Nice Job Girls!!

VAC Wins at Tour of the Gila!

I can't wait to hear about it. We have a fantastic team there, each of these girls is my hero: Chrissy, Shaz, Emily, and the as-yet-blogless Marni and Leah. I just know today is the start of a great week for them! I am so excited!

San Dimas Pt. 3: Cheerleading!

So I earned an A+ for effort in my attempt to debate my way into starting today's crit. Unfortunately I got an F for efficacy? Because I didn't start. Ah well, there will be other races... and of all types of bike racing, criteriums can be the hairiest. Unfortunately, our team was harshly reminded of this fact today when an inexperienced rider slammed into poor Sharon (a.k.a. Shaz), took her and 2 other riders out, and broke Sharon's wrist. She didn't even apologize.

So awful how hours and months of work can get wiped away in a second. This has happened to too many friends recently, it's really sad and I feel depressed and speechless about it. What do you tell your dear friend who's sitting torn, bloody, broken, crying, and asking "why me?"... All I can say is I don't know but we all love you and here's a hot chocolate? Coincidentally, this morning I was telling Shaz all about Marit's recent crash and phenomenal attitude.

Poor Shaz. Like Marit, she did not deserve this.

Anyhow, on to lighter and brighter news:


I am now in Santa Monica playing with my favourite-ever not birthday present!! He's even bigger and better and funner than he was last September! I love Bob!

San Dimas Pt. 2: Currently a Question Mark?

Today's road stage was great and crappy. Great because I helped my teammates more than I thought I was capable of, saw the front and the wind and more front and wind, climbed hills at a trillion watts, and even felt like my descending skills improved from mediocre to mildly o.k. during the course of the race. Woohoo!

Crappy because I got dropped right when the proverbial crap hit the proverbial fan, my legs gave out when I and We needed them most... As I was chasing into a fierce headwind, a good 20 seconds off the back of a strung-out peleton, I saw the field round a corner and sure enough, it was my other 5 VAC teammates on the front, single file, chasing two High Road riders. I knew at that moment that my chances of chasing down that horsepower were pretty minimal!

Crappy also because, despite the fact that this is not an NRC race, and further despite the fact that there is no safety issue with tomorrow's relatively un-technical crit course (and our field is down to 66 riders now), I and 9 others got time cut! How silly! It's like the officials decided this is the World Championships of Stripmallland and They are going to Exercise their Non-exercising bodies' rights to Enforce Senseless Rules and Watch Girls Cry... I completely understand time cuts in big stage races where you have big fields and potentially dangerous courses, like Redlands or Nature Valley for example, but come on! This is a local race! Our field is not large, and the course tomorrow can accomodate everyone with no problem! Just let everyone race, seriously! I don't regret my race at all though. Yeah, if I had sat in and been a passenger all day, I'd have made it in with the group and I'd be starting tomorrow. But there's no point to that, racing as a passenger doesn't help anyone and it certainly isn't fun or gratifying.

So yeah, I am bummed, because the whole reason I am here is to race hard and take advantage of my one opportunity to contribute to the team this year, and now I don't get to race tomorrow. Greg is probably coming to pick me up tonight, although now I am having second thoughts about that... half the impetus for him coming to get me is he was having dinner with some triathletes, including Chris McCormack and his family, but now by the time I get there everyone will be gone. Plus apparently the brain trust that's running the official side of San Dimas released results that say I and the other time-cut girls have a GC placing, but the stage results indicate the time cut... so which is it?! Are we in the race or not?!

I shouldn't be so high and mighty I guess... Officials are probably underpaid.

San Dimas Pt. 1

Greg and I made it safely and happily down to San Dimas yesterday! All 450 (mostly) beautiful miles... Not a lick of traffic, either, which was totally nice. And we basically pretty much sort of left "first thing", as intended - 9:30 a.m. is pretty good for us actually.

But Kitty didn't want me to leave! He was holding my bike shorts hostage (Huntress I know these are last year's shorts, I only use them on the trainer I swear!)
I am sharing a room with my favourite roommate ever, Shaz, who is getting over a cold and her voice sounds like something out of the Godfather and she is currently on the phone with her dogsitter explaining why she didn't mean to insinuate that the dogsitter's ex was a ho, she was saying her dog was a ho, or something? I am not sure but it's hilarious, especially since she can't really talk.

Anyhow today was the first stage of the race, a 6k hillclimb time trial (this is the part where Greg laughs at how I thought I was a "climber" when I first started cycling, then I went to my first road race and realized my huge misclassification of myself). Mara Abbott won, followed by her High Road teammate Kim Anderson, and our very own Leah Goldstein finished third! Additionally, Godfather Shaz rode up the mountain in the 10th fastest overall time, pretty good for being at about 75% health-wise. It's all because of my simultaneously calming and invigorating roommate-influence of course. I had a good day too, finishing 37th out of 71 starters, about 3 minutes down on Mara, in a time that was over a minute and a half faster than my time on the same course in 2006!! Hooray for improvements! It was also marginally fun-ish to see my heartrate in the 180s for the first time in 6 months??

Tomorrow is the road race stage, an 8-loop circuit race totalling 56 miles. It's a bit rolling, and the race is always exciting because every lap has either a time-bonus sprint or a QOM sprint. I can't wait, bring on the sprints!

OK we are going out for dinner but first a glimpse of the San Bernadino mountains, indication of why I could never ever live in this megalopolis of cars and people and more cars that pollute to the point where you can barely see mountains that are just a few miles away:

Winding Down

Tomorrow is the first Team VAC race of the year :), and the last day of camp :( ! It's been a fantastic week of training for all of us, and we were very blessed with great weather. I would come back to Healdsburg in a heartbeat for another training camp - great roads for cycling and running, and a nice 25 meter outdoor pool in town.

But I would only come if I had the same great company. Everyone is a lot of good adjectives, including entertaining. For example Sharon is finding herself by reading "A New Earth: Awakening to your Life's Purpose" (she admits it's new-agey crap but by golly she's going to enjoy and learn from it). Sharon and Nicole look so much alike from behind that even Sharon's sister mistook one for the other (made me feel better for making that mistake approx. 12 times this week). Leah has been educating us about all kinds of safety precautions and intelligence methods she learned in the Israeli army, totally fascinating stuff. I can't wait to ride to the race with her tomorrow and get more stories, she is one of the most amazing people I have ever met. Ultra-friendly young Hannah has been the recipient of a few of these safety warnings, I swear Hannah would talk to even someone like George W. for an hour just to avoid hurting his feelings! Chrissy left us last night to go to Australia with the national team. I remember meeting her at Mt. Hood in 2005, my first NRC race ever, and during one stage I saw her running the opposite direction along the course, in sneakers, cheering "go ford basis!" (chrissy's team that year) - I was so confused and impressed, until I learned it was actually her twin sister! Incidentally, Leah won the race that year and Chrissy was second. I was in awe of them both. Katie is just as fantastic as she was last year, if not moreso. I am thoroughly entertained whenever she is speaking, even if I can't make out a word she's saying! That happened today in a busy coffeeshop. Also I am learning to say "Leese hunnybunny, do we have a SHED-joule for the MAAssaje?" rather than "hey huntress, what's the muhSSADGE SKEDjull?" The Aussie version is so much more melodious!

More on the rest of the girls tomorrow. I am beat, in a good way but beat nonetheless. So are my toes:

I ran for the same amount of time as my friend Marit today, but not as far and not for an awesome win! Anyhow I know I am a wuss who screams for attention and sympathy even for a hangnail, but I have blisters on ALL of my TOES!!

Ins and outs of the day thanks to my ever-trusty-in-a-pinch camera phone, spooky morning then serene sunset:


Speaking of camera phones, I am reading Katie's trashy Aussie mags and they have ads in there for camera phones with 5 or 6 megapixels!!! Why the crap don't we get that here?!? Did the digital camera industry pay off the domestic phone manufacturers or something?!?

More Huntress Teasements

So last night during our team meeting, Huntress is emphasizing the importance of punctuality.

Lisa: ...I will NOT TOLERATE anyone being over 10 minutes late to any team meeting or departure or function, ladies. It's UNACCEPTABLE. The ONLY WAY you will get out of being in big trouble is if for example you have a medical eMERGency, or, well, if someone DIES, or, or...

Me: or if you're on the PHONE

Lisa: ...yeah or if you're on the PHONE, or --

Us: HAHAHAHAHAHA

Lisa: Courtenay! God. Being on the phone is NOT an excuse.


You may have had to be there. I'm not sure. But I totally got her. It was hilarious. I would say that Katie and I are the biggest huntress-teasers, and I would say that I get in more trouble than Katie does because a. I am less charming than she is and b. I don't have Australian nat'l champ stripes on my jersey or world champ stripes on my saddle!!

Valentine's with the Girls!

Well our internet was out for the afternoon here at Team VAC headquarters and it took a few bottles of wine and a dip in the hot tub to recall that we could actually reset it and get it up and running again...

Today was our 80 mile "flat ride", which in Huntress-speak basically means constant rollers with a couple of 10 minute climbs and maybe a millimeter or two of flatness just to make the label work o.k. Having moved away from NorCal, I now see that the NorCal definition of "flat" is decidedly wrong. Today was way harder than yesterday's "hilly" route! But it was actually a gorgeous ride, we headed out from Healdsburg through Guerneville (start point of Vineman 70.3 and incidentally we were on some of the same roads as the bike course, pothole central, which was a good test for the new bikes and parts) to the coast, then south to Coleman Valley road, through Occidental, and back home to Healdsburg. All 12 of us all together the whole time, I was suffering behind all these fit girls but I stuck with it and I feel my legs coming around already. Even better, my I've Been On The Trainer All Winter And Haven't Group Ridden Since October bike-handling skills are slowly slowly improving to like a Cat 4 level.

Choice moments, not necessarily related to Valentine's:

-10 of us waiting at the top of Coleman Valley, freezing and windblown and lying on the asphalt to try to keep warm, waiting for a certain someone to finish a top secret art project for a certain someone, to be blogged about in the future.

-my decrepit yet faithful old camera finally pooped out for good it seems, whilst documenting above project - Fuji FinePix as a replacement?!

-Sharon and I sung to ourselves for the last hour. We are not very good. Taitt was like "you'll find a note somewhere, keep trying!" as she scuttled off to the back, away from us!

-Leah (leah goldstein, super climber and former world-champ kick boxer and the list goes on)(she's great), anyhow she likes to eat bananas on the rides and throw the peels to the grass and she was not a world-champ banana thrower, today she hit Nicole twice!

-We saw two recreational cyclists on the side of the road studying a map. "Are you guys LOST?!" says Lisa the Huntress. Followed by Katie: "Well don't ask Lisa for help!" The poor guys were probably wondering why 12 smurfs were going 30 miles per hour on bikes and laughing at them, but we were just laughing at Lisa.

-We got Huntress and her husband John a gift certificate to Victoria's Secret for Valentine's day. "John'll tell me to get flannel stuff!" she said, prior to relating the fun and excitement of a Victoria's Secret shopping excursion to the fun and excitement of some gourmet grocery store on the east coast?!!?


Anyway so yeah my camera broke, unfortch that means no pics for a little while unless I can borrow some from my teammates, although the flip side is I won't be lugging the thing up the hills! I will so be on the front now! But here's one I took of our Huntress the other night, in her directorial fuzzy chair:

Antics

So last night Martina goes "Do you want to do partner downward dog? It's not sexual!" and some amusing rolling-on-the-floor ensues:

Success! But Huntress is already bored.

And meanwhile, Sharon is attempting her own yogic something-or-other?
Note her omnipresent trashy magazine in the foreground... Some things don't change!

Smashed

We just got back from a four hour ride, the weather was so gorgeous and so was the route! We did the Geysers ride, starting from Healdsburg riding up to Cloverdale and then over the climb that way. I brought my camera along expecting to get some Old Faithful-style photo ops but we didn't see a single geyser! So why's it called the Geyser Ride?

The only other time I did this ride was 3 years ago, when I was a Cat. 3 racer getting ready for my second racing season. For that ride, I was under strict orders by my coach to stay under a low heart rate ceiling (impossible to do on the long 12-15% climb), and I was also about 30 lbs heavier than I am now (yet I still thought I was a climber for some strange reason), plus it was cold and drizzly, so I didn't really notice that there were no geysers. Today's experience was totally different, in a great way, but no geysers?!

I did get a shot at the base of the real climb, the other girls stopped for a pee break and I posed myself by this cool bridge with my camera unintentionally on some wacky-ass setting:

Briefly

Yesterday's "Huntress Moment" courtesy of VAC Team Director Lisa Hunt:

"Lara your little sister is a triplet? That's so cool! Wait - does that mean you are twins?!"


We had team photos yesterday afternoon at the Golden Gate Bridge - a long-ish drive from where we are staying in Healdsburg but the view and dramatic backdrop made the trip worth it, and the wind and rapidly-rolling fog made the shoot very funny. I'd post some of my photos of the photo shoot but ride departure time is t minus 22 minutes and huntress FREAKS OUT Courtenay-style when we are late.

Oh and I made it to the pool this morning!!!! Got to swim right next to high school swim team practice, good practice for race swimming with all their splashing and cavorting. Apparently all the hubbub caused me to completely forget my favourite new skill, the Flip Turn, (i SWEAR i know how to do them) but other than that I had a lovely outdoor swim workout! Sunrise over our (very chilly) pool this morning:

Bananas - Interesting.

This was the subject line of an email I got from my mom this morning, which like most things my mom says and does, cracked me up. The email was a forward all about how bananas are great, which I already knew, but still: Ha! Bananas - Interesting.

Other news:

- Baby Thor is a bit sick. She caught a cold on the way home from Reno (i.e. she has 'ich'), I have not had to deal with a sick fish yet so I freaked out but when I talked to the fish store they said to put in 1 tbsp of salt per 10 gallons of water, and to jack the heater up to 86 degrees and it should go away in 5-7 days. The good news is she has a healthy appetite, and Sweetie and Pipsqueak are very healthy and happy looking.

- This Sunday and Monday, en route to my super awesome VAC training camp, to which I have been looking forward since like AUGUST, I will be stopping by the city to chill with friends, get my old dentist to make me a crown, and go SHOPPING! On a budget of approx. $10 of course, but that will definitely get me some cool paper at Flax and maybe some new shoelaces at Sports Basement and hopefully also a new nail polish to bring to camp. Woohoo party time for Court!

- The sun finally came out here! Temps are in the 40's for the first time since December, and I'm loving it. I still haven't ventured outside for any workouts, the roads are wet from all the snow melting and it's a rest week so I am O.K. with doing 1 hour rides and 30 minute runs indoors, and catching up on my Animal Planet. Polar bears - interesting.

- Tomorrow I am going to the car wash to make my bike sparkly.

And that's about it.

I Saved the Best for Last

So, I am at the tail-end of my Nature Valley blogging. Although, I am not even remotely near the tail-end of my Nature Valley recovery. For some strange reason I am still way tired (might have something to do with my running-around-like-a-chicken-trying-to-get-stuff-done).

Anyway here is my favourite photo of the trip, it's Katie Mac in our lake after the Stillwater stage:


I love it... The nails. The laugh. The omnipresent Blackberry.

Like I am one to talk though. While I was taking this photo Sharon was teasing us. "This is so typical," she said, "we go in the lake for 5 minutes, but Courtenay and Katie still can't bear to leave their wireless devices on the shore!"

Am I Quite Good At This?

So I am safely home from Nature Valley, and my computer is finally able to get a much-needed (ok, essential) charge so I can blog properly with photos and everything! Get psyched.

Or not. I am actually kinda running out of steam.

Here's Sharon. She has great taste in outfits and reading material, and she's an expert at stage-race recovery:

That is In Touch Magazine, those are tan lines not white spandex, and Sharon your hair looks great

She can't get mad at me for posting this because I totally made her bike-packing life way easier. Her "resident mechanic" had told her that to take off the pedals you just turn them the opposite way of the pedaling motion provided you only do some confusing thing or somethingorother. Basically a total guy trick. I helpfully informed her that you turn the wrench towards the back of the bike and presto change-o your pedals are off.

Moving on, I don't have photos from two of my favourite incidents from the trip, incident #1 being my breakaway on the Mankato stage and incident #2 being my horse rescue operation at the Stillwater stage. We were sitting in the parking lot, getting really fired up for the final stage ("OMG I so need coffee" "I can't deal with walking down the hill to get it" "Lisa do we have to warm up?" "Can we go clothes shopping instead?" sort of thing), and there was this horse trailer off in the corner of the lot with a carriage parked next to it. All of the sudden this big draft horse comes running out from behind the trailer, trotting across the parking lot looking totally scared, and no owner or responsible party seemed to be on hand. So tired-I-want-to-shop-or-nap Courtenay goes trotting across the parking lot at full speed to rescue the horse and return her to her tie-up spot. The Lipton girls seemed to be taking photos so maybe I will eventually see proof of my heroics.

(update: here is Meredith's post)

That was probably the fastest I moved all day.

O.K., more catch-up blogging to come, after I catch up on real life...

More Minneapolitan Excitement

Tonight's crit was fast and painful, but blessedly dry in comparison to last year (scroll down, couldn't get just a picture link alone, sorry).

And, being a big important stage of a big important race and everything, there were plenty of gossip-worthy moments. For example the call-up situation that got totally botched, and the Theresa Moriarty fan in the crowd who started freaking out (which is the main theme of this blog post, btw) and yelling at Dave Towle to hold everything because Theresa couldn't move up to the front of the start line or whatever. There was plenty more, BUT:

I am going to tell you about the drive home instead. Sharon is driving, with Jill riding shotgun/manning air and radio controls, and Katie, Hannah, Marni and I are piled in back text messaging all our friends and advising Jill how to make us more comfy with her controls please.

BTW this is a Chevy Impala sedan (which Lisa is referring to as "black beauty" or something).

Sharon starts singing along to the White Wing Dove song on the radio (the Stevie Nicks one) as I am simultaneously texting a friend about how cool all my teammates are. I ask Sharon to please stop singing so as not to make a liar out of me regarding the coolness.

Marni mourns the fact that her iPod has been on since the afternoon by accident and is out of batteries so she can't drown out the karaoke routine with her earphones.

Katie rolls down her window and tosses out her gum.

A cop pulls out behind us. Right behind us.

I freak out and duck since I think 4 of us in a back seat is technically illegal and that's gotta be why we're in trouble.

Katie freaks out and wonders how to lie about her litterbugging actions from just a second ago because that's gotta be why we're in trouble.

Hannah doesn't freak out and tells Sharon turns onto a side street.

Marni tells Katie to say it was an apple core instead of gum because that's biodegradable and thus technically not littering.

Cop follows and turns on lights and sirens. We pull over and dude gets out of his cop car and walks over.

Jill freaks out because he has his gun!

And the rest is anticlimactic. Apparently we were doing 45 in a 30, on top of that you aren't supposed to have so many girls in one car, there was no mention of littering so Katie was off the hook, Sharon did a good job of being calm and giving the cop subtle hints that we are bike racers, and ultimately we got off with a warning. Oh, and the gun turned out to be his flashslight.

Major phew.

Tomorrow is the Mankato stage. Check back here for stories...

More Race Seriousness

OK here I am taking the race slightly more seriously than I was in that other photo...

Quotes from the Weekend

"Sorry Ladies, we didn't get any lap cards for you so you're just going to have to pay attention."
-Officials on the start line at Sea Otter, as large rain drops are starting to fall. Greeeeaaaat. Glad you take us so seriously...

"These certainly weren't the 'scattered showers' that were advertised."
-Hannah, after cancellation of the Sea Otter circuit race due to sub-50 degree hail/windstormness.

"Roman, what kind of jeans are those? Are they Sevens? Are they women's Sevens?!"
-Devon, to Roman, not realizing that we had all already teased him about his fashion jeanwear.

"Hey, I'm fighting for Women's Rights!"
-Felicia to the women's peloton, on the start line of the Santa Cruz Criterium, after the officials announced that the race had been lengthened to 30 laps at her request. Actually I thought it was a good call.

"Girls, I want you coming back to the cars IMMEDIATELY after the race. I mean immediately! No running around all over the place FLIRTING! We have a schedule to follow!"
-Director Lisa, at Sea Otter, to all of us...

Rain or Shine. Or Hail.

Sea Otter.

Always a massive effort in many ways. Driving to the event through one of two many-mile entrances with 6 thousand other bike-laden cars, parking, getting from parking through the vendor area over the bridge dodging the mountain bikers through the mud onto the racetrack, then the race itself where you go round and round and up and down 300 feet every 7 minutes, then scraping together some sort of cool down before changing clothes and schmoozing and gossiping with sponsors in the vendor area, all the while trying to stay with your teammates, then remembering where the car is and schlepping all the way back out of the event, oh yeah don't forget to give back your expensive timing chip ankle bracelet thing that supposedly keeps track of you during your race...

I definitely love the action and the fanfare. It's one reason why I always go back. But man, Sea Otter is no joke and definitely no place for the tired or the moody. Not that I am ever either of those things, I am just saying.

Anyway, this year, on top of all the hectic crapola, please add a good dose of nutball weather. Serious nutball weather.

Look how gorgeous the weather was (and also us girls of course, me, Hannah, Taitt, and Martina, L-R) before the start:

Then the skies turned ominous approximately 1 minute before we rolled off the start line.

The wind picked up.

Then it started to rain during the second (I think) of 22 laps.

Then it REALLY started to rain.

Meanwhile the temperature plummeted from 70-ish to 45-ish.

Then it started to hail.

Sideways.

Then there was mad scattering off of the track and into cars and out of spandex and into something, anything, warm and dry. The latter was quite hard to come by. We did 11 laps (again: I think), but due to the rather immediate call-off of the race there was no sprint and there were no results. A wash, literally and figuratively.


After thawing out as best we could, us Team VAC-ers headed into the vendor area to visit our lovely sponsors, buy several warm Ritchey hoodies, drink lots of hot cocoa, and make fun of Sharon's outfit:

Goof Part 2

Here I am being a moron in front of a camera again:

The good news is Smartts seems to have joined me in moron-photo-land!

Anyway, yesterday was Team Photo Day in the Marin Headlands. I was amazed that it came together - everyone made it there on time, no one forgot their helmets or bikes or clothes (although apparently we did have some requests to do a nude photo shoot)(boys. typical.), everyone remembered their lip gloss, and the sun came out.

Afterwards we went to Sushi in the city, to a place I have been many times and always liked but NO MORE. Godzila was TERRIBLE to us last night! I am sure my outfit didn't help, I was freezing after the shoot so I kept my longsleeve on and so did Taitt, whereas all the other customers in there were in their perfumed $500-jeans Pac Heights finery, but still it was totally lame. We occuppied one of the 5 tables in the whole place for over an hour with no food, shoulders slumped over the table in full I'm a Starving Athlete Who Needs to Eat Constantly mode, waiting for our dinner, drooling as plate after plate of sushi got delivered to not-our-table, but instead to tables that ordered WAY AFTER we did... anyway it was awful.

And to top it all off we all somehow under-ordered, so when we finally got our food and inhaled it in 4 minutes and thirty seconds (including all the pickled ginger flakes and random rice kernels), we were of course still hungry. Not sure what everyone else did but I was on my couch eating a spinach salad with tofu and mushrooms at 9:45 p.m. I ran out of Ben & Jerry's.

But hey, we saved about $15 total because we left a zero-dollar tip. Don't mess with a former waitress, I know that it's not that hard to smile or to provide customer service.

Kids?!?!

How do you parents do it?

I just spent 4 hours at my cousin's house with her, her husband, her 2 1/2 year old, and her 1 week old.

I am exhausted.**

It was super fun, Mika and Wolfie are very cool parents and their little people are so cute, but whoa. We read, climbed in and out of chairs, nursed the baby, held the baby, went potty, put on and took off lots of clothes, made raviolis, ate raviolis, made other dinner, put a bed together, gossiped, read another book, played with rubber stamps, ate chocolates, took photos of me holding the baby to show my mom who loves babies but as yet has no grandchildren (Ma don't count on me to help you out with that), played in a swing, and discussed the many merits of being a big sister. Yikes! Left to my own devices I would have spent the evening with my feet propped up doing not much. Nevertheless, I had enough fun to want to go back later in the week, after some recovery and napping on my part...

Also: I am getting Nadja on the Team VAC bandwagon early. She's the Team Toddler/soigneur-in-training!

**(Although perhaps 4 drizzly hours in the saddle today with some Strawberry boys, a Kelly Strategist, a Health Nut, and a teammate had a small something to do with my tiredness. All of us have spent the last 6 or so weekends racing, rather than riding together, so we had more than the usual amount of shenanigans. Thankfully, however, there was less than the usual amount of bodily-function talk and innuendoed insulting.)

Yay Redlands!

O.K.

I just finished a really hard stage race! AND I finished in not-worst place! The team finished in 9th place overall, right up there for qualifying for a travel grant for the Bermuda Grand Prix at the end of the year.

This was a really great race, one of my favourites. The courses were demanding and rewarding, the competition was top-notch, and our host family was absolutely amazing. So amazing that Sharon and I were like "oh, we'll just stay in Redlands for another night and drive home tomorrow, since it will be better for recovery and everything..."

Good thing we didn't hit the road tonight, today's stage was super hard (all warnings about the full-gas uphill "neutral" roll-out proved valid) and I am giddily wasted.

Anyway, the highlights:

-Jill McLaughlin, who we borrowed from Touchstone, is so great! She somehow is still friends with me even though I had to ask her to repeat herself like 200 times - she has lived in the U.S. for 13 years after moving here from England so I seriously doubt her accent is that thick, I am just getting old-and-hard-of-hearing I guess! Sigh. The funniest was when she kept asking me "Am I all salty?" after the Oak Glen stage on Friday. I kept hearing "am I assaulting?" and I was like "who? what? you assaulted who? was he cute? what HAPPened?! tell me tell me tell me!" Anyway...

-An anonymous teammate gets up and drinks a Diet Coke first thing in the morning, which apparently gets her going enough to make and drink her coffee.

-Sharon and I are sharing a bed during this trip and last night she thought I was her dog and she reached over to pet me-who-she-thought-was-Buster but instead she poked me in the eye. I was knocked out with Ambien so I didn't even notice but she apologized this morning, which is how I found out about it. Hmph.

-Sharon also thinks that my pony Pox is a purple unicorn. What do you think?: