Winter, Work and Aventskalender

It is kind of hard to see, but there is a squirrel sitting on a itty-bitty branch, munching on some chow and I was wondering, if that branch was sturdy enough:)
We have pretty well fed squirrels.
As you can tell in the pictures, winter is definitely here.
It was a cozy (not) 1 F, when I went to work this morning. I am dreading tomorrow morning because of the severe weather warning...
Other than that, the training is going well and the job is shaping up to be very interesting.

Next week, I will start my normal work hours on my team and then it will really show, how things will work out....

Sunday was already the 2nd Advent. Do you guys celebrate that? Those are the 4 Sundays before Christmas?
In Germany, we also have the old tradition of giving each other Adventkalender, with 24 little presents or chocolates to count down the days in December until Christmas Eve. That is the day, when we open our presents.

This is mine, filled by Martin

This is Martin's. A friend of mine actually helped me sew it. It's quilted.

12 hours are half a day of racing....

...holy crap, someone should have told me that, before I signed up.

Well, Martin said, this is all about fun and we are just treating it as a long (a$$) ride... yeah right.

The race started at 10 am and Martin did the first lap.
One of the challenges today was, to stay warm, on the bike and even more so, off the bike and since I had made up my mind literally last second (minutes would have given me more time to pack) did I forgot to bring some essential warm clothes (it was in the lower 40ies, when we started) and since I have never done such a long race, did I not bring enough clothes to change into.
Someone loaned me a long-sleeve under-shirt and I do believe it gave me magic powers, because I rode so much more and stronger than I ever thought possible. Thanks Bill!!
Another bad prep was the lack of food. I didn't bring enough food and went hungry for most of the day. Another good soul , Steve Dickey, shared a sandwich with me and that pushed me at least through two more laps.

In the beginning, Martin and I took turns every other lap, but after a while, we figured, it is actually better to do two laps at a time. It keeps the flow going and gives the other one a better break.

So, we kept plugging away, and I was amazed, when I hit my fourth or fifth lap. I have to add, that I have never done, more than two, maybe two and a half laps out there at Manawa...
Five laps and still going pretty strong...
Would we be able to ride till 10pm? I wasn't sure, plus I was worried about Martin's shoulder, but I thought, we just keep riding, one lap at a time....
And that's what we did.


I was so mad with myself because, I has left my Heart Rate Monitor at home. So besides having no data to log onto my work out log (Marc, I can still reconstruct the distance and the average time per lap) , I never knew what time it was...on the other hand, it was a relaxing way to ride and take it easy.
Around 7.30pm the sun went down and it was time to put on lights.
Riding with lights is a whole different ball game. I LOVE IT! It makes you a better rider, because it forces you to keep your head up and look ahead (what you should always do), because if you don't, you can't see NOTHING...and you realize, your "flow", the line of your riding gets better, because of that, since your bike goes, wherever you look.
Now, I have gotten better about this and do it also "during the day" :) and that's why I love riding at Manawa. I lot of people had run in with trees out there, because there are some tight turns and twisty sections, but with enough concentration and your head up and your eyes where you WANT to go, you are golden!
I also ride now almost all the technical features at Manawa and that is a personal victory for me. There are a lot of log-crossings and other little surprises that mix things up a bit....


Anyway, in the end I finished after 9 laps!!! Martin had done 9 laps by that time and he put two more on top, so we ended up doing 20.
That put is in 5th place, which am really happy about. I didn't ride all that much in the last few weeks and Martin, due to Doctor's orders hadn't touched his bike in three weeks prior to the race.
If we would have done the 2-lap/2-lap strategy from the beginning, I am sure, we could have squeezed out a few more more, but then again...we had fun and it wasn't about racing, RIGHT?!

By the way, each lap was 6.2 miles, so Martin did 68.2 miles.
I did 9 laps, which added up to 55.8 miles. (which is 89 km, for my metric ego:)

So, together, we pedaled out: 124 miles...yeah!!!!

Thank you Martin for doing this with me!! This was a lot of fun.

Thanks to the organizers for a FUN event and thanks to Trek and Highgear for all the cool goodies:)


Last but not least, it showed me that I am right in my wishing to do more endurance racing next year.
I love the different pace you go about these events and the vibe they have. It is more a riding together than riding against each other, even though you still compete.

Now, I know, what to work for over the winter months......

12HOURS OF MANAWA

Yes, you are reading right. I decided last minute to join into the fun at the 12hour race.
Well, Martin talked me into to it (kinda). He wanted to do it and said, let's do it as a team.....OK....

I love to ride that trail. It's flat, fast and for parts very technical (twisty enough to keep your concentration up, logs that raises your adrenalin, at least mine,...) and fast, BUT, we try not to treat it as a race but rather as a long ride.

We are going out there to have fun!!

Well, let's see how much fun we will.....to be continued:)

P.S. Did I mention, that it is 47F right now? Where is all my cold weather gear????

a bit more about Tranquility

Tranquility is always the first race in the Psycowpath Race Series.
Tranquility Park is just off Fort Street in Omaha and is actually pretty beginner friendly. But it does require a lot of climbing...don't ever believe anyone that tells you that Nebraska is flat:)
This year's race was especially interesting, because the organizers, The Bikemasters decided to run the race course backwards, so instead of riding it counter clockwise, we rode it clockwise and listening to a lot of folks, everybody loved it.





This picture shows the beginning of the Expert race, even though it looks like a string of pearls from my lens, there is a lot of fighting and despite the COLD already sweating going on.








The start of the Beginner Women's race. I my opinion, Crossbikes should be forbidden at a MTB race...I am the the lady in red, second after the crossbike. I actually had a pretty good race. I did better than I thought considering that I haven't been training in so long. That will change!


Donna Holmes keeping the right race spirit.... She is a great rider and always fun to meet at the races:)
Roxzanne flying around the corner. Roxzy finished even though she had to run her bike over the line AND still made second. Roxzy YOU ROCK!!!

Big smiles from very good friends and mentors, Sydney Brown and Marc Walters.

Where is my helmet liner and why do my tulips die?

Facing the facts about the COLD weather tomorrow for the race is one thing...finding my cold weather gear is another. I can't find my helmet liner. I used it for skiing last and now it disappeared.

I am also watching all my tulips die in the yard:((
I know I should have covered them up, but I finally have so many in the ground that the area is too big too cover. I just hope that it only caught the early ones. I did buy a mix that is supposed to bloom at different times.
Yes, I love to garden and whoever has been to our house knows that we have a big yard. Martin built me several flower beds and I am filling them slowly with bulbs and perennials. Not being from here and not having gardened before, some of the planting is done by trial and error and "survival of the fittest". I have smuggled bulbs from Germany and, I sometimes set my heart on a plant that isn't hardy for this area. Then, I have to pot it in a pot and it comes inside in the winter.
I can't go to garden stores too often. It gets too expensive:))
I have to upload some of the pictures that I took this morning during my garden walk. But I always have to be careful, since I get really excited about ONE LITTLE flower and I don't want to bore anybody.....Oh besides all that, did Martin, Whiskers and I go for a walk at Swanson to see, how the trail is doing, to do a bit of maintenance and pick up some trash.
The trail is dry, so go out there and ride!!

One of my tulips that I took inside:

40 Degrees and WIND....

...that almost makes you go backwards on the trail. Who told me that road biking is supposed to be fun!?!?
Well, it actually made for a good work-out. I went into the wind and did some "sprints", well let's say, I pedaled harder, my heart rate went up, but I didn't go any faster....I got cold toes (no wonder after I saw the wind chill temps on the weather channel) and I had a hard time listening to my IPod, because the wind was howling.

BUT, on the way home, I got rewarded with a tail wind that made me fly:))
What always amazes me is the quietness, when you ride with the wind, it is like all of a sudden, you hit the mute button.

I guess, the good thing about the wind is, that it's drying out the trails for the race on Saturday. Then I can hide between the trees:)

Epic and COLD Ski day

Well we got our first ski day in and even though the weather was gorgeous, it was also freaking cold (arschkalt) and we didn't want to pull out the camera too often. That is, why I looked for some "snowy" pictures online, but nothing does it justice compared to what we saw today.
I know a few of you have been here and know the are. It is beautiful beyond words to start with. Today, after the fresh snow they had yesterday and all week, all the trees and everything was covered in snow and it was the kind of powder that they call champagne powder here, light and fluffy. It was sunny all day and clear.
The only Problem we had today was, that it was arschkalt, like I said earlier. It was so cold, that you had to cover your face and it made the snow slow. I know that rhymes, but it actually sucked as well. Someone, we met on one of the lifts explained it to us. The cold temps, made snow crystals "stand up" and act like sand paper. They actually slowed your skis down...weirdest thing I have ever skied on, plus the wrong wax. It's like having super knobby tires on a bike and you have to pedal to go down hill.
My skis, K2 Performance Carving skis, sometimes just stopped, if I didn't point them downhill enough. Which is hard to do in a mogul field... Tomorrow it is supposed to be warmer and we get a new wax job done. I can't wait. Other than the stopping part they felt really good and I got some got carving in...
The slopes up here are wide open and there weren't many people out today. Maybe it was too cold for them.
Well, time for me to sleep.