February 24th, 2001...I lost a bet and had to take Terry out for a steak dinner. Most of you know the story, and while I do love telling it, I won't bore you again... Here's what we looked like then...on film no less.
And here we are now. We still celebrate the anniversary of our first date.
And he still gives me first-date butterflies on a regular basis.
If this whole cycling thing does work out, I'm taking Keirin Cut Newell and Team Beth is going to switch to winter extreme sport of Crashed Ice racing. We both have dreams of being speed skaters, but let's be honest, that's way too mainstream for our fringe track and cx racing tastes. I originally found out about this crazy sport from the Reuters' Photographers blog, and if Reuters is reporting it, it must be legit.
We'll need to get Sabine to loan us her stinky hockey gear.
2008 Yosemite Christmas
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This is mainly for the fam, so I don't have to try to send an e-mail to everyone...and speaking of fam, congrats to Aunt Banana who, as of last weekend, is now a certified USA Cycling Official - awesome! Last weekend I did my first crit. The Cherry Pie Crit in Napa. It was actually my first road event ever. I was definitely nervous, but I had plenty of teammates and friends helping me get ready leading up to the event so I was completely relaxed when it came time to race. The weather was cold and windy, but I think the wind helped to keep the field together - no one wanted to attack into the wind. And I got to race with the other half of Team Beth! Plus Terry was happy because he hadn't taken any pictures in about a month, so he got to play, too.
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Long story short...I hung in the pack, took care of my front wheel, learned a little bit about race dynamics, and was at near the front at the end of the race (finished 4th), so I can't complain.
Here is a little video highlight of the Women's 35+ / Women's 4 race, courtesy of DeltaVelo. I'm second wheel in the first race shot in the black longsleeve skinsuit and pink helmet. You'll have to watch for other snippets of me sprinkled throughout.
While I'm sitting here jamming out to Bruce at half time of some football game (not quite sure if that knee slide across the stage resulting in his crotch all over the camera lens was necessary, but whatever, its Bruce) and waiting for my new batch of satellite data to decode itself, I figured I'd tell a little story about my ride yesterday... Saturdays are always reserved for mountain biking. Usually it involves a fun group ride with the Bella crew, but I awoke in a panic on Saturday morning about how much work I have left to do on my thesis and only 2 months to get 'er done. So I bailed on what was likely a blissful day of single track heaven at Campus and opted for a quick solo spin around the sandy routes of Ft Ord. Solo spin does mean that I can totally geek out and no one can make fun of me, so I strapped on the heart rate monitor (perhaps to make sure I never worked too hard and crossed into zone 4?), turned on the sweet GPS app for my iPhone, and grabbed my camera and off I went. I took a page out of the tri-geek book of secrets and got one of those nutrition box thingies that straps onto my top-tube and perfectly holds my little Canon G10 within reach as I roll along. Since I loathe stuffing my jersey pockets full of crap, this little $15 pouch makes Beth happy.
So I would roll along, swooshing along the trails and pulling out the camera occasionally for a quick snap while I pedaled.
And then I snapped a few more when I stopped at the new lollygagging spot above the old lollygagging spot...
Three hours later, as the ride was winding down and I was on my way back to the car, I got bored and decided to do silly things like try to take pictures of my tire as I rolled and my own shadow. I'll spare you those photos. But while I had the camera out for this little bit of creative silliness, I rounded a corner and saw wildlife up ahead in the trail. A coyote, perhaps? Oooh, no, that looks like a kitty! I rolled to a stop as the very large cat decided to sit down in the trail ahead of me. He's facing away so he can't see me, though I thought he heard me. So now there's a big ass cat in the trail ahead of me and since he sat down, I couldn't see his tail--the easiest way to tell a not-so-threatening bobcat from a potentially not-so-friendly mountain lion.
I stood there, weighing my options, taking a few more pictures, while the cat lies down on the trail and takes a little dust bath. At this point I'm thinking he's not so threatening, so I could just roll by and he might not bother me...but I really didn't want to be on the evening news, so I had to come up with plan B. The route was downhill the other way, so I decided to make noise. The kitty would either be scared and run away into the brush or see me as a tasty treat and run at me, at which point I'd pray that all those standing starts I practiced at the track would get me down the trail faster than the kitty cared to chase. So I picked up and dropped my back tire, the kitty looked at me and then darted into the woods...and as he ran away I could tell it was just a bobcat with a short little tail. Phew.
Oh, now for the geeky part...we found this cool plug-in for Aperture called Maperture that can add a geotag to the EXIF data a photographs. Basically that means that we can add a latitude and longitude to the picture so we know where we took it. But today we discovered that we can take the GPS data from our iPhones and it will match up the location of any photo from any camera as long as the time setting on the camera is the same as the iPhone...how cool is that? So from now on we should be able to tell you exactly where we took every single one of our photos.
Don't expect to see much of me on the blog, Facebook, Twitter, TwitPic, Flickr, or anywhere else for the next few weeks since I'm hammering out some thesis stuff...but I'll leave you with one more picture to hold you over...
The joys of doing a thesis... Two days spent cutting and pasting, trialing and erroring, compiling and running, deleting and starting over...half of the little project is getting there, the other half, I have no idea. Lovely.
I reached a tipping point of frustration with a batch of data that I can't figure out how to read. I literally threw my hands in the air, said a few four letter words, brushed my hands, and went in the kitchen.
Cookies had to be made.
My favorite cookies are oatmeal scotchies. Terry thinks they are too sweet. He'd rather have oatmeal raisin, but I hate raisins in baked goods. So I developed a compromise...oatmeal craisin.
Add a little ice cream to a still-warm cookie and everything is oh-so-lovely in the world.
Maybe I'll bring cookies to my weekly meeting my advisors tomorrow. Then maybe they won't notice that I didn't figure out how to read my data...
So what if I made the book myself. Its out there for the world to see. Our collective best pictures from 2008, as decided by some very stingy judges (okay, yes, we picked them). If you'd like a copy, please go to Blurb or click on the badge on the left-hand side of the screen. And to be serious for a little bit..many of our readers encouraged us and inspired us over the past year (and by many, I mean the five regular readers who drop by here...many is anything over 3). . Now that the book is out there, its a little frighting to think that we've bared our artistic souls for the world to see. This is a step we likely would not have taken without the encouragement, inspiration, and love from our family and friends. Thank you.
And here's to hoping that next year's book kicks this book's ass.
We were really fortunate to have the opportunity to see a lot of new and different places in 2008, and of course, we went to nearly all these new places with cameras in-tow. Immersing ourselves in these new places and trying to capture exciting/interesting/meaningful images every where we went challenged our creativity while encouraging us to try some new techniques from behind the lens. I feel like we both improved as photographers over the past year, and while we certainly have a long to go and so much to learn as photographers, I think we both are starting to feel confident that we can go out and get at least one good, solid image each time we shoot. We've pooled our best photos from 2008. It was a tough decision since we had so many images from so many different places and experiences. The ten photos below are the "top ten". Over the course of the next few weeks (in between thesis writing) I'll be putting the finishing touches on a book highlighting our all of favorites (roughly 100 images) from the past year...more to come on that later. Now for the top ten, in roughly chronological order:
1. Red Hat. Terry captured this image while waiting for me a mountain bike race.
2. California Poppies. Terry's lovely image from Henry Coe State Park last March.
3. Middle Young Lake at Sunrise. From my late-June solo backpacking adventure to Yosemite.
4. Love Bugs. I happened across these two while hiking back up to the car from the beach somewhere north of Santa Cruz.
5. Aspens in Autumn. I came across these trees not too far from the Big Wood River during my last morning ride in Ketchum, Idaho.
6. View from Hurricane Point. This was one of those days when you almost turn around half way to the intended destination because it seems that the conditions aren't going to cooperate. But we pushed on and I was rewarded with this vista over the Big Sur coast.
7. Green Bird. Terry patiently waited for this guy to pose just right for him. Inside the rainforest exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.
8. Butterfly Close-up. Terry loves chasing butterflies with the macro lens. This one is also from inside the rainforest exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.
9. El Capitan over Merced River. Terry's capture on the day after Christmas. Absolutely amazing conditions.
10. Deer Run. I had a tough decision trying to pick just one from my Yosemite shots. My first choice was very similar to Terry's shot above, so to add a little variety, I went with the deer in the woods.
Thank you to everyone who has been supportive of our little hobby this year. Hopefully we'll have even better work to show off at the end of 2009.
I've been in a funk lately. And by lately, I mean for well over a month. I've been grumpy and mopey and bitter and probably quite unpleasant to be around. I'm normally a pretty happy-go-lucky, roll-with-it sort of person. Maybe its the self-induced stress of finishing my thesis, the end of a hard fought cyclocross season, the looming solo move to Lousy-ana, I don't know. But I have to admit, when you have over a week's worth of bright, sunny, 70-degree days in the middle of January, you can't complain. You embrace those bright blue skies and warm breezes. You get out and do what you do...so Monday I rode. I didn't train, I just rode. Pedaled along, me and my managerie of geek tools...cameras and iPhone and heart rate monitor...I played with stuff, I took pictures, I did some thinking. I made a goal for this year. Its to early to announce what my goal is, but its something. A focal point in the chaotic cloud of moving and being apart and new jobs and finishing school and finding new friends and new trails to ride. A channel, an outlet, a something to get me through the crap sandwich I'm about to choke down come April. And having a meaning to what I'm doing makes it so much easier. Today I convinced a friend to go ride with me. He's a great riding buddy...goes only as fast as I want to go, always lets me lead the way, doesn't care what trails I take, doesn't mind the inevitable bushwacking wrong turn or miscalculation of where a trail ends up (my legs are all scratched up tonight)...he just rides along with me, chitchatting and making sure we aren't taking ourselves to seriously about school. We rode Ft Ord. It was perfect. The normal sandpits were a little more packed. The downhills were swoopy and speedy. The climbs were comfortable. The skies were bright. I loved it.
Its days like today this that make piling on the jerseys and vests and arm warmers and leg warmers and toe warmers to go out in the damp, bone-chilling coastal winds and foggy soup to suffer up another never-ending climb, snot streaming, hands numb, legs screaming not to do another stupid interval--these days make it all worth it. Because when days likes this week come along, you'll want to enjoy it.
And now I'm home with Terry and we're geeking out with our nerdy homework and our iPhones and dreaming about the photography business we'd love to have some day and everything is just fine. A big ol' smile all over my face. I guess a few days of riding without a care in the world while you're in the saddle makes everything okay. Besides, how can I possibly take myself so seriously when I wear something like this...
Why isn't it this easy to write my thesis?
This weekend we did nothing but homework. I left the house for about an hour and a half yesterday for a short little ride and Terry left for about an hour today to run an errand. That's it. Beautiful January weekend with 70 degree temps and I've been basking in the CFL light over my kitchen table, pecking away at my thesis. But we have had time to cook... Last night I tried out a new recipe. It was a spin on the traditional French Coq au Vin recipe called Coq au Zin, since it is made with red zinfandel. I found the recipe on The Recipe Girl during my daily read of food blogs (apparently my new obsession). It was a fairly easy and straight forward recipe with inexpensive ingredients, just takes a little while to make. And honestly, who can complain about a recipe that includes fried chicken, bacon, and an entire bottle of wine??
The final product. (Darn right we drink $3.99 Trader Joe's wine with dinner):
We're used to making dishes that have a lot of big flavors in them, but since this was French, it was a little more mellow than my usual kitchen creations. But it was definitely rich. I think next time I might save a few bits of bacon to sprinkle on at the end. And I'll serve it with some garlic mashed potatoes on the side. But overall, a great recipe. And the name makes you feel all fancy when you're cooking it.
Terry's making his secret-recipe fajitas tonight. Mmmmm!
New Year's resolutions make me laugh. I've never really made one. Well, actually, I mentally come up with a whole crap load of ideas around new year's that will drastically change my life, but then I think, hey, what I'm doing has worked for 29 years, why mess with a good thing? So really I resolve nothing. One year I decided my resolution was to floss every day so the dentist would stop making me feel bad every time I went and he/she found a new cavity. So I flossed every day. Flouride treatment too. Six months later I go to the dentist, smugly thinking, you can't give me the "you need to floss more" guilt-trip this time! The dentist checks me out and says, hey, great job of flossing, but I still found a cavity. Arrrggg...my resolution got me nothing but another cavity. So I stopped making them. But I do still floss.
So this week I've been carrying on in my usual way...Tuesdays I go to yoga. Only I had to park 2 blocks farther away than usual because all the parking close to the gym was taken by all the new years workout resolvers. You can tell which ones they are, too. So I'm in a rush to get to class since I had to park so far away and of course, my fitness class card is out of credits, so it has to be renewed before I can get into class. Precious time ticking away...precious mat space being taken up by all the resolvers! I ended up being in the front row, and I'm not a "front row yogi". I like the middle row. The room was packed with new yogis. I can't make too much fun, I was a new yogi a few months ago...but I secretly think our instructor was trying to break all the new years resolver yogis...it was the hardest yoga class so far. Maybe there will be fewer resolver yogis tomorrow and I won't have to be in the front row again.
Today I went for a ride. It was going to be a massive climbing ride, out to Barloy then back around to do the Saturday Morning climb route, but my exuberance for copious amounts of climbing waned in the breezy 40-degree early morning sunshine. Or maybe my toes were numb when I rolled back around to PG. So I just did Barloy. On the way back along the coast trail thru town, I saw more resolvers. Moms pushing strollers, moms running behind strollers, one mom pushing/running/tripping behind a two-seater stroller while also trying to walk two dogs...that was ridiculous, people running with dogs, people being run by their dogs, roller bladers (did they resolve to go back to 1997 when roller blades were cool?), and people running in the barely 50-degree morning in just tank tops and shorts. Hey new fitness person, you can wear warmer clothes!
I came home and ate peppermint flavored oreos, content with my resolution to once again resolve nothing.
My mom and I both spent our Sunday afternoon suffering on two wheels. In snowy, frigid Iowa they have a winter series of roller races held in places like shopping malls. Since today's roller race was sponsored by my parent's/sister's team, Mom decided to toss her hat in the ring and give it a try. She practiced all week on the rollers (which I think means she figured out how to ride them faster than me) for today's race, a 2-mile time trial. She was worried about getting last, but she didn't by quite a bit. Pretty darn cool! Here's Mom's suffer face in the middle of the mall for all the post-holiday shoppers to see...
As for me, today was the second Peak Season series race, but more importantly, it was the finale of the NCNCA Cup. Way back last spring I made a goal of getting myself on the B's podium for the NCNCA Cup. Then I got all obsessed with track racing and sort of brushed aside 'cross racing. I missed the first two races of the local series while we were in Idaho, but when I came back and did my first race of the season the following weekend, my lust for the crazy sport of cyclocross came rushing back. And the rest of the season was a blur of giggling schoolgirl fun with a few wins tossed in along the way, all culminating in today's race. Coming into the race, I held a narrow lead in the NCNCA Cup standings, but if Melanie beat me we would tie on points and I had no idea what the tiebreaker might be. I was actually a little nervous for this one.
The race was at the Watsonville Fairgrounds, infamous in past years as a huge mudfest (like what I experienced last year!). Fortunately today was crisp and sunny, though there was still some mud to go around. The hard part about racing at the fairground is the terrain we don't really see anywhere else...first there's the mud--thick sticky peanut buttery mud in some places with slippery-snotty mud in others by the time our race started. There's also a tricky off-camber section across the hillside--something we don't see in many races out here. And you can't forget those huuuge barriers--I swear they are nearly as tall as my waist!
Anyways, to the race itself...Mel didn't show up, so I knew at the start that I had the NCNCA Cup wrapped up. Phew. But my inner uber-competitive self still wanted to win. So off we went, B women and 35+ Master's women together, and through most of the first lap I had two other girls hot on my heels. I heard them behind me asking each other what category they were racing--one was a B and the other was a 35+ Masters racer, but I didn't know who was who, just that I had to keep one of them behind me. I slowed down on a corner and they both went by. Crap! I caught back up on the run-up and passed one of them who was struggling with the sticky peanut buttery mud in her shoes. But the other girl took off! Crap! I pushed and suffered and rode hard, but she just kept pulling away. By the time we had two laps left, I couldn't even see her anymore. Crap! All I could do was keep riding hard and see what happened. I actually started riding better and better each lap after I figured out how to negotiate some of the slippery mud at speed. By the last lap I was exhausted, waiting to slide out in one of the snotty-mud corners. But I kept it upright and finished, where I saw Jill, the girl who was ahead of me. She asked me, "did you win?" I was thinking, uh, you crushed me, but I managed a "Are you in the master's category?" between panting breaths. She nodded, "yes". Woohoo! I won! But she did crush me by two minutes. Ouch.
So that was my last race as a B. And probably the last 'cross win I'll win for a very, very, very long time as I enter the big, bad, scary fast world of A racing. But at least I've had a blast racing this year. I'm sad that its almost over.
There are lots of people to thanks for the great 'cross season I've had this year. You know who you are and I'm truely appreciative of all the help! Thanks!
Terry and I are on holiday break or winter break or whatever its supposed to be called these days. A little time away from school is nice. But we have stayed incredibly busy. Terry's parents visited from Cheyenne, Wyoming, so we did the whirl-wind tour of the central Cali coast. Here's the quick summary. First we headed down the coast to the south with the ultimate objective of seeing the waterfall at Julia Pfieffer Burns State Park. But of course when you drive down Highway 1 through Big Sur, one tends to stop at every pretty little view of the Pacific. Eventually we did make it down there.
Then we were trying to get back to Carmel for the sunset, but we didn't make it. Instead we stopped at Garrapata State Beach and froze our butts off while shooting one of the best sunsets Terry and I have seen here.
Terry's parents wanted to see a 'cross race while they were here so on Sunday I dragged them all along to the Peak Season series opener at Harbor High. I hated this course last year and was not surprised to see that it was the exact same course this year. But at least this year I didn't feel like I was going to die after 2 laps. I ended up winning while rocking some santa socks. This picture looks a lot muddier than it really was. We got our race in just before the downpour came for the last two men's races.
Of course since we live on the Monterey Peninsula we had to go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where Terry and his dad proceeded to photographically document nearly every single fish in the place. The next day we went to San Francisco to check out the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. They have an indoor rain forest with butterflies fluttering around that is pretty cool and an aquarium, too. I would highly recommend not going there on a day when kids are out of school though...it was obscenely crowded! After the museum we wandered around GGP and then went over to the Marin side of the Golden Gate Bridge before dinner in Chinatown.
On Christmas Day we headed up to Yosemite National Park for a few days. It was snowing pretty hard when we got up there and had to put the chains on...luckily Terry and his dad are some sort of expert chain installers so they went on in a flash and we were off to Yosemite Valley in no time. It was snowing so hard that there weren't many good views, but we did wander through some snow to check out Lower Yosemite Falls.
On the way back from the Falls some deer wandered on to the trail to check us out. They were so comfortable around people; one even licked my hand. We practically had to shoe them out of our way so we could keep moving along. I actually had to zoom out to take this photo.
The next morning the snow had ended and the skies cleared and we were rewarded with bright blue skies over a beautiful winter wonderland. We wandered around checking out all the good viewpoints in the Valley. And everyone bought new boots at the Sport Shop. I swear we should buy stock in Keen Footwear. Or maybe we already hold stock considering the number of pairs of Keen shoes sitting in our closet!
Our last morning in Yosemite we did "photography walk" with a staff member from the Ansel Adams Gallery. I would definitely recommend doing one of these walks if you have the photo bug. Our guide was great and encouraged everyone to shoot in full manual mode and even let us use his filters. We trudged through some thigh-deep snow (good thing everyone bought those new boots) to get an incredible view of Half Dome over the Merced River. It was great! We were really lucky to make it to Yosemite to witness some amazingly beautiful conditions. We're slowing getting our favorite images uploaded to the Flickr page.
That covers most of the highlights. Except for one. Terry's mom had a knack for unknowingly ordering the biggest dish every time we went out to eat. So I had to throw in this photo from our post-race lunch at Sarita's. She ordered a breakfast burrito. Note how its wider than her. She had part of it for lunch and then we all had leftover breakfast burrito the next morning!
I know, I know, no bloggy for awhile. We've had visitors and bike races and trips to the aquarium and photo outings and snow-filled trips to Yosemite. But soon we'll get everyone caught up on our ever-so-exciting lives. In the meantime, enjoy the photo above from Yosemite, taken the day after Christmas which also happened to be the day after what the locals called an epic snowfall.
More pics on our Flickr page.
I've been a huge fan of Sheila Moon's awesome cycling apparel ever since I got my first pair of her arm warmers last summer. I love my arm warmers, my fleece that I still cry about losing, my knickers, and my racer shimmel that I wear to yoga. A few weeks back she had a warehouse sale and in my massive spending spree (hey, it wasn't all for me!) I picked up a pair of her fleece knee warmers. After this afternoon's ride in damp, 45 degree weather I think I can honestly say that these knee warmers are one of the best investments I've ever made! If you ride where its cold, get a pair of these bad boys. You won't regret it and your knees will thank you! The dri-release wool fleece keeps the moisture away and your legs stay nice and toasty.
If only she made something cool to keep the stream of snot from my nose in check...
This year my grandpa was presented with a good opportunity to sell his farm. So he did. And with that, a lifetime of accumulated stuff had to be sorted, sold, given away, hauled off, or thrown out. In true Boyer pack rat fashion, he had a lot of stuff that had to go somewhere as he prepared to move into a much smaller apartment in the local retirement community. Tucked away in drawers here and in closets there were photographic slides. 820 of them. All taken by my grandpa between about 1950 and 1976. Since I used to think that film was way cooler than digital (and I still sort of do, but film is so expensive to work with these days), we have a Nikon SuperCoolScan slide/negative scanner that can scan 50 slides in a batch. So Grandpa sent the slides to me and for the last week, I've been scanning away, converting all 820 slides to digital images. Its been a fascinating journey back in time. Grandpa was head over heels in love with Grandma, so there's lots of pictures of her and even a few from their wedding.
Before they were married, Grandpa was off serving in the Army's Signal Corps during the Korean War. I especially love these photos of military life in another time. His stories that he tells of the river near where he was stationed in Korea, R&R trips to Tokyo, passing through Guam on his way back, the few days of training he spent in Colorado Springs before they shipped out (seeing 1950's downtown CSprings was pretty cool since we lived there for 5 years), all captured forever. And there was even a photo from when they sailed underneath the Golden Gate Bridge on their way back from Korea, with the fog so thick you can barely make out the faint outline of the bridge above. Seeing these images brings all those stories he's told over the years to life.
Of course there were lovely images of my high school sweetheart parents rocking some serious 70's prom fashions too.
And my dad used to be a fairly competitive motocross racer. Sometimes I try to imagine what a badass mountain biker I'd be if he'd stuck with it, but he didn't want his little girls growing up on motorcycles--probably a good move. I just think this picture is sweet...brraapp!
I've selected about 75 of the photos and made a custom hard-bound book for Grandpa for Christmas. I wish I could be there to give it to him, but I'll be here in California and he'll be with the rest of the family in Iowa. But hopefully he'll like it just the same. Grandpa is one of those guys who truly would do anything for anyone--a great person who cares more about every single other person around him than he does about himself. It was a treat to do this for him.
Mondays always have been and always will be rest days. In college we never had soccer practice on Mondays. When I was in my crazy distance runner phase, Monday was either nothing or, at most, a 2-mile jog. And now that I'm doing this cycling thing, Monday is a day for catching up on homework (yeah, right), going to yoga, and generally putzing around. I didn't even race this weekend, but I still took my Monday rest day. The plan was to go to the local Pacific Grove Farmer's Market and take pics of the fascinating and usually eclectic crowds of a central Cali farmer's market. So I shuffled le ol' Stumpjumper out of the bike pile, put on my Chucks, rolled up my pant legs, and off I went.
Except I forgot that I live in a rather white, upper-middle class enclave of Lexus-driving upper-middle aged women. Pacgrovians don't make for very interesting pictures. But I had my camera and the light was starting to get good, so I decided to pedal around PG and see what I could find. Like trees in the golf course that I ride by every single day but never really notice.
We have a lot of benches in PG. Maybe its because we have so many active old people. They need places to sit every once in awhile. I don't mind though, its nice to watch the waves roll in. Or out. I never really understand what waves are doing.
And the clouds change colors.
And the pelicans fly by.
Then I rolled over to Point Pinos because the sunset looked like it might be nice. Of course I didn't have my tripod, so I had to improvise. I found yet another trusty park bench, leaned the bike against it and some how got the monster long stem and silly old school shifters to perfectly balance my sort of expensive camera (shhh, don't tell Terry). I think it worked out.
Luckily I had my light to get home and only one deer ran in front of me. Oh, and I looove my fabulous new Sheila Moon hat.
Sunday saw my sister and I both doing a little cyclocross racing, though in very different conditions. Kristen raced with the C Women at JingleCross Rock, which also happened to be a UCI C2 race in Iowa City. Meanwhile I got my first taste of racing at Golden Gate Park in the Pilarcitos/Bay Area Super Prestige, which was also race #5 of the NCNCA Cup. Here's a little photo documentary to provide a visual comparison of the two events. Photos of Kristen courtesy of Mom and the ones of me are from Terry.
First, here is the starting line shot:
Note the short sleeves on me and the snowflakes you can see falling in front of Kristen.
Next, a little CX action, with Kristen headed up a run-up while I'm going over some barriers.
Again, nice warm light shining down on GGP while 3" of snow blanketed the Johnson County Fair Grounds.
And finally, a little bit of riding thru some twists and turns.
If you look closely at the background in my photo you'll see some white course tape on the ground. That would be where I broke through it a few laps prior when I didn't see a turn. I clearly had no excuse with the dry tacky dirt under my tires as compared to Kristen's snowfest.
I'm not sure how Kristen actually finished, but considering she had to do most of the race with only two gears in the back because the rest of the cog and deraileur iced over and without being able to click back into her pedals once they got snow/sand/muck-packed, finishing was accomplishment enough.
As for me, I loved the course at Golden Gate Park. Looooved it! It was a blast to race there. Niki B. and I rode together for a few laps - she's so smooth on dirt it was fun to follow her lines. And we got to giggle at the pot smoker on the run-up. The bummer of the day was that Melanie, who has been my main and very tough competition during the NCNCA Cup races this year, got her feet tangled up going through the last set of barriers on the first lap and went down. Terry said she got back up and on the bike but we never saw her again. Hopefully she's okay. I was happy to see that a few of the fans put dollars out for the women's races this time, and I even tried to grab a few on the last lap, but I missed all of them. I need to add "reaching for the beer dollar" to my weekly 'cross skills practice session I guess. I won the race, with Niki coming in second not far back. It was an insanely fun race and a good one for the end of the Turkey weekend.
Oh my. It was hard, it was fast, it was full of suffering. I'd been doing a fairly good job of keeping my fabulously scary 'cross suffer face hidden far away until the end of today's race. Then it came screaming back in full force on the final sprint. But we'll save that bit for the ending... Today was the NorCal district championship for the A's and the master's, but for us B's it was just a regular old CCCX race. But that definitely didn't stop the fast girls from showing up! Lindsay Collins had missed a few races but was back for this one along with the usual suspects - Niki B and Melanie. Right from the gun, or whistle I guess, Lindsay shot up the hill with the rest of us giving chase for the whole first lap. Then on the 2nd lap Lindsay had a little gap on the rest of us when we came around a corner...first we saw the cloud of dust and then there she was picking her bike up. I didn't get to see her after the race but I know she got back on and finished well, so hopefully she's okay!
So now the battle has whittled down to Mel and I. I got a little gap but then nearly killed myself when I tried to start running before unclipping heading up the run-up, so she caught me. That's the reason for the smile in this picture...I was laughing at my retardedness and at the spectator that gave me a "whoa Beth!" as I struggled to keep my feet and wheels on the dirt.
Mel got ahead of me starting up the long climb to the finish line going into the last lap and since she's a much stronger climber than me, she got a little gap. I had to fly down the back side to catch back up and get on her wheel again. We were neck and neck headed toward the last run-up. I was able to duck in close to the tree on the run-up and cut to the inside of her and get my bike down on the singletrack just head of her's. So I now had the lead going into the last bit of the course, but knew that the big ol' hill was just a few twists and turns of the course away.
Here's where I turned scary. I knew I had to crush it up this hill to hold Mel off...as in sprint like its a points race on the track but up the hill. So I stood up. I stomped and pulled as hard as I could on my pedals. And I made the scariest suffering face ever! Its really hard to be panting like a dog and gritting your teeth and hoping that your heart isn't going to explode out of your chest all at the same time. But it worked and I held her off for the win! Terry actually fired off about 10 frames of this suffering beast, but I'll protect the innocent and only post one on here.
It was so much fun to race today against great competition. The mental strategery (that's right, I just used the word "strategery" in my bloggy) of being in a race with challenging terrain and fast competitors made it interesting to say the least. And last but not least, requisite podium shot (Terry apologizes for the lighting but not much he could do with that bright Cali sun):
Hats off to Jasmin Parsins...she's a high schooler at Foothills High School in Pleasanton who is hanging in strong with the B's this year and grabbed that 5th place podium spot today. She along with fellow high schooler and B racer Lainey Aldridge from Harbor High are going to be ones to watch in the future I'm sure!
The crickets are chirping in the greater blogosphere and I needed a spreadsheet break, so I'm blogging for no reason other than to do something other than work on my thesis. Plus I want to see if I can insert a video into the new bloggy. [flickr video=3040556270]
Last night I went to the beach down the street to shoot the sunset. The sunset on Sunday night was freakin' amazing, and of course, we had no cameras and weren't in a good spot to even try to get a shot with our lame camera phones. So Monday afternoon rolled around and I was hoping that the sunset would be good again. Of course two unbelievably spectacular sunsets in a row is pretty unlikely, but a girl's gotta hope, right? So I went to Asilomar State Beach, took a bajillion photos and none of them were particularly striking. I was sitting at home, staring at a screen of those bajillion thumbnails of the sunset and couldn't find one that was any better than the others. I started mindlessly scrolling back and forth through the photos and it was a little like I was watching the sunset and the waves roll by. Thus, I decided to make a movie by putting all the frames together. Hopefully my crooked horizons and moving tripod spots aren't too nausiating.
Ninety minutes worth of shooting and 52 images all rolled into 12 seconds of video.
This video, along with a few other photos I shot last night can be found on our Flickr account.
