Training hard

It has been wonderful to be home for two whole weeks!  I am thoroughly enjoying Durango and all it has to offer this time of year.  I think suffering on the rollers all winter during the snow storms has really made me appreciate the warm weather that much more!  I rode my favorite ride the other day….over all the mountain passes ending just before Ouray!  The ride was definitely an exercise in mental toughness as my legs were protesting for a lot of it and then it started to rain.  Racing in the rain is one thing when you are surrounded by 100 other competitors going through the same thing.  It is a whole different thing to train for hours in the rain in the mountains….I’d like to think I got mentally tougher that day and I got to catch up on my 50 mph wet-roads-mountain-roads-descending skills! I have been to the farmers market for two weeks in a row!!! I met Dave from James Ranch and learned all about why their grass-fed beef is so tasty!  If you haven’t tried it, I highly recommend it!  The remainder of my time has consisted of frequent rides with friends and family with frequent stops at Bread for coffee!!  I raced a club time trial during which I came to realize that I am luckiest person in the world….I have been given these amazingly fast and expensive ‘toys’ that I get to play with everyday….’toys’ being my Jamis Xenith road bike and my Jamis Xenith SL time trial bike aka my fighter jet.   I still get the chills when I see my name on my bike.  Finally, I rounded out the fun with some secret night time training….the topic: bike handeling skills…the location: a remote bmx track….the bike:  my 1970’s cruisier…the outcome:  valuable bike handeling skills and wall riding were learned as well as how not to crash in the dark when you catch air while going too fast approaching a jump…I’m not sure ‘jump’ is proper bmx lingo, but it will have to do.  I’m off to race Fitchburg Longsjo Classic tomorrow!  I will update from there if the internet is abundant in our host house!

Making my way up Red Mountain…..yeah! its not raining anymore!

Ciao

kmac

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The Return to Nature Valley

I was full of feelings of anticipation and hesitation as I boarded my flight to Minneapolis, MN for the Nature Valley Grand Prix. Last year I suffered big time at this race and then crashed out. This year I was determined to have a better showing, and I was pleasantly surprised with the end result.

The crit the first night was first on my list of improvements to make. Last year I showed up to the line late, started last, then time-trialed for 30 minutes just off the back, and barely made the time cut. This year I started on the second line, clipped in on the first try and then held on to 5th wheel as the crash fest in the downpour of rain began. As Amy D put it, ‘creative bike handling skills’ by all were in full force. I finished the race and was slightly disappointed that they weren’t going to count the race as I had raced so hard, but there was hardly any time to ponder this as I stripped my soaking spandex and tried to get my shivers under control before the next day.

Day two…take two of stage one. I stayed up front, out of trouble and finished with the pack, I lost a few spots as I celebrated Tina winning the stage and taking the yellow! My excitement was increased as I found myself the owner of the ‘Best Amateur’ green jersey! Sweet, my first jersey. The race was already ten times better than last years addition.

Day three….I was a little sluggish in the time trial but still managed a top twenty (cheers to the power climb at the end) Again, waaay better than my 50 something finish last year.

I got a call up at the Minneapolis downtown crit and was determined to once again capitalize on my start position. I stayed in the top 1/4 of the race all night and stayed out of trouble….actually I think everyone stayed out of trouble as there were no crashes anywhere, hoorah! Tina pulled out a second place with no lead-out train!! What a badass! I got to stand on the podium twice in front of the crowd to take the best young rider and another best amateur jersey! I stood nervously behind the podium watching the veterans do the whole ‘jersey ceremony’, taking notes on what to do and willing myself not to trip on the podium on my way up.

Day four…..The day I crashed last year. I was a little tense at the beginning and stayed way up front to avoid any possible crashes. As we passed the site of my crash I began to breathe a little easier! As the miles ticked on I started to realize that I would not be doing an 80 mile time trial, but that I was going to get to contest the race to the end! Armstrong killed the finishing circuits and I was bummed not to even stay with her for a lap, but I turned in a top 10! I was starting to believe that the race didn’t hate me after all!

Day five…the bread and butter stage, I couldn’t wait to test myself on the 22% grade…I wasn’t going up hill as fast as I wanted, but the good news was Andrea was up the road making her breakaway companions suffer. I kept my race together and was comforted knowing that my other jersey contenders were behind me! After it was all said and done, I still managed a top ten finish on the day and overall and I kept my jerseys! Now I’m home until Fitchburg! Good luck to the girls in Austin!!!

Race reports

Race reports from Tour of the Gila, Mt. Hood, Kelly Cup, and Tour of Somerville are all at colavitawomen.blogspot.com!

Race Recovery

After all the racing I have been doing, I have learned that my recovery activities are vital.  After Tour of the Gila, Lou aided my recovery by cooking some amazing food and coming up with some mellow activities like river rafting and tandem cruiser riding!  This meal was especially great with salad before hand, then herb grilled lamb chops, lemon spicy quinoa, and an avocado-tomato-cucumber salad, roasted yellow peppers and a nice red wine!

After Mt. Hood I headed home with teammate Andrea to recover before some important crits the following weekend.  Recovery in Crozet, VA was awesome.  The scenery and riding were awesome, and the strawberry-picking was super!

View from the bike in Crozet, VA

The best strawberries I have ever had!

I am now at home, gearing up for the Nature Valley Grand Prix next week!  I promise to update with race reports…check back soon!

keep it rollin!

Hmmmm

So I am officially a huge slacker when it comes to updating.  Sorry bout that.  My diary from Tour of the Gila will be on cyclingnews.com shortly.  Access it by going to cyclingnews.com and clicking on uswcdp diary.  So Gila went pretty well, I finished 5th overall.  Collegiate nationals showed me that I need to work on my sprint some more.  I am now at Mt. Hood getting ready for the long TT tomorrow!  When I get one second of extra time I will post some pictures from all my travels!

ciao for now

kmac

Almost perfect day

I had an amazing ride this past weekend.  My super coach, Michael Engleman, came over to Durango and followed me on a great day of climbing from Durango to the top of Red Mountain pass (65 miles away over 3 mountain passes and to an altitude of 12,000 ft three times).  It was so nice to have the support car with warm clothes and an endless supply of water and food.  I climbed to my hearts content!  To top it off, I had a little tail wind the whole day and I never had to turn around and ride home in the wind…..I got to ride in the car!!!  While this isn’t the ideal way to get tougher or work on riding in the wind, it was a great workout mentally!  It felt fast!  Sorry no pics.  Next stop Tour de Gila!

Very Tardy Update

So it has been a while since my last post because I have been crazy busy. So here is a quick update of all the exciting things I have been encountering in the past couple of months. . ..
Lou and I headed to his home state of New Jersey to hang out with his family and meet his new niece (she is adorable). It was a great trip! While I was there I got to visit the Colavita USA headquarters as well as ride with the Colavita U-19 Cycling team.

Dan Coleman and his gang are doing great things for these kids. They are so lucky to have such support at such a young age.

I also did some more inside riding before I headed out to training camp in Fresno, CA.

After New Jersey I headed out to training camp in California. After multiple trips to the grocery store and the airport, we finally had everyone and we headed up to Yosemite for a few days of photo shoots and amazing rides inside Yosemite park. Then it was down to sunny, warm Fresno for some more riding and finally a race!! I had a lot of fun getting to know my new team. Everyone is awesome and I am looking forward to a stellar season with them all! I don’t have any pictures from there because I didn’t have a camera…but I do now! More to come shortly. I promise I will do a better job of updating. Ciao!

Moab the great!

Amy D and I escaped to beautiful Moab last weekend!!! The weather was warm, the roads were dry, the views were amazing and the company was the best (so were all the goodies from BREAD)! Thanks Rob!!! And thanks to Micheal Engleman for driving behind us for a grand total of 8.5 hours this weekend!

We are so happy to be outside in the sun! By the way…did you hear that Amy finished top 20 at cyclocross worlds!!! AMAZING girl!

I am headed back to Moab again this weekend because guess what? It is snowing again…holy smokes I hope it stops coming down sometime this year.

Check out that view! I was in heaven! This is one of the reasons I LOVE riding my bike!! The scenery is amazing!

Weather, Snow and Cold

Hmmm, well its been a while since I posted, mainly because when I haven’t been training or resting I have been shoveling. Our house is completely buried in snow… this is the garage snow bank while it was still snowing, the snow is now up to the roof of the garage.

That is my subaru buried behind a snow bank. Lou finally fired me from shoveling snow because the snow banks are too high for me to get the snow on top of them….I haven’t seen this much snow in Durango in a long time (like since the early 90’s). I have been spending some really quality time with my rollers and I have watched some great action movies, but who am I kidding, riding inside is not so fun. The roads are starting to clear up, and riding will be possible soon!