indiana, we're all for you.

So, I'll admit that I'm secretly sort of excited to finally see IU. I mean, we've all seen Breaking Away, right? Well, I'm going to dress up in my best 1970's outfit and hang out outside whateverthatbuildingwas and hope that a dashing young fellow who rides bikes comes and flirts embarassedly and shamefully with me. (Then I'll flash my wedding ring and say, "no, thanks, I've already got one that's probably faster than you." Ha.) And one more random run on the map.

I've been playing a stupid dork game lately called "get your average pace down!" It's not so easy when there are already 750 miles factored into the average, but this week, I pulled it down one second! Someone pop some champagne. No, really. It's nice to see things speed up a spell. This morning's 8 mi pace run was again a failure, averaging about 33 seconds per mile faster than pace. What what?!? For this I blame last night's dinner of grilled cheese, tater tots, and PRB. It makes me fast. Take that, the man.

Last night the women of Half Acre Cycling met up with the superawesome women of another team we love for some top secret drinkin' and social time. I've said it before and I'll say it again, this will be the BEST SEASON EVER.

And then there's the bad news. Chris was right when he said things are a big bag of suck lately. Yesterday 65+ of my coworkers got layoff notice, including some close friends and our office manager who's 6 years short of retirement. The office manager cried. I'm super glad I still have my job (for now) but who knows what's coming, and who knows how we'll cover the workload of all the folks leaving. * dread *

ups and downs.

Ugh. So just after unveiling Our Great Plans to more than double the number of races inside the Chicago city limits, everyone has some nitpicky thing to say. Will it be light enough? Will the races be long enough to count? Won't the cops come? Seriously, do you think we would have thrown down the thousands of dollars and gone through all this crappy process if we didn't know the answers to those simple questions? Maybe I shouldn't be annoyed. Maybe I should take it as them trying to help the newbies. Maybe they assumed we organized this loosely, like the alleycats of days of yore. Maybe it blows peoples' minds that our little 2nd year team could have it this together. But it certainly sounds like some cranky backseat driving is going on. We do have it this together, and we have pieces of paper from 439765282746 different city entities confirming it. The haters, they see us rollin'.

Sunday I ran stairs for 30 minutes, thinking I'd do it but escape the 3 days of pain that followed when I did a full 60 minute. (I still hurt today, but not as badly.) I wore my HRM and had to laugh when I saw the readout. Up and down, up and down! Later, I went with Audrey, Lisa, and Claudia to the gym, where I was reminded how much I hate gyms, and lifted some weights n' such, in the model of a good cross-training day.

Today, I ran a fast 5. Only I didn't look at the plan this week, I just assumed 5, so I actually overran the plan by a mile. Getting out of bed was by far the hardest part, particularly because I'm getting some kind of cold. The gizmo went nuts and said I was superfast, which I'd love to believe, but can't. I lost the key to my bike lock, my jeans are smelly and I didn't realize till after I was sitting at my desk at work, and it's just the kind of day that makes me want to GO HOME NOW.

Oh! And I forgot. Work's sending me to Bloomington on Wed-Thu. I'm staying in the student union hotel on Wed night. I hope they have a bar, like the Wisconsin student union does. I'll be running on the IU campus on Thu morning. Route ideas greatly appreciated.

fruition

BAM!
And thus my winter project actually is going to happen.
If you're not a road/crit rider, consider volunteering, please. I'm still overwhelmed at trying to find 10-12 marshalls a day for 5 days in a row.