So - I haven't written for almost a year. At some point in the summer, something had to go -- and it was this blog. I wrote occasionally for our team page, maybe I wrote for work now and again. Summer travel happened, as it happens in Portland -- the fervent HEY it's NOT RAINING so we have to go outside and DO ALL OF THE THINGS! People got married, I went to their weddings. Work was work-like...
...so, I gave up. And, inbetween: my teammate Ed won the Mt Tabor fixed gear series. I made 5/6 races (skipping the first because I "knew" I "couldn't" do it... bullshit, bear). I came in 13th for the series. Maybe more importantly, our team had a great showing and dominated the fixie category. And we had a great time doing it. Pom-poms and lots of yelling and encouragment, chalking the course and drinking restorative beers post-facto.
Short-track happened. I raced some number of "doubles" -- so my evening looked like this :: leave work, ride to PIR, set up and referee "kiddie" races, race cat 3 womens (30 min), race womens singlespeed (30 min), count laps/officiate for two races (1 hr total), drink beer/eat food, get home late + exhausted.
Portland short track: 12th overall in cat-3 women. 3rd (that's a podium, backstitches) in women's singlespeed.
Then there was cyclocross. Somewhere in there, some non-riding stressed amped up, so I raced a lot. Satudrays for the "Grand Prix Molly Cameron" - a collection of independently-promoted cross races; then Sundays for the Cross Crusades (which are like racing in a parking lot anyway; more about technique practice than racing, I'd say? - at least for those of us not in the top 10). I showed up a lot - and then I showed up less, dropped the Crusades from my schedule, because I was never home (this causes some sadness around the homicile...).
Key part: I showed up a lot. I rode hard, I kept trying, I kept showing the hell up. I rode with a bad upper respiratory infection (that was awful + is not recommended). I rode tired. I rode in rain and four kinds of mud. I sometimes rode in sunshine...
...but mostly, I kept riding.
First place, womens' beginner, GPMC. Granted, I was the only woman who showed up for the fully-scoreable 7 of 9 races. I have no delusions about being the best or the strongest. It was definitely an attendance award trophy. Copy, check, Roger. But.... but I still did all of that riding.
Over the winter, I was off my bike for two months -- back injury, says the p/t. I've decided that I'm better and am back to dragonboating (races are in two weeks); my back and I are still negotiating re: how healed I am. We shall see.
(Over the winter other things happened; I landed an awesome job. I re-negotiated all of our team's sponsorships for the year. My guy Ben and I expanded our garden again. I made some damn fine beer + food. You know, the usual...)
...Tabor started last night. Our team was almost half of the 15-person field for fixed-gear. We were the back half. We were loud and pom-pom'ed and we tried hard and I was, once again, DFL. Which is fine, because somebody has to be there -- and I'm not last for the whole year.
Short track starts on Monday ... woot! We'll see how that goes.
GO SLOW! and pick it up....
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