stuff. One of them just returned from a trans-america tour and another from a tour of Colorado. Makes me look like a wussy! Girls on bikes. Check it, yo.
First of all I just want to thank everyone I talked to at the TTT for their well wishes and genuine interest in how I am doing.. Dirt Girl was feeling the love and I really appreciate your concern. It was tough watching and not participating in the race but I'm a big advocate of resting to heal, and so that is my focus now. Dakota 5-0 is a question mark at this point.
The knee has begun the healing process. New skin is forming around the crater edges. I've been told by an ER nurse that the deepest part of the puncture won't be healed even by my wedding day, but luckily, my dress is very long. He did confirm that he could still see exposed muscle tissue, so that gives you an idea on how deep it is. Now my job is to bend it as much as possible to aid the tissue to grow back in such a way that I don't have pain when I squat down. This is how I work, people. If I'm given a goal, I latch onto it like leach. My knee will bend, even if I have to strap my foot to my ass.
This was the mantra I repeated to myself for most of the 70 mile race that was the Laramie Enduro. Most, I say, because at mile 10, I had to make a choice.
We got to Laramie late Thursday night. My plane was an hour late taking off for Denver and then much of the highway from Colorado to Wyoming was down to one lane due to construction. By the time we checked in to our hotel, it was past midnight. But we had a lazy Friday planned. We got up around 8 and walked to a Cole Creek Cofeehouse, which later we found out, is owned by the originator of the LE. After downing scones and quiche (yeah, we're snobs) we walked the historic downtown to get the lay of the land. Laramie is a college town. Lots of cool shops, eateries and peeps. Seriously. I could live there.
After our stroll we went back to the hotel and unpacked the car. We assembled the racing rigs, lubed up the chaines, aired up tires and forks (had to take out air to allow them to fit inside the car) and headed up to do a recon ride of the course. We pulled up into an empty parking lot exactly where the hole shot was. Just as we were getting ready to ride, Team Ergon pulled up with Jeff Kerkove and Sonya Looney having the same plan. Ryan and I took off up the single track which quickly opened up to some windy-ass gravel roads. After a half our we turned back. The wind was picking up and we could see rain on the horizon.
After the recon we went back to town and got our grub on. We needed to eat well. We pigged out at Jeffery's Bistro. A must if you ever visit. Small place, awesome food from Tai to pasta. From there we hit a local bike shop and then to register for the race. The rest of the day and night was spent fussing with gear, eating and watching it rain sideways. I wasn't too worried considering it was bone dry on trail. I ate those words later in the race.
Race Day: Alarm goes off at 4:45 am. How do ya eat? Unfortunately, the bagels we bought the night before dried out but we forced them down. I also had a vegan cookie that had like 450 calories. At 5:30 we drove out of town, forced to drink gas station coffee b/c the Daylight Donut shop wasn't open, even though 5:30-1pm were their hours of business. That also meant no donuts. The morning wasn't starting off quite right already. But the sky was clear which meant it was chilly. In the low 40s. A record low, we found out later. Luckily I brought arm and knee warmers but once the sun came over the mountains, leg warmers came off and it was just a matter of staying somewhat warm. I did a few hill repeats and went to the starting line.
It was a bit chaotic and hard to understand what was being said and where to line up. I ended up starting way too far back but what ev. All pro, open and ss cats started at the same time, then sports. The gun went off and we charged up a gravel road and to the hole shot. Traffic jam immediatly, but not too bad. Come to find out, the race promoters didn't leave a gate open, so all the racers had to hold on to the gate door for the next rider behind them as it was spring tensioned and would slap back pretty quickly. Once through that and the first section of single track, which was awesome, we popped out onto the gravel road we rode the day before. For a ways ahead and behind me, it was biker after biker. Pace lines were forming to fight the wind. After about 7 miles, we finally dumped back into single track. It was a field of long grass with a ribbon of trail, wide enough for one rider. The next section was again gravel service roads that wound around the wide open landscape. Rolling terrain that warranted large gears and lots of whoo-hoos! It was in this section that I had to decide to keep going.
The gravel roads were well used by ranch trucks. Many of the ruts were full to the brim with rain water so between 20 and 30 mph it was important to keep looking ahead and know what line to take, especially if there were other around you. So I came upon a double puddle and decided to go high center, between them. Three other riders were nearby. I took the line and suddenly it was very loud and chaotic. When I realized I had crashed, the first thought I had was I was being run over by another rider and how much that was going to suck. I popped up right away and asked if everyone was ok. Two other riders had stopped and they were asking me if I was ok. I said yes but again asked if everyone else was and one of them said I was the only one that went down. Whew! That was a relief. I waved them off and started to access my situation. All the parts were moving. Not immediate pain anywhere. Bike checked out ok. So I mounted back on and when I looked down at my pedal to click in I saw the skin of my left knee hanging off. Holy shit! I bent over and well, it was bad as you can imagine. Not a lot of blood (yet) but lots of skin missing. Since it didn't hurt too bad, I decided I'd at least ride to the aid station (at 18 miles, I was at about mile 10) and assess. Well, I was able to ride harder than I thought I would so when I pulled into the aid station, my plan was to grab food and go but an EMT caught site of my wound and talked me into at least rinsing it out. While he did that their awesome volunteers took my camelback, filled it with water and heed and even gave me four ibuprofen that I asked for. How fricken cool is that. I spent about 8 minutes there. I knew I probably lost some places along the way but what do ya do!
I took off with a boiled potato in my mouth and a bananna in my pocket. I looked down at the knee. It was bleeding pretty good now, but as the video said, I didn't have time to bleed. I felt pretty good considering, and knowing there were other aid stations along the way, I knew if things really hit the fan, I would have support to get me back to the car. But, it never hit, so to speak. The worst pain was from the abrasions that still had nerve endings when the cold wind would hit them while riding out in the open range. But the actual gash was numb because all the nerve endings had been ripped out so I labored on.
The course ran through all kinds of terrain from gravel roads to open prairie, some of which was through long prairie grass where you couldn't see what was on the trail or around the corner and it looked like it had just been stomped out the week before, so it was bumpy as well. There were water hazzards like I've never seen before. Some were rideable, some were not. Two, which were next to each other, were waist deep. I kid you not. I had to carry my bike at my shoulders through two bogs, then up a muddy grassy climb. There were others not as deep or maybe they were muddy slogs that sucked up your wheel. Between that and the crash, my drive train was F'd. By mile 55 it wouldn't go into the biggest ring on back without going right into my wheel. I must have gotten off a half dozen times to put it back on. That made the last part of the race really frustrating and difficult. The last 8 miles were by far the hardest. Dubbed the Head Quarters trail, it was steep, rocky and rooty. It's meant to be ridden down, but noooooo, we had the privelage to go up it and if you were cooked by the last aid station at mile 63, then you were in for a tough challenge. But I labored on. My knee was black from the blood, dirt and whatever debree that stuck to it, not to mention any potential evilness from the water crossings. No time to bleed. Just gotta keep going. One bright spot. I did manage to reel in three women that I had passed earlier in the race. That gave me a lot of energy. After the last aid station, I caught a YetiBeti rider and used that as my momentum to finish as strong as I could. Aside from having to dodge a St. Bernard and a local, bearded trail rider while going up a power climb, I made it through the last section without too much incident. I ran some of the short climbs because of the bike issues, but I was surprised that I still had the energy to ride over stuff as well as I did. That last big push sealed my 5th place finish in women over 39 category, 7th place finish overall of both pro and open women. I was happy with that.
After the race, I went directly to the first aid station. The same guy at the 1st aid station was there to again clean up the train wreck that was my knee. From the looks of it, you couldn't tell what was hurt, there was so much blood down my leg.
The doc on site numbed it up and cleaned it as well as she could, but alas, I had to go to the ER to get the rest of the debris removed. Kind of a bummer but it had to be done. They were really cool. I got right in and we joked around while Ryan took action shots. I couldn't even feel anything afterwards because it was so numb so we headed back to the race celebrations so we could take part in the free food and beer. I ended up winning some socks! Score!
So, all in all, it was a tough race. Tougher than the Firecracker in some ways, easier in some ways too. Elevation, although at 7-9k, didn't play as much a factor. Lots of climbing, but it wasn't stupid steep and long. Usually one or the other. It was harder in that at mile 55 I was starting to hit bottom and my efforts weren't as effortful. It probably had more gravel roads than I'd like but then again they allowed for rest and easier pedaling between the gnarly stuff. Will I do it again? I think so. My time of 6:38 was way off my goal of 5:30 but I was also guessing. It seems on average, an hour more than the FC50 would have been more accurate, so next time, I'm going to shoot for 6:15 and less blood loss.
Alright, cats, I'm heading out tonight to meet Ryan in Denver. From there we'll drive to Laramie (he drove out in Pearl, my Subaru), which is only a few hours. We'll be able to sleep in, get a good breakfast and some recon riding of the race course. Lots on my mind, so I just really need to focus once I'm on the start line. I've been told to get up front early so I have a chance at the whole shot.
On the home front, mom is home. She looks like she hit the pavement but it's all superficial stuff that will heal. THANK THE GOOD LORD! My sibs will take care of her well while I'm out doing crazy two-wheeled stuff.
We are close to getting a house! If all goes well, we close in three weeks. Anyone got a truck?
Have a great weekend all. I hope this weather comes with us!
Okay, dirt lovers. Round two of the 2009 trifecta is in my sights. This weekend RF and I will be trying a new endurance race: The Laramie Enduro. This is a popular race, usually selling out in a few days after it opens up for registration. Why? Race support. It's 70 miles and supported all the way by means of aid stations that stock snacks and drinks so that anyone can go light and long.
I've heard that this race is more of a race of old. Less technical, faster and just plain fun. No multiple laps. No hike a bikes. People come to ride their bike and damn it, that's what people do. The caveat: better be getting your grub on before sun rise, cuz the gun goes off at 7am. Ouch! Best to pack a pancake in the jersey.
I'm excited to try a new race. RF and I have found some gems that we've been going back to every year just cuz we have so much fun and the races are well organized but this year we decided to skip 24 hours of 9 mile for the Enduro. We've been to the area on other trips and it's a cool place to play outside let alone race. I can't wait. Ryan is on a mission to not lose to me again, which then puts me on an even bigger mission: to put a stop to his mission. It's all good, clean competition of course. :)
Hard to say how long I'll be out there. I'm going to shoot for around 5:30. It's longer than the Fire Cracker 50 but not as much sustained climbing and lower altitude, so hopefully that equals faster dirt girl.
