I'm calling myself an athlete

Greatest motivator for athletes is seeing results.

I never thought of myself as an athlete. Then I changed my perspective & started to think of myself as an athlete. After all, I have a coach, stick to my training plan, do my best to eat well, sleep well & many of my free hours are dedicated to training…so I AM an athlete.

As an athlete I train hard. 

How do I train for these events? I hired a coach, Jill Gass. We’ve been working together for 1.5 years now. Jill's experience surmounts any coach & she founded my cycling team, B4T9. The best performances in my athletic career (marathons, Ironmans, cycling, etc.) have always been when I trained with a coach. I’m too busy to figure out a training plan plus it always makes sense to have someone do it for you. I’d rather spend my time on the bike. 

The beginning of this year I played catch up with training and it hurt. Mostly mentally.  Last year I focused on moving up a category in women’s road racing & it did not happen. Disappointed. Oh well. I re-evaluated my 2013 goals & decided to focus on my cycling vacation to Italy and the Mt. Everest challenge. I have/will race some road races such as Madera & even a few crits but the cat 3 upgrade is on the bottom of my list. 

I booked my Italy trip with Thomson Bike Tours to watch the Giro d ‘Italia and climb the infamous passes. Before then, I’m going to ride the super hard Spy Belgium Waffle Ride  (BWR) this April in my own backyard of north county San Diego. All the macho cycling men show up at BWR and ride the hell out of this route. So will I. BRUTAL is the best way I can describe this based on hearsay. BWR will prep me for the big ride of my year, the Mt. Everest Challenge, Bishop CA (near Mt. Whitney). I’m a climbing fiend & possess the spirit of a climber.

What does my training look like? Lots of climbing.

my BMC = beautiful mexican chica

the epic ride

this is what makes climbing worth the suffering

business school friends

Want to know my secret weapon? It's my sexy BMC.  Fast & super light. The last 5 years I've ridden a BMC and my most recent one is dressed with Campagnolo Super Record. The compact crank I switched to last year makes a huge difference since many of the road races in CA involve some type of climbing.

How do I make training interesting? Ride in different places.  I take road trips to ride my bike. This one happened to be one to the San Francisco Bay Area to visit business school friends. They are very understanding of my athletic lifestyle and a few of them joined me on this ride.  The best part of this ride in particular was how strong I felt on the climbs. Since I have trained for several Ironmans, I find I am stronger at the end of rides due to my muscle memory of long endurance rides. Strong because I've been following the training plan. Motivated because I felt the results. 

The ride in the Mount Tamalpais area exceeded my expectations with it's smooth, asphalt roads and breathtaking scenery. Everything a climber could ask for in a ride; orgasmic. 

I ended up riding to the lighthouse both on Saturday & Sunday only to see if I could break my Strava record. As you can see from the picture, Strava records didn't matter after taking in the view. These past weekend rides motivated me because I felt good. I felt strong on the climbs. I know the training plan is working. Thanks coach. 

Another great weekend of cycling & spending time with good friends from business school. I'm grateful for a life of passion & great friends.

I'm back!

I've been MIA because I've lacked the motivation. So now that I have two races under my belt for 2013 I'm taking a stab at updating my blog. 

Two of my favorite races: Poor College Kids and Boulevard. Poor College Kids is the road race where I fell in love with road racing. This year the organizers changed the course eliminating the fast descent and moved the course closer to Santa Maria (Sisquoc to be exact), a beautiful location. The UCSB cycling team did a fantastic job organizing this race with their well marked course and smooth registration process. Our very own B4T9 teammate, Amy Benner, placed 1^st at this race.

For me it was a hard race and I finished strong on the uphill climb although I did get dropped from the group on the first loop on the climb. Those hill surges kill me! I worked with another racer from a different team for the 2^nd lap and that was fun. It's always nice to have someone to finish the race.  I experienced some negative self talk in my head about feeling like crap and wanting to come. This was hard but I quickly stopped those negative voices from getting me down & focused on finishing the race. For some reason, I can always finish strong and it makes me wonder if I need to push myself harder up front but then my legs can only take it so far. I'm working on improving my efforts on the hill surges. 

Boulevard road race, I changed my attitude. I went in with the goal of staying with the group as long as I could. The descents made for the biggest challenge for this race. I fear descending in a large pace group and I experience stomach knots due to my nerves. This stems from my experience last May at Mariposa Stage Race with the loss of our B4T9 sister, Susanne Rivera. I will just need to work through and I’m really not sure how. It’s important to feel confident during any bike race because once you are instilled with fear you've already lost. The other important lesson was to stop comparing myself. I am where I need to be and I just need to accept that.

The best part of racing is hanging out with my B4T9 sisters. Kudos to my dearest friend, Rachel, on her first road race. She picked one of the hardest road races as her first one. 

My goals for this year in terms of racing are to focus on the Belgium Waffle Ride in April & the Mt. Everest Challenge Stage Race in August.

Next race: Madera Stage Race.