kat's adventures in bicycle racing

MFG CX WOODLAND PARK GP

2011-11-15T11:58:00.001-08:00

MFG CYCLOCROSS - Woodland Park GP
Race Report

I’ve been aware of the WP GP that MFG has been putting on for a couple years now, and it sounded like a ton of fun, but my schedule had never allowed me to make it. This year, I vowed that would change. Never mind the fact that it was my first CX race since last year’s epic (and epically fucked up) SSCXWC, my first (and last) cross race all year, and that I haven’t specifically trained for cross in a good while. Never mind; ‘cross is all about attitude and I had it going in.

Three things: I’ve stopped worrying about what I look like while I’m racing. This means I’m the crazy lady with mirrored sunglasses and purple tights. Whatever. Second: My pre- and post-race nutritional strategies have been fine-tuned over the years and involve Red Bull, donut holes, and beer. Third: Being unemployed really cuts into your training funds, since it takes a lot of food to train for cycling. So I’m on an edge here, literally and physically.

Anyway, the race. I had set up a Facebook event and invited roughly 100 of my friends, mostly so that I wouldn’t wake up that morning and go “aw, screw it, the weather’s bad and it’s far away and bed is warm.” I had skipped a party at the house I’m staying at the previous night, put in earplugs, and went to sleep around 10. Turned out to be a very good move. I woke up feeling refreshed and ready to face some CYCLOCROSS (lack of training, you know, notwithstanding.)

My bike was clean but not tuned, and I had a few auto-shifting issues on the ride in and during my warmup, but it was too late to do anything about it, and I’m pretty sure it just needs a new cable anyway. So that was working against me. I rode out to the course (about 8 miles from where I’m staying) and did some quick hill sprints, power squats, and jumping jacks to stay warm. When the race before mine ended, I hopped on the course, hoping to have enough time to gently preview the course. I got it, but I ended up lining up at the back of the pack. Where I should have been anyway.

There are only 2 places to be in a cyclocross race, off the front, or off the back. If you’re neither, you’re caught up in the storm, bumping elbows and handlebars and hoping no one in front of you fucks up an element and piles up. Given my training and fitness, and the fact that this was my first race in over a year, I chose the latter, trying not to be DFL the entire time. I kind of succeeded…

Right off the start I hammered it and put about 10 girls behind me. The course narrowed and we got trapped up in some single track where people were just riding slow and stupid. I got plowed into from behind by some bitch on a mountain bike who half-assedly apologized. I know you’re not sorry, don’t say you are. Then by about half way through the first lap I was really fighting that urge to purge. That’s how you know you’re working hard enough in CX: You kind of think you might vomit, but you haven’t yet. I backed off so I could recover, and by the time the barriers came around I was feeling ok, but as I came into the barriers my chain dropped. Good timing anyway, since I had to get off to clear the barriers: hup, hup, up the hill, and then put the chain back on. A girl comes around me as I’m doing this - Squeaky Brakes. I tail her down the hill and around the corner but somehow she gets away.

Laps start ticking. I hear the announcer say that there are 23 minutes to go - about half way. I’m recovering from the “urge to purge” feeling but not super stoked about why I’m here in the first place. I always go through this during a cross race: the existential “why the fuck am i doing this, i should just quit, why am i here” questions. Fortunately I silenced that little voice as my strength came back and I passed a girl going up the hill toward the end of the lap. The Cat 3 Masters men started coming around to lap, and I slowed up so that I wouldn’t interfere with their race. Then the Cat 1-2 women started passing. I continued to just ride my own damn ride, not interfere with the races that I wasn’t in, and to keep working. Two to go. Dammit. I was hoping the lap card would say “1”. Maybe next time.

At one point another woman passed me with an “On your right!” and I got out of her way, assuming she was a cat 1-2 lapping me. Not the case - her number was a Cat 3 number. So I jumped on her wheel and followed her through the barrier section. Dropped my chain AGAIN. Third time’s the charm. Put the chain back on, chase back on, pass her. Put distance between self and her. Keep mashing.

Last lap, I was starting to settle back into a rhythm and was feeling good. This is the problem with cyclocross - you can’t warm up during the race, you’ll waste your race. I was finally warm and feeling good and there were less than 9 minutes left. I kept pushing it, keeping distance and growing distance between myself and the next girl, and +by the time I came back around to the finish line I had way too much gas left for the sprint. Even though I wasn’t sprinting against anyone.

2nd to last, not last. Phew. That was my goal: not last. And I was only 10 seconds off the next girl - but she was out of sight so I didn’t use her as a rabbit. Mistake. Oh well…

Lessons learned: The womens’ fields in the cyclocross scene here in the PNW is improving. Hard. When I first started this stuff back in ’07, there were only a handful of cat 1-2 women at a given race, maybe 5 or 6 at most. There were almost 20. There were 26 or 27 Cat 3 women and according to the results over 50 Cat 4 women that raced that day. That is AWESOME. I love seeing more and more girls coming out and enjoying playing in the mud. It also means that I need to step my game the fuck up. HTFU. Train harder. Train specific. Train more and train better. Also, get your shifter tuned before the race, and maybe a second chain guard so you don’t drop your chain 3 times every race.

There are always lessons learned.

Another lesson I learned: Always invite all your friends. Even though only a handful out of the hundred-something people I invited came, I still had at least 7 or 8 fans yelling my name and even more people who I didn’t know heckling me for my fantastic fashion choices. My friends enjoyed watching me suffer and get muddy, and I enjoyed racing for people that I knew. Win-win.

Note to my friends: Next year it’s on. More, faster, better, stronger. The best part of cyclocross is the way there is always room for improvement - there’s no such thing as a perfect race. There’s always an element you could have cleared better, been stronger on the run up, or the stairs, or not grabbed such a handful of brake going into those swoopy singletrack turns. Always room for improvement.

Can’t wait for next year!!! Thanks to all who came out and thanks for reading! If you haven’t ever been to a cyclocross race I strongly encourage it. You won’t be disappointed.

Collegiate Nationals Race Report

2010-05-17T16:45:00.000-07:00

BACKSTORY: I managed to qualify for Collegiate Road Nationals this year. This is a bit misleading, because just because I was eligible and qualified did not mean I was prepared. A nasty bout with the H1N1 this fall derailed all my training plans for the winter, and school and snowboarding interfered with my spring riding (as did the crap weather here in the Willamette Valley). So I qualified for Nationals as an A rider because I showed up to enough races (I finished 3 crits and 1 road race, DNFed one road race, and did a couple of TTTs). There simply aren't enough women racing at the A level in our conference to fill up the slots for nationals, so as long as you show up enough times, you're qualified.

Which doesn't make you prepared.

So, not being sure if this opportunity would ever replicate itself, and motivated by the fact that the ASUO senate was paying for our travel and lodging expenses, I decided to join six of my teammates on the trek to Madison to represent UO at Collegiate Road Nationals.

MORE BACKSTORY: The Sunday before we left for Madison, I crashed my bike doing something incredibly stupid, and my body (and less so, my bike) paid the price - a gnarly wound on my knee, bruises on my hips and groin, and a big old bruise on my chin. The knee injury was bad enough that I was limping around and unable to ride for the days prior to leaving. But tickets and race entry fees had been paid, travel was booked, and the ball was rolling. I wasn't going to sit out on my first Nationals ever just because I was slightly injured - eff that!

ON TO THE TRIP: We drove up from Eugene to Portland on Wednesday, flew from PDX to MKE via DEN, and rented vans in Milwaukee, then drove to Madison. Neat town, good weather (when we weren't racing), fun trip overall. But we weren't there on vacation, we were there to race bikes.

THURSDAY, MAY 6: Unpack bikes, put bikes back together, make sure everything is in order for a race the next day. The rest of the team goes on a nice spin together while I am trying to find an 8mm allen wrench for my pedals. I'm still unsure that I can even ride a bike, given the state of my knee (it's stiff and painful to bend; i'm worried about damage to tendons and bones; I haven't had it checked out by a medical professional and am just doing all I can to keep the wound clean and try to regain range of motion). I find an 8mm Allen wrench to replace my pedals (TSA took the one I had in my carry-on); I go outside and ride a few laps around the Capital. Knee is definitely stiff and hurts, but it seems to have enough range of motion to ride a bike, so I am determined to start the road race. I'm not sure I'll finish, but I'll at least start.

Big dinner the night before, lots of carbs (pizza, ice cream), and off to bed early, especially as the men have an 8AM start. Rachelle and I plan to sleep in and leave around 11 for our 1:30 start.

FRIDAY, MAY 7: THE ROAD RACE

Rachelle and I got up around 8:30 or 9 and had a delicious breakfast at the Marigold Kitchen - I wholeheartedly recommend it if you're ever in Madison. We loaded up our bikes and gear, plugged the race location into the GPS, and headed out to Blue Mound State Park. As we drove, the weather got worse - 43 degrees, intermittent rain, and a bit windy. Well, can't back out now!

We arrived at the State Park about an hour and a half before our race start. The men were still finishing - and part of the course was also the drive to the parking lot - so we were held up while racers finished, and then drove up the hill to the staging area at the same pace as the guys finishing. As we were paying for our parking fees at the park entrance, our teammate DK passed us, so we cheered - and he shot back with a summary of how many of the racers felt about the course and the conditions - "Fuck this."

All right! We were feeling pretty motivated at this point - 43 and rainy, windy, foggy, can't see a thing... this has to favor the Oregon riders, right? Well, maybe the Oregon riders who have trained and are prepared for the race. Not the Oregon riders who ignored training all winter, who show up with injuries and old bicycles that weigh a ton. But whatever - we're here. I start getting dressed and realize that it's a lot colder than I'd anticipated, and that - oh crap - I forgot my wool base layer. Not okay. That means I don't have a base layer - I have a jersey, a rain jacket that isn't race legal because it's opaque, and the clothes that I'm wearing. I ended up putting my cotton hoodie on underneath my jersey, and Galen gave me his see-through rain jacket, which I put on over the top. I wasn't planning on doing more than a lap or two, and so whenever the hoodie got too wet, I'd stop and take it off.

Except I never did. But more on that later.

Staging and call-ups were confusing, and there were a ton of other girls there looking much, much more Pro than I - Embrocated legs, matching helmets and bikes, defined calf muscles. Crap. Well, I never said I was prepared to race against these girls, so I don't give it much more thought than that. Call-ups are confusing, we get to the starting area, and then we are off on the neutral roll out.

The neutral roll out is down a huge hill (that will end up being the finishing climb). We descend, we turn left, and then we climb a little kicker before the lead car stops us. Then, suddenly, the race is on, and I'm yoyoing off the back immediately. Find a wheel! But it's sketchy, we're descending, half the girls have deep-dish carbon rims (not good at stopping in wet conditions), and I don't know any of these riders and I'm not exactly a trusting drafter. I much prefer to know the girl whose wheel I'm on, or at least to be able to tell that she's a good rider. In these conditions it is super-hard to tell. So I yoyo off the back, I chase back on, I work with other girls off the back and basically do the yoyo for a good while. I can see the leaders though, so I'm not popped. Then the flat tires start happening. A pop, hiss, and there's a girl moving backwards through the pack. Then another raises her hand. And another. Three flat tires in the first half-lap. I hang with the pack, yoyoing off the back, for the first half-lap, until there's a substantial climb and then suddenly I'm off the back with a few other girls. But not last, no, definitely not last.

And then we lost the pack. There wasn't much organization among the girls that got shelled - some more determined to catch back on, others not working so hard. I work with a girl from Marian for awhile, then we get caught by a girl from Navy and one from Lees-McRae who had both had flat tires. And we're starting the big climb at this point. It becomes obvious that the two girls who had flats are more fit than those of us who are just shelled, so we once again got shelled. And then it was just me and the girl from Arizona climbing at our own pace - a pace which matches pretty well. I know that we're not even done with the first lap, and that I definitely can't burn all the matches if I want to have a hope of climbing back up to the staging area. At this point I'm in Quitsville - deep in the shame cave (not even the pain cave) hating myself and the weather and my bike and everything else. Fortunately Erin from Arizona is in a much better mood, saying she is glad to just be there, and is determined to finish the race.

Finish? I'm not sure I'm going to do that. But we match each other in climbing speeds pretty well and work together on the flats, and we've finished a lap - only 3 more to go! I see some people I know in the feed zone and decide that on the next lap, I'll stop and ditch my hoodie with one of them. I got hot and took off the rain jacket, so the hoodie is just absorbing water at this point, but it's not making me cold, I'm keeping myself pretty warm. So I keep it on through the feed zone the first time.

And then we start the second lap. Descents, turns, climbs... it really is a gorgeous course. Hecka hard climbs - including a short little one that's 14% - but I'm holding together. I eat some food, drink some water, get passed by a few more girls who were either stragglers or had mechanicals.

So we're off the back, riding our own ride, and honestly not working terribly hard. I know that I don't have a bunch more matches to burn, and I'm just glad that I have a cheerful, motivated ride partner - "I'm going to finish this race" turns into "I really want to finish this race, but if you quit I'm not going to be able to do it" and I'm suddenly motivated to finish. However long it takes.

My knee, surprisingly, was just a little stiff at the beginning and then ceased to hurt at all throughout the race. The biggest issue was after coasting a descent, getting it back into the groove of moving, but after a few pedal strokes it was fine. No pain, very little discomfort - I can't believe my luck.

We finish the second lap - getting passed by the D2 women on the brutal climb to the feed zone to the lap counter that says "2" and I can't find anyone I know, and I don't feel like stopping anyway, so I keep the hoodie on. I'm glad I have it on the descents, anyway... never mind the fact that it's probably absorbed 2 lbs of water at this point. Halfway done. Well, if I was going to quit, I would have done it on the first lap, and we're at the top of a descent right now anyway, so might as well do another lap.

It's on the third lap that the little 14% kicker really starts to hurt. We get caught and then passed by a D2 woman who was dropped on that hill, and we trade some good-natured obscenities about the hill and the course and the conditions. We get passed by a few big rigs on one section of road, which is a bit scary with the cross-winds, but not a huge deal. A few more climbs, a few more twisting descents and turns, and a lot of encouragement from corner marshals, and we're back on the stupid climb to the stupid feed zone to the stupid lap counter that is going to say "1" when we come by. Except there are suddenly motorcycles and cars passing us very slowly, and as we get to the top of the hill, the lap counter says "0" - I'm about to be lapped by the leaders of my own race. On a 15-mile circuit. That's just... well, that WOULD BE just pathetic, but fortunately it doesn't happen, as the guys at the lap board point at me and shout, "YOU have one lap to go!" And I joke back, "What, can't I go that way? To the finish?" And they reply, "Sure, on the next lap!" And my ride partner, Erin, has dropped the heck out of me (remember, I'm riding a 25 lb bike, and have at least 2lb of water in my hoodie at this point, so I'm a bit slower than she is on her 18lb bike with her APPROPRIATE CYCLING CLOTHING), but I came all this way, and it's just 15 more miles, so fuck if I'm going to quit now. So I turn back on to the descent, tuck in and spend the next few miles descending and trying to chase back on so I can ride with Erin.

It's a good distance before I can see her off ahead, and once I see her it still takes me a good while to catch back up. But then she's within shouting distance and she's looking behind her, so I yell "Hey, here I am" and she slows down and we start riding together again. And it's the last lap, there's no one behind us except a broom wagon, driving very slowly just out of sight behind us. I think the weather was a bit better on this last lap - less rain and wind - but that 14% hill still kills, and by the time we get to the start of the huge climb, I'm taking the whole road, zig-zagging all across the road. Erin thinks she's bonking until she looks down and realizes she's in her big ring. I'm pretty sure I'm hallucinating - the colors are quite vivid and I see patterns in the gravel by the side of the road, and there's definitely orange and pink and green tendrils in the sky. But I'm still upright, and I'm still climbing, I'm still riding my bike. No point quitting now, can't quit now, have to get back up the hill to the van anyway, and walking is stupid, so just ride. And so I slowly make my way, losing contact with Erin, zig zagging up the hill as slowly as my legs will turn over, but somehow without losing momentum and falling over. My legs are screaming, my arms are aching, my brain is repeating the phrase "last hill, last hill, last hill" and I pass the now deserted feed zone and the lap counter which still says "0" and the marshals usher me on to the final climb. And I hear that this part sucks, but I haven't ridden it yet so I have no idea how much agony is yet in store in the final mile of this bike ride. (I've long accepted that it's not a race at this point. I'm just riding my ride.)

A short descent, a right turn onto the road into the park, and a gentle climb. Nothing that should really be too much of a problem, but after the 4 laps I've already done, I'm close to my limit. It's a gentle hill. Not a bad hill. But I'm still saying "last hill last hill last hill" to myself (interspersed by "ow ow legs ow ow legs" and some more phrases with more obscenities) and as I come upon a group of spectators in ponchos and umbrellas and possibly unconsciously let out a series of grunts and groans. The spectators turn around and start encouraging me - "come on, you can do it!" "I'm not sure I can!" "Oh, come on, if us little old ladies can walk up this hill, you can ride it." Back and forth, as it's not my lungs that are holding me back - it's trying to turn over my legs over and over and over again as I keep fighting gravity, praying that the Bicycle Gods will magically turn my 23 tooth cog into a 25, and then it levels out and there are more people cheering, and I'm in the finishing chute. No one behind me that I'm aware of - I am pretty certain I have locked up the DFL Finisher place here and as the announcer says, "Now THAT is the HEART OF A DUCK" I take both hands off the bars, extend my arms and hold my head up high in a victory salute because I JUST FINISHED THE FUCKING RACE IN DEAD LAST. HA. TAKE THAT, LEGS. I gasp for air, ride further and further and find the van, and collapse in a pile of sobs and gasps.

I have climbed halfway up Mount Rainier and I've ridden 90-100 miles in a day before. But that 60 miles that I just did feels like THE HARDEST THING I HAVE EVER DONE. But I finished. I'm not at all sure how I did it, or even why - but I did.

I get in the van quickly to stave off hypothermia, towel off, put on dry clothes, and we're outta there. That evening: results posted show that I got 2nd to DFL to the Navy girl, guess she had more mechanicals but managed to tough it out for a 5+ hour finishing time, more than 45 minutes behind me. But I'm 2nd to DFL, not DFL... that's like winning. Then we eat LOTS of food, a little beer, more ice cream. Galen bought me a six-pack of Bitter Woman IPA - funny, for the girl who just finished 2nd to DFL. Soak in the hot tub and get some sleep, because tomorrow is the crit!

SATURDAY, MAY 8: I kit up for the crit, and get on my bike to warm up, but my knee painfully refuses to bend far enough to pedal. Fine, knee, you win. I un-kit, put on a warm jacket, and watch both the D1 womens and mens races. Got some good pictures, caught finish-line salutes in blurry photographs for both races, cheered on teammates and had fun watching. Stupid knee!

Saturday night: The banquet involves some good food, John Burke talking a bit too much about why Trek makes awesome bicycles, and watching trike races. The Monona Terrace place where the banquet is is a pretty neat building, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. We eat our food, watch some awards, and then leave early. Discover that you can't buy beer or wine after 9pm in Wisconsin (that's a dumb law.) Go to the bar and meet up with other NWCCC riders, have several beers, Jaeger bombs, and possibly whiskey. Good times.

SUNDAY, MAY 9: We don't do the TTT. Everyone else goes for a ride; I wander around Madison and spend way too much money in cute stores. Eat a delicious burger for lunch, walk around on my crap knee way too much. The sun came out, and the weather is in the 60's and gorgeous. I can't bear to be inside, so I spend all day wandering around Madison. Again - fun town. Spend Sunday evening in a coffee shop plugged into the Internet, getting some work done.

MONDAY, MAY 10: More coffee, more wandering around Madison, eating good food and looking at bike parts and clothes. Trying to not spend any more money. Eventually it's time to pack up and leave for Milwaukee; drive back to the airport, fill up the vans, check our bags, get on the plane. Change planes in Denver. Arrive in PDX way too late; drive back down to EUG. Finally home around 2:00 AM on Tuesday morning... whew, what a trip.

BOTTOM LINE: I WENT TO NATIONALS! I even finished the road race. My knee wouldn't let me start the crit, but I had fun anyway. Madison is a neat town and I fully intend to be back next year. Eligible and qualified, and perhaps even prepared next time.

Hipsters discussing "cyclo cross racing"

2009-11-17T21:51:00.000-08:00

Ha! Too funny. Thanks to Kori for posting this to Facebook.

a new direction:

2009-11-15T20:48:00.000-08:00

The past few weeks, sick with the flu, I've been provided with hours of entertainment by the one and only Lady Gaga. Her new video, Bad Romance, dropped last Tuesday and within 24 hours of its release I had watched it at least 12 if not 20 times. And it seems like nearly every day, or every couple of days, there's something new - a new interview, or a new song from the upcoming Fame Monster. And every single I hear is awesome, and every thing I hear her say is brilliant. She really is the new Bowie, in a completely original way. Everything I want in a pop artist and more.

But i isn't just that Lady Gaga has been killing it lately, or that I have exhausted myself and run my immune system down to the very wire. There's change in the air right now, and new ideas and thoughts are going to be very necessary to survive and thrive in the changing world. Lady Gaga has it made because everything she conceives can be made reality, because of her team and her media placement. But she worked hard for several years before she found that place. What is it that I have to share with the world, that I've been working for several years on and am ready to share? (Besides bike racing, or science?) Well... there are all those sketches and paintings and random creations that have accumulated over the years.

And the million dollar question that an item in my google reader posed:

Is it art if you don't share it?

And the correct answer is that no, it is not art if it is not shared, because the very reason for creating art is for it to be shared and to create a different feeling in other people. In order to become Art, a sketch or a painting or a sculpture must be brought out into the eyes of others, outside the protective embrace of its creator.

And with that I am proud to announce the launch of my new art blog. I'll be posting some old stuff and some new stuff, a little at first, and hope that it resonates. It's all very personal, of course, but what art isn't?

We'll be back to the usual bike racing on this channel soon enough. I just have to get this flu out of my system and I'll be back in action.

right brain update

2009-11-07T20:56:00.000-08:00

long radio silence. been busy; been sick. 'cross season has been going well; that is, it *was* going well until i succumbed to ye olde swine flu. i've spent the last week mostly in bed. the worst part is the brain fog... even when i'm not on nyquil my brain is moving at about 1/25 normal speed.

i finished my NSF grant on time, fortunately before i got sick. i even turned it in a few days early. it feels very good to be done with that deadline... though the next deadline, the comprehensive exam, is imminent (contingent upon me recovering from this flu). i have a topic and i think i understand it pretty well, but i still need to pick which testable hypotheses i am going to propose experiments for. it's interesting, since there are so many unanswered questions in biology, it's like low-hanging fruit. which one of these will i test. and since it's a proposal exam, i don't have to have any intention of actually *doing * those experiments (in fact i shouldn't). so i can suggest expensive, or time-consuming, or radically new procedures, as long as i can defend why i picked them and what they would show. and so it goes.

a large part of what i wrote about in my nsf personal statement essay was how my... *ahem*... "unique" background has prepared me for studying and communicating science. i chose to draw (no pun intended?) from my background as a visual artist/designer - although not a very experienced or good one, since i tend to be way too self-critical to be good - to visualize and communicate science. and i've been doodling today with my new wacom bamboo. it's a really fun toy - opens up completely new frontiers. so far nothing i've produced has really been scientific at all, but i am having fun playing with my own perception of visual objects. the little picture at the top of this post is one of the things i've spat out - this one probably took 10 minutes tops. i'm not sure if she's princess leia, or if she's got huge ears, or even if she's human, but i kind of liked her and felt like i could maybe let the world see her too.

it's almost like the virus has shut down the left hemisphere of my brain. my right brain seems to be functioning just fine - or maybe even better than usual. without that annoying left brain timekeeper ruler metric voice i can just produce things that resonate with how i feel. hopefully later on this will translate to me being able to communicate the ideas i am nurturing that have to do with development and neural circuits.

i also expect there to be bicycles in the near future. a future without bicycles is grim indeed.

Cross season begins! CC #2 race report

2009-10-13T19:47:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was my first 'cross race of the season (finally!) I was a little late to the game because first, I was tired from road season and wanted time off, second, my 'cross bike was in pathetic shape, and third, I caught a little virus that ended up keeping me down for awhile.

The time off was great, but it couldn't last forever, because I get antsy. I finally got my Surly back in some sort of racing shape, and I'm mostly recovered from the virus, so this Sunday I headed up with my friend Jon to the Cross Crusade race at Rainier High School. I have to say, RHS is a damn near ideal 'cross venue. One complaint: It's a high school, so there's no alcohol on campus (and the whole venue is on-campus). No beer garden, no pre-race whiskey nip, no post-race pint of homebrew. Oh well - it was perfect in every other way... and it is, after all, a high schoool. I can respect that.

The weather was partly cloudy and kind of chilly, but the sun poked through in the afternoon before my race, and the course was bone-dry (and thus dusty). I didn't get a chance to pre-ride the course, but I did tool around campus and checked out most of the course from the sidelines. The crux of the course was the long climb - since the campus is built into the side of a hill, there was a lot of climbing, and most of it all in one section. More on that later.

My race didn't start until 2, and we had arrived around 11:30 or so, so I had plenty of time to warm up. The ride from the car to registration/start/portopotties was downhill, which meant it was a climb to get back. So just riding around I got a pretty decent warm up. But I had brought my fancy new impulse-buy trainer (a pink kinetic road machine, from biketiresdirect - great deal AND super-fast FREE shipping!) so darned if I wasn't going to use it! After the singlespeed men's race started (which my friend/carpool buddy Jon was racing in) I went back to the car and set up the trainer, plugged in my iPod for a good 30 minute session - easy, then some harder intervals. Around 1:30 I popped the trainer back in the trunk and rode down to the course.

I was feeling surprisingly good after my warmup, and also surprisingly, given it was my first race of the season and my first race as a cat B, not terribly nervous, at least until well after callups as we were all corralled in the start chute. I lucked out on the callups - they do it randomly, based on the last digit of your number (after they call up the series leaders). My number is 172, and they called the 2's maybe 4th out of all the digits. So I was in maybe the fourth row for the start. The start was tricky, too, because the start chute was pretty much all gravel. We were fortunately staged on the grass, which made it easier to get started, since gravel is much kinder when you have momentum. So that was good. The Masters women had to start in the gravel, which I really don't envy them for.

The Masters A women went off first, with a 30 second gap before our start. Then we went off - all 54 or so women in the B field. I had practiced starts the week before, so I felt pretty good about mine: push, shift, push push shift, keep clicking into higher gears as high as you can go, picking off as many people as possible before the course bottlenecks. After about 30 yards of flat gravel, we turned onto the course just above the GRAVEL HILL OF DOOM, and started the paved part of the climb. I passed some women in the start, but I also got passed by a few. I think was in the top 15 or so by the top of the climb, where the course took a left hand turn off the pavement and onto a running trail. It was flat, and straight, and fast. A tricky turn with a big gnarly root in the middle of the trail, then another section of straight trail, with a slight downhill. Another left hand turn onto a section of LONG, FAAAAAST descent. Some bumpy roots in that section, but not too bad. At the bottom of the descent was an off-camber left, into a section with a lot of off-camber turns and a loop around a tree. Another turn, more descent, into a really rocky bumpy section at the bottom. Short rocky kick, gravel trail section, and the first pit entrance. It was at this point that I blew past LK, last week's winner and all-around monster (in a good/fast way). She was clearly having bike issues and was trying to get to the pit. that sucks: you win some, you lose some. Anyway. Around a practice field, a set of double barriers - hey, look, I've been practicing my dismounts and remounts! My barrier hops, not so much. That's still hard. Single track through the wooods, a couple of short kicker hills. Back out onto the grass, a really bumpy grassy off-camber section. More turns, a fast off-camber descent, then a blind corner into a barrier before a run-up. This dismount killed me on most of the laps: if you didn't get off before the uphill started you lost time. Pushed my bike up that hill every time, instead of shouldering it, because I ride 28 lbs of surly 4130 cromo, what's your excuse? Remount at the top of the hill and fly down another fun steep descent, a couple more turns on off-camber grass, past the pit again, then onto the gravel. This is where you know it's coming: THE HILL. OF DEATH.

You can see all the riders in front of you struggling up the hill. It makes you want to slow down, so you don't get caught behind them. But you know it's better to build momentum before the climb, then shift down just as you hit the incline. There are only two tracks through this brutal climb, because it is doubletrack gravel road. And it is steep - probably 18%. The rocks are not your friend. Neither is the dust. It's alright on the first lap since the only people in front of you are the faster girls, but on the subsequent laps there are slow beginners and juniors slogging up the hill, complicating things. I think I only cleaned this hill once out of four laps - I had to unclip at the top on two laps, and actually was forced to dismount on the third.

After you cleared the top of that GRAVEL HILL OF DOOM, though, you weren't done, because you had just come to the point where the start chute meets the rest of the course. The climb leveled out a little when the pavement started but was still very much up hill until the finish line. Then, past the finish, it kept going up. Up and up and up, until the flat fast part, and then the descent. Off-camber turns, u-turns around trees, flying past teams warming up by the bottom of the descent. Bumps. Rocks. Barriers and dust. And on every lap, as much as you didn't want it to come, before you knew it you were back at the HILL OF DEATH. Grinding up that stupid unpaved ridiculous brutal climb. As I finished the third lap, and heard the bell, the woman next to me gasped, "i don't think I have another one in me!" Like i felt any better. Seriously, after that hill, my eyes were blurred, I was breathing like an asthmatic emphesymic whale. And I was fully focused on not throwing up. But there was just one more lap. So you have to crank it out, even if you don't think you have it in you. (Turns out she was lying: i know, I saw her finish.)

Push as hard as you can - without puking or passing out - on that climb. Take the descent a little hot. Clean those turns at the bottom - blowing past that beginner rider who's clearly unsure of this part. Show her how it's done, just like they showed you last year and the year before. Push through the bumpy section and dismount cleanly for those barriers because it takes less energy to do it right. Don't cry as the lactate builds in your muscles as you crush the little kickers in the woods. Just keep going, pass that girl in front of you, but don't knock over the junior in your way. Go go go - you've done all this three times before. Totally botch the dismount before the runup, because you forget to get off in time. But run - RUN - that run up, and don't even slow down as you jump back on for that screamin' descent. Doesn't matter if you're not clipped in until you get to the bottom. Clear those corners, don't worry about cutting off that girl (she's a beginner; she needs to learn) in the u-turn by the pit. This will be the LAST TIME you have to climb that HILL. OF. DEATH.

Build up momentum on the flat. Go go go. Hill starts. Downshift. Stand up. Push. Weight over the back tire prevents slippage but you need to stand up for leverage, and to keep your front wheel from popping up. People in front of you hate this hill too; they're just as tired as you; use that to your advantage. See up there, not too far ahead? That's Tori, who's been your rabbit slash battle buddy this whole race. She is really cooked. You can catch her! Bump up onto the pavement and upshift a gear - this is the climactic sprint finish. Push it until you're tire and tire with Tori. She accelerates. You accelerate. She gains an inch. You stand up and MASH. Tori yells a profanity (you'd do the same!) as you take the sprint - the "sprint" - for 13th place. Yeeah!

Downshift all the way. Soft pedal another ten yards. Get off the course, come to a stop, and start hacking up all that dust that's gathered in your lungs. That hacking noise? It means you gave it what you had. Your pulmonary cilia will take care of the dust.

Chug something sugary if your road trip buddy is as awesome as mine and hands you Powerade when he finds you at the finish. Collapse briefly onto the grass. Try as hard as you can not to vomit. Complain loudly about how much you hated that course - pure sweet hell. Commiserate with everyone else at the finish line - wow, that hill was BRUTAL! Wasn't that horrible? That was no fun at all!

For some reason we all maintain this spirit at the end of a race: wow, we hated that, that was horrible. But we all know that we're all lying: in the middle of all that pain, that suffering, that flavor of bile and stomach acid in your throat and the juicy wheezy rumble in your lungs, is the most fun you have ever had in your life, on or off the bike. Pure, sweet, unadulterated hell. Until you try it, you probably can't understand; try it once, though, and you're hooked for life.

Yeah, I think that was a pretty good first race for the season. Great course, awesome weather, very respectable competitors. I'm looking forward to next week, which is supposed to be a similar course, except it's not at a high school which means BEER. Which is correct and appropriate for cyclocross. AND, I found out on Sunday that if I just jump through a few red tape hoops, I can qualify for the Collegiate National Championship race this December in Bend. Holy crap yes please! My first nationals - way sooner than I'd expected! My friend and teammate Sonja will be there too - we have just about exactly two months to prepare. Cross Nats, here we come. But in the meantime, Cross Crusade, here I am. I've missed you!

My name is Kat Reinhart, and I'm a cyclocross addict.

Balance nutrition bars

2009-09-12T17:12:00.000-07:00

Confession: I LOVE energy bars. Clif bars make up an embarassing proportion of my diet. I've tried most of the bars on the market - especially the ones under $1.50 each - and Clif remains consistently my favorite. But they were $1.19 (good, but not awesome) at the market today, and another bar caught my eye at the same price: Balance nurition.

I glanced at the ingredients and nutrition info, and found it to be inoffensive enough to buy: 210 calories, 15 g protein, no HFCS or hydrogenated oils. Okay.

Bought a couple, brought them home. Am now eating one. It's hard and chewy, like many of the high-protein bars on the market, and claims to be "caramel nut blast" flavor. Meh. The caramel is inoffensive enough, but for the texture of the bar, I would expect it to have more than 15 g of protein (out of a 50g bar). Chewy. Not really tasty. Meh.

Think I'll go back to Clif bars.

good bye road season

2009-09-08T15:11:00.001-07:00

Well, I finished up the road racing season last weekend with the Eugene Celebration Stage Race. I really enjoyed the whole race, ended up taking 5th overall in cat 4, and got myself a stage win in the crit. Stage racing is so much more difficult than single-day races - it's hard to recover and eat enough food and get enough sleep in order to get up the next day and race again! It was really fun though. I'm kind of glad that road season is over, but am definitely looking forward to 'cross, and to next year.

Up next: Psycho Cross #1 this Saturday. I just need to install cables and a chain on my Cross-Check and it's all ready to go! Can't wait. 'Cross season is going to be off the hook.

In the meantime, I spent the past week out in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada riding a cruiser bike around the playa, climbing no hills whatsoever, but learning a lot about holding my line in a sand pit. I wasn't expecting my trip to Burning Man to be anything vaguely resembling training, but I actually got quite a bit of exercise riding around the city and the playa. Black Rock City is something else entirely - a temporary city, built by volunteers, populated by artists, intellectuals, freaks, geeks, hippies, celebrities, and "normal" people. I could probably spend a couple of hours talking about everything that I did and saw, but I think I'm going to leave that for later, or for another forum. I survived my first Burn, and I have a feeling that there will be many more to come! What a week. I think that's all I'll say about it here and now.

Co-Motion Criterium

2009-08-23T21:57:00.000-07:00

I went out and raced the Co-Motion Criterium this afternoon. The Co-Motion Classic is a stage race for tandems, and the final stage was today's crit. Fortunately, the promoters decided to let us non-tandem riders[*] have a go as well. Unfortunately, they didn't have the turnout or the time to run more than one womens field, so it was a combined field - from Cat 1 through Cat 4. Even so, only 7 women turned out.

It's getting late and I don't really have the energy to write a whole race report right now, but here's the abbreviated version. The field was shattered early on due to a couple of attacks by the stronger riders. I suffered like hell for a few laps alone against the wind after an attack got away with 3 riders. I thought I could catch them, then they would open the gap. Just as I was nearly spent, they rang the bell for the prime lap - and the 3 leaders sped up. Crap. I was pretty much toast at this point. Halfway through the prime lap, someone got shelled from the lead group of 3, and not too long after that lap I caught up with her. It was Pam Archer, Lisa's teammate on Therapeutic Associates. I sat on Pam's wheel for a few seconds, but she was pretty cooked too, so I took a pull... we traded pulls for the rest of the race, maintaining our lead over 5th place, but not gaining at all on the lead group. It was Lisa Turnbull and Cara Bussell off the front, and, well... those two are dang strong girls, especially Lisa, who had just raced the tandem stage race with Galen - and won overall, beating all the guy/guy teams! So basically it turned into Pam and I trading pulls. After a good solid effort of team time trial style riding, she rode off away from me for 3rd place (because HELLO, she's a cat 2 and I'm a 4) and I pulled in for 4th. It was hard, especially with the really strong cross winds, but it was really fun, as always. I think that I am getting better at crit riding, but I still need to work on following wheels through turns.

Mad props for the day go to my UO teammates Mike Brunelle, for winning the Cat 3 mens race with a ballsy solo attack FTW, and Galen Mitterman, for not only winning the Tandem race with Lisa, but also making the Pro/1/2 field hurt a good bit with a (perhaps ill-advised) solo flyer early on. He stayed away for 5 or 6 laps, but eventually the field caught up. Damn impressive pain tolerance, man. Mark Hibbard won the P/1/2 race, setting a good example for his son, who was there to see his win, even though he won't be born for another 4 weeks or so.

Next weekend is the Eugene Celebration Stage Race. It'll be my first stage race ever. I'm nervous and excited... especially for the prologue stage, which is the 5K uphill time trial up McBeth Road. That hill is my nemesis!

[*] You will never catch me stoking a tandem - I am *way* too much of a control freak. I'd captain one, though.

Fight Like Susan

2009-08-06T13:36:00.000-07:00

If you read any bike blogs at all, you are prbably already aware that Susan Nelson, wife of the Fat Cyclist, passed away last night. For someone I never met, Susan was (and still is!) such an inspiration. Via his blog, Fatty inspired me to get personal in the war on cancer; because of him, and Susan, I rode my first century in the LiveStrong Challenge in June. Because of Susan's courage, thousands of people are stronger and more courageous as we face the scariest thing in the world. I don't know anyone who isn't scared to death of cancer; I know that my family and I have been lucky - my mom's cancer was caught early and she is now almost two decades cancer -free; my grandmother's battle has also been comparatively easy. We have been lucky. But we are still fighting, every day. Cancer is evil and horrible. It robs us of people, of time, of health, without remorse. So we have to fight it remorselessly. Tirelessly. Endlessly. Fight cancer with every fiber of our beings, like Susan did. Because she sure did fight, with courage that even her family didn't think she had. Fight like Susan.

Thank you, Fatty, for sharing your family's battle and inspiring all of us. Thank you, Susan, for showing us how to fight. And thank you Lance, as well, for everythig you have done. Cancer sucks, but if we all fight we can win, just like Susan.

Fight on. Fight like Susan. And fuck cancer in the face.

(sorry if this is ridden with typos, I am posting from my phone.)

Eugene-Roubaix

2009-04-20T21:19:00.000-07:00

well, that decided to auto-publish for no reason. apologies for the phantom feed, RSS subscribers.

This past Saturday was the now-fabled Eugene-Roubaix road race, put on by Midtown Racing. It was an absolute blast.

I rode out to the course because it was a beautiful day, I didn't start until mid-afternoon, and it isn't really all that far at all. The ride out was scenic - midday Saturday on the bike path, with the sun shining. Not terribly crowded, but definitely populated, with people and birds.

To get to the start/finish from the bike path, the most direct route took me up and over the one big climb in the course, Oak Hill Road. It's a bit of a climb. Not really terribly tall, but quite steep, and going the direction of the race, a really sketchy off-camber turn at the bottom of a flying descent. I climbed up this hill in reverse, watching lots of guys negotiate the descent as well as the climb as a warmup for their race. I got to the start area, registered and paid, and soon it was 2:00 and the men started lining up. Cat 3 and Cat 4-5 fields - both huge - went off before the women lined up.

I counted 12 women at the start, in a combined Cat 4/Masters field. We rolled out, neutral up and over the first hill, and started climbing, then descending, turning, up over a roller, a right hand turn, and then suddenly the lead car honked and we were racing. The pace quickened quite a bit immediately as a few girls started attacking. No one really had teams to speak of, so tactics were a lot different than in the races I've been used to. I planned ahead with Mackenzie, and based on what I've learned racing collegiate, figured i could get her the win (and place well myself) by exploiting a little strategy.

Crow road, heading south away from Eugene, has a little riser, and then a long descent, with some twisty sections but mostly flat for the most part. Coming up over the riser I attacked a little, then someone else would attack, but for the most part everyone toward the front of the group seemed intent mostly on holding onto the wheel they had, not sharing in the work, and certainly not letting in one who had just made an effort. So I got pretty tired of the fact that I had to attack from the back and then fall all the way back when I got tired.

Coming off a right turn onto Petzel (?) Road, the course started climbing a bit with a series of rollers. Nothing too high, but enough to break up the monotony of the flats, and wear some people out. The pack still held together for the most part through this section, then the course turned again, and the road was much flatter, with a bit of a head/crosswind. Again with the pacelining attempt, this time it got a bit more organized, and I thought we had it down for awhile. Then Mackenzie attacked, we chased - Serena attacked, we chased... and so on. Another right turn and we were onto the final stretch, with a few miles of flat plus a little kicker or two, and pretty soon the gravel section was coming up. I was leading going in when Mackenzie attacked and jumped into the gravel section right in front of me. I grabbed her wheel, and in we went.

I was so focused on holding onto MK's wheel I didn't really notice the point at which a gap opened up behind me; all I know is that at one point I could see someone's shadow behind me and then awhile later I couldn't. I stole a quick glance backwards after we hit pavement, and couldn't see anyone - though that doesn't mean they were far behind. I focused again on the race, gave Mackenzie a tow across the finish line for the first lap, and started to fade before we started climbing.

That hill - Oak Hill - crap. It seemed so easy when we did it neutral at the start; this time, though, I was chasing a rabbit all the way up, in hopes that we could work together to hold off the field. MK is a much better athlete in general, and a stronger climber in particular, than I am... by a long shot. (She is an elite triathlete after all.) So I was in full-on suffer mode, trying not to throw up, by the time I made it to the top. She was waiting. We descended, taking the turn cautiously, with me chasing the whole time to the corner of Crow Road again.

What happened for the next half lap was exactly this: Me focusing on MK's wheel, watching the pavement blur by, hanging on for dear life. We had a couple of updates from our lead and follow cars as to the time gaps: 35 seconds on the first chaser (Serena), and then 1:30 on her, 2:30 on the next chaser, and back from there. We had shattered the pack - oops! Er, intentionally.

So I hung on as long as I could, but at one point, I needed to swap out my water bottles and I couldn't use one of my cages, because I hadn't tightened it enough when I installed it that morning and it was rattling like crazy. I couldn't have a bottle in it or it got much worse, so I kept one in my jersey pocket for most of the race. But toward the end of the hilly section on the back side of the course, I wanted to swap bottles because the one in my functional cage was empty so I rolled back and handed the bottle to Galen. By the time the handoff was finished, Mackenzie was just far enough ahead that as hard as I chased, I never caught back onto her wheel. My race became a time trial. The only thing that mattered was holding off 3rd place. Time trial time... sufferfest time. I was slowing down. I knew I couldn't catch the elite fucking triathlete ahead of me, so I guess I dialed down the effort... well, it was enough for Galen to notice in the follow car, so he pulled up beside me to yell at me a bit. You're slowing down! Push harder! Catch her, dammit! "Ha! That girl is a fucking beast! I can't catch her!" STOP TALKING AND RACE.

Head down. Maximal effort plus 10%. Last right turn. Last kicker before the gravel. And then the gravel. Hold the line, avoid the holes, don't slow down. Halfway through the gravel section, a couple of cheering guys fixing a flat. Another group by the port-o-potties, a few more cheers and words of encouragement. Suddenly, the 1K sign. A quick backward glance: phew, no one right on my wheel. Head back down. Hammer time. 200M, flat becomes false flat, and then perceptibly uphill. The last few meters pass and I'm across the line, people are cheering, wow, that was so much fun. Holy cow I got 2nd place! I worked hard for it, definitely... but... wow, my efforts are actually paying off. That, I have to say, is the coolest feeling ever.

CWU omnium: check.

2009-04-12T21:23:00.000-07:00

(warming up for the crit, Easter morning)

Seward Park Crit

2009-03-30T18:44:00.000-07:00

It was crisp and clearing after a hard rain when I woke up way too early on Sunday morning for the Seward Park crit. After a good breakfast, I headed out from Capitol Hill to meet the team at the race. Sunday meant the end of Spring Break, the UW-hosted criterium race, and returning to Eugene after five days of fun and bikes in Seattle. The streets were mostly empty at 7:20 AM as we rode down 12th Ave, across the Rizal Bridge (which afforded a gorgeous sunlit view of new snow on the Olympic mountains, across the sound, as well as downtown), and onto the I-90 trail, then down to Lake Washington Blvd. The ride to Seward Park took about 40 minutes, and I arrived at the scene of the race with 30 minutes to spare before my start. I found the team vans, dumped my backpack, and surveyed the area. Even though I'd been to Seward Park a hundred times before, I had never actually made it up the hill to the loop of road that served as the crit course.

After the Men's D field finished, I jumped on the course and did a lap before lining up for the start. Front row, right side. Rules, regulations, safety discussions, number-adjusting, roll-call, chatting with an OSU rider, and suddenly we had 30 seconds to go. 15. 10. 5. The whistle.

I jumped at the start, though my starts have never been super-explosive, and was probably 7th or 8th wheel coming into the first turn, a tight 140-degree hairpin followed by a nice descent. My heavy bike came in handy on the descent, and I passed a few women on the way down, and mashed it through the flat section on the other side. Next came a 200-meter climb back to the start/finish line. I was 3rd wheel at the bottom of the climb, and I gave it an extra kick to pass Rachel Hoar, a Whitman rider, to take 2nd. At the start of the 2nd lap, a bell indicated a prime. I held onto my lead over Rachel through the second lap, trying to keep the first rider in my sights. I managed to open the gap behind me, but didn't manage to close the one in front of me. And thus the rest of the race proceeded - riding by myself, not passing anyone, not being passed. The turn was always sketchy (and I was distracted by Ivar, who had positioned himself at the corner and was probably taking awesome pictures of me as I turned - I haven't learned how to ignore cameras) so I tended to take it pretty slowly, but mashed on the descent to try to not lose time. After two laps, the 5-lap sign came up, and then I just ticked them off in my head. Three more descents, three more climbs. Two more climbs. Two more descents, one more climb, one more descent. Bell lap. Final descent, mash mash mash through the flats, and push push push up the climb. As the finish line came into sight I kicked it up into high gear and laid it all out on the road - sprinting with everything I had to the line. Not that there was anyone nearby to sprint with, but it seemed pointless to save anything at that point.

2nd place: fully respectable. Now I think it's time for that upgrade, though... the C field is for people who don't want to or have time to train, and I shouldn't sandbag, since I have been working pretty hard all winter. Two of my other teammates have upgraded to B's, and another is putting in for an A upgrade this week. This means we'll have a women's A time trial team, which is fully exciting - if you do well in the A field, you have a chance at nationals! I don't think that's going to happen this year, but next year it will definitely be in my sights... and if we continue to work and grow our team, we could have a shot at it. I gotta say, the idea of getting a stars and stripes jersey is a powerful motivator... though it would take a lot of hard work.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love racing bikes?

end of the quarter

2009-03-19T11:22:00.000-07:00

winter quarter has come and gone, it seems. it's thursday of finals week, which means that people are finishing/finished with exams, and campus is starting to empty out. being done with finals, however, means something different for those of us on the cycling team: it means that our first road race is only a few days away.

i'm not panicking, i'm not nervous. i am a little tired from lack of sleep and writing, but not too tired to function. problem is, at the end of a rotation, what's a first-year to do? keep futzing around with the devices i spent all quarter tweaking? read a bunch of papers about my next rotation project? go out to lunch with the other first-years and catch up on the gossip? fill out basketball brackets? (only if i want to be cool like Obama, of course.) (my picks: washington for men's, stanford for women's. predictable? if you know me. likely to win? ehh... maybe, maybe not.)

other things going on: going to seattle next week, hoping to see the baby that will appear on this flickr stream as soon as she makes her little entrance, though she seems to be taking her sweet time. she will most likely have arrived by the time i get to seattle next week, though. squee! babies!*

in other news, it's march in oregon, and finally almost spring. i think this picture sums up what that is all about.

*i'm not normally so stoked over babies, but chris and jenn are both awesome people, and i think they'll be awesome parents. and it's their kid, not mine, which is 99.999% of why it's awesome.

Thoughts on a Saturday

2009-03-07T14:28:00.000-08:00

Went on a great ride with the team this AM - out the bike path, Crow
to Doane to Territorial to Lorane to Fox Hollow (up the back side - a
climb I had never done) and back down into town. Someone flatted
coming down the hill and we stood around waiting at the bottom until
my friend Lindsay rode by, and I hitched a ride with her and her ride
partner, kid named Ryan, to the top of Dillard. Turned around at the
top instead of doing the big loop on the other side of the hill, and
rode home in the rain through town. When I was almost home, I saw that
the altimeter on my Garmin said that I had climbed 2870 feet. Well,
that close to 3000, I had to run it up to the 3k mark so I rode about
halfway up the butte behind my house. Totals: 52.8 miles, 3009 feet of
climbing. Awesome!

Now I am doing laundry and reading a paper. It just came out in PNAS
this week, and it's a really elegant model using network theory and
established cellular signaling pathways to predict gene expression
patterns. Right now I am trying to walk through the math - my eyes
glaze over when I see equations, I need to get over that and re-awaken
my inner math nerd. Because this is a really important paper and will
be the next big thing in the dev bio field... or so says me. I think I
am going to use this for my journal club presentation next quarter...
it is damn cool.

Lembong J et al (2009) Pattern formation by dynamically interacting
network motifs. PNAS 106:9 p. 3213-18. doi:10.1073/pnas.0810728106

CX Worlds 2009

2009-02-24T12:48:00.001-08:00

Check out this footage from CX World Championships in Hoogerheide, Netherlands from Feb. 1 of this year.

Katie Compton is AWESOME! Hanka Kupfernagel said in an interview after the race that she just did not want an American to win, so she and Mariane Vos managed to reel Katie in. Still, 3rd in the world is nothing to sneeze at, and Compton is a real American hero. And check out those thighs - that is power.

update: cherry pie

2009-02-16T19:48:00.000-08:00

Results from yesterday are up. 15th out of 47, not damn bad at all. Major props to the Ironclad ladies for their complete domination of the race.

Major props, actually, to everyone, dammit. That was a tough race, the first road race for many of us, and a damn big field. A few of us got some scrapes and bruises and a few others got a cheap cherry pie, but we all came out and raced, and we did an awesome job.

Racing is awesome.

cherry pie

2009-02-15T20:00:00.000-08:00

You know what's sketchy? 50 nervous novice cyclists in the first road race of the season.

The first one went down on the turn at the end of the neutral roll-out. I heard her bike hit the pavement behind me - an unmistakeable sound.

That didn't do much to calm down any of our jitters. Neither did the headwinds of probably close to 20 mph at some points, though they did keep us from getting any real speed. Strong crosswinds kept people to the right of the rider in front of them, and I had a tough time finding a draft... riding in a peloton is a lot harder than the pros make it look. I felt like I was riding in the wind most of the time and when I did manage to catch a draft, I was trying to avoid getting my front wheel knocked out by someone swerving in front of me.

About 8 miles in two more went down, not far in front of me - including the lovely & talented ms. heidi swift. That split up the field a bit more, put us all on edge.

It wasn't until the third crash, though, that the field really got split up. Someone went down right in the middle of the pack, and took at least 3 or 4 others with her. I saw it all happen in slo-mo and maintained ("Slowing! Riders Down! Stopping!"), went off onto the shoulder and around the tangle, and gunned it, spending a good deal of my reserves time-trialing it back up to the pack. At this point, the headwind we'd been fighting had become a tailwind, and the peloton was going really darn fast. I was fighting being off the back for the rest of the race, but was never completely dropped - the lead group slowed down a bit as the finish loomed - we knew there was a big climb at the end.

About 3k to the finish an officials vehicle drove along side us and said something about if he honked, it meant we were supposed to "go neutral" and move right, because another field was overtaking ours. "Keep your speed up and we won't have to," I heard him yell.

At 2k to go, the climb started with a pretty moderate hill - maybe 7-8%, noticeable, but not horrible. Our pack started stretching out, and I tried to move forward as much as I could, but probably got passed by an equal number.

A short downhill and a sharp right turn meant we were under 1k to go, and the course took a decidedly uphill turn: a 9% slope to the finish line. This was the crucial finish, that we had been saving for, the dramatic ending. And just then, the call from the officials: "WOMEN MOVE RIGHT. MEN OVERTAKING." The front of the Cat 5 men's peloton was overtaking us. This couldn't have been timed worse - the first women were probably within the last 200 meters of the finish, and we were supposed to move over and let the boys pass? Here, on the final climb, where the race ought to be decided? I had a lot of suffer left in me, and wasn't about to give up or downshift... so I put on my suffer face and grunted my way to the top. (There are pictures. You will see my suffer face.) I think I only passed 3 or 4 women, but I gave it my best effort without puking, and I finished strong... with boys on my left, girls on my right, and a bunch of really tired riders just over the line. The officials probably had a ton of fun with the finish line camera footage trying to sort out the final results. What a mess.

After the finish I caught up with Lisa (who later won the Cat 1-2 race!) and Doug, who were both right at the finish line yelling for me (best feeling ever) - and Lisa's friend Mackenzie, who was also racing in the same field as me. Got yelled at by the officials for accidentally crossing the finish line again (thus negating having finished at all? hopefully not), and then rode back to the start (at least 3 miles away from the finish line) with Mackenzie. I'd never met her before... she's an elite triathlete and full-time athlete/exercise nerd and a fellow first-year grad student. It was fun to hear her perspective on the race - her first as well. I still maintain that triathletes are crazy. Also crazy: me competing against her. (Seriously, check out her blog. She is 100% not messing around.)

Aaand... I'll post more later with results and all that good stuff but that is all I have in me right now and I am going to go sleep now.

little victories

2009-02-05T20:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was definitely a *headdesk* kind of day - stressed out about course work and lab work, pissed off at the sunny day while stuck inside, completely unable to make tiny objects do my bidding under a dissecting scope - though thankfully, today was much better.

It started out better already when I met up with my friend Lisa at 8:30 for a ride. After I dropped my stuff off at school, we headed out for a bitch of a hill-climb - up over Dillard - followed by some really nice flat to rolling roads toward the southeast of Eugene. Lisa is way better at riding bikes than I am, and so it was really fun to get to go out with her and pick her brain. I'm sure she was going easy on me, but we did climb the hill at a pretty brisk pace, and kept it up the whole ride.

The roadies around here have a tradition of sprinting for "Stop Ahead" signs - so if you're ever on a group ride and people just start sprinting, there's probably a Stop Ahead sign coming up. Since there were only two of us, we weren't super-hardcore about the sprints, but there were several signs on the course of our ride. I went for the sprint on the first one, only to get passed by her within maybe 3 seconds of sprint. The next two she noticed first, and sprinted pre-emptively to make sure I didn't pull a fast one on her. But the next sign, I noticed while we were still a few hundred yards out, and as we were side-by-side chatting I nonchalantly moved down into my drops, continuing to make small-talk, and then upshifted and sprinted with all my might. Lisa went into sprint mode within a few seconds ("See, you're in your drops now, so I know you're about to sprint"), but I pushed it with everything I had and crossed the line of the sign about 6" in front of her. HA! Life's little victories! We had been talking earlier about how it's fun to try to beat the crap out of people who are in actuality WAY stronger than you are... so she probably let me have it, but I'm going to savor it anyway!

So with a 20ish mile brisk ride under my belt I felt way better than yesterday when I rolled into lab at 10:15, and I was certainly more productive. I may have to start making this a habit at least a few times a week... if not with a super-fast friend, then by myself - then I'd be sure to win all the stop-ahead sprints!

happy inauguration day!

2009-01-20T13:34:00.000-08:00

It's hard to overstate the importance of this day - 1/20/2009. We've been waiting so long for it to come, and it is finally here. I hope everyone had the opportunity to see the inauguration live, or to watch it online or rebroadcast on cable. Obama's speeches are always uplifting and resonant, but today's was particularly good - hopefully you all got to see it. One thing that he said really resonated with me:

"For the world has changed, and we must change with it."

Today is the beginning of a new era, the dawn of a new day, and all sorts of other cheesy metaphors. But it's true what the President said: the world has changed. How are you going to change with it? Do you have any new-administration resolutions? What will be the biggest difference in your life, now that Barack Obama is President?

hot girls with road rash

2009-01-19T21:03:00.000-08:00

Wow, it's been a bad weekend for fast girls on bikes:

world DH champ Rachel Atherton
lovely ladies of the veloshop team (via molly)
vanderkitten racer liz hatch

All in bad (though thankfully not tragic, unless you count the bikes killed) crashes this weekend. Heal well, ladies, and be careful out there! There was ice on the road in places on the UO ladies' team ride this Sunday, but we managed to keep the rubber down. Ride safe!

friday!

2009-01-16T17:05:00.000-08:00

It's the end of the second week of classes, meaning the term is 20% over already. I gotta say, I love the quarter system... there's not enough time to get sick of a class. So the quarter is 1/5 done, and I'm already dreaming of spring break... hoping I can go to the NW Developmental Biology meeting in Friday Harbor, race bikes in Eugene, Corvallis, Seattle and Bellingham, and spend at least a little time in Seattle over the break. I think I'll need to rent a car for the week, if that all is going to happen, but it'll work out.

Last night was Grateful Dead night at the Villard. Nothing could have been more Eugene. The first years all had a huge exam yesterday evening, so we all went out for beers afterwards. I'd been to the Villard before, but never on Dead night... and I have to say, I've never really listened to the Dead. I associate them with old hippies who have smoked too much pot in their lives and say "groovy" a lot. But the music wasn't horrible, and the company was good as well. There are some pretty cool people in my department.

Going snowboarding tomorrow with a bunch of biology folks. It should be really nice up in the mountains - a high pressure inversion (see cliff mass's weather blog for more on current NW weather, if you care) has trapped some cold fog in the valley here, but it'll be sunny and warm up there. Warm is good - since there hasn't been any new snow recently, slushy is better than icy. Should be a good time.

OK, time for a late night trainer session plus a little lifting. And then vegging in front of buffy. I've been slacktastic lately (no morning runs! so lazy), time to put in a little sweat.

snippets

2009-01-12T21:58:00.000-08:00

Took this picture over break and wanted to share it here:

Crows dive-bombing a bald eagle at Seward Park in Seattle, taken the day after Thanksgiving 2008. There are some other new ones up on my flickr.

In the past week I have:
- started eating right, thanks to Precision Nutrition (and a bit of willpower)
- ridden every day, including around 70 miles on Saturday, an hour on Sunday, and an hour and a half today, bringing my 3-day total to somewhere around 100 miles
- turned 26 years old
- gotten an Oregon drivers license (goodbye, ever paying sales tax again!)
- assembled some sexy bike parts for a major upgrade to the Serotta
- thrown a pretty kick-ass birthday party
- reached the fundraising minimum for my liveSTRONG challenge participation (thanks to everyone who has contributed!)
- started lifting weights again
- started running (just a little, don't die of shock!)
- and begun my second quarter at grad school.

My schedule this quarter is pretty conducive to being able to ride a lot, provided I get my ass in gear in the morning: all my classes and other responsibilities are after noon, and on Wednesdays, I don't have anything before 4pm. I predict many mornings out on the road resulting in a silly shit-eating grin on my face all day.

I've also discovered that I can run to the top of the hill behind my house and back down in around 10 minutes, giving me a fast workout to do before breakfast, which will almost certainly pay off come 'cross season. Eventually I'll start doing it twice, but for now, I'm just running up and down once. And by "running" I mean jogging and intermittently walking uphill and running downhill... though my goal is to be able to run a bit further before I have to walk each day, and eventually I'll be able to run the whole thing. Ultimately I hope to get to the point where I can just sprint up that fucker like it's nothing... but I'm a long way from that.

Life is good.

Sorry the posting has been light but...

2009-01-09T13:07:00.000-08:00

Blogger sucks. You probably already knew that, which is why most of you don't use blogger, but I'm mostly too lazy to switch over to something else and thus keep starting entries, leaving them alone, and coming back to server errors. Sigh.

Better post this quick before the server decides to flake.

A good holiday

2008-12-26T10:28:00.001-08:00

I've been in Texas for the last week, cerebrating Xmas, the Solstice,
Saturnalia and Festivus with the family. It's been pretty relaxing and
fun, and as much as I am glad to no longer live here, it has been a
nice visit. For some reason, my relationship with my parents has
improved over the last 5 years - maybe that has something to do with
getting older. Anyway, as I write this, I am sitting out by the pool
in short sleeves, half-amazed and half-amused by the fact that it is
over 70 degrees, whereas the west coast is still trying to thaw from
more than 12 days of snowfall and freezing temps. And as much as I
like a snow day or two, I have to say that this weather here is much
better.

I've been taking it easy over the course of the trip, not exercising
much (by my new standards) but keeping my fitness up by putting in
some time in the elliptical. I haven't been on a bike the whole time I
have been here. (kind of weird.) It's been a great vacation, but I am
starting to itch for a return to normalcy, and a chance to start
working toward some of the goals I have for 2009. It seems like an
opportune time to put some goals into writing here, so here we go:
Kat's 2009 goals.

1. Eat better. More on this later, but I signed up for a nutrition
program for athletes (precisionnutrition.com), which should help me
reach this goal, overcome my fear/hate of cooking, and make me a
stronger rider.

2. Ride more. I want to try to put in 200 mile weeks, but that isn't
terribly realistic given my time commitments, so let's say, 3 hours 4
days a week. More when I can, less when I have lots of other stuff
going on.

3. Join a lab and find a Ph.D advisor. This one shouldn't be too hard
considering I have a very good idea if which lab it'll be, but it's
still significant.

4. Raise a thousand dollars to fight cancer, and ride 70 miles in the
LAF LiveStrong Challenge.

5. Race cyclocross in category B, and finish in the top half of the
field at a Cross Crusade event at least once. Coming from the
Beginners field this will be hard and will require training throughout
the course of the year. But I figure I can use road season as good
training, try to get out on an MTB as much as I can, and look forward
to September and the start of next 'cross season. This is probably my
biggest riding goal of the year and will be refined and enumerated
better in the coming months.

6. Do my best in the collegiate road season. Learn to ride with a
team. Work on team time trials especially. Improve my bike handling,
cornering and descending skills, and become a better climber as well.
(ok, several goals in one, but still.)

7. Continue my weight and cross training. I am, at 25, in the best
shape of my life. Keep being able to say that for 26.

8. Drink less beer. This one shouldn't be too hard, being away from
the Elysian and from Gregg.

9. Work on my verbal communication skills, especially in teaching and
writing.

10. Give thanks to the amazing people around me who make me who I am.
Appreciate more the amazing hand I have been dealt in life and
acknowledge those who have made it possible, starting with my family
and amazing friends. If you are reading this, you are included in
this: thank you.

Happy holidays, and best wishes for a happy 2009!

music for...

2008-12-17T11:28:00.001-08:00

this is appropriate: listening Brian Eno's Music for Airports while
waiting to board. I wish every airport would just have this album on
repeat- it's far better than the monitors blaring CNN. People would be
in better moods everywhere.

the internet is for this

2008-12-13T12:15:00.000-08:00

I've missed my fuzzy bear-kitty, since she's been here in Seattle staying with Gregg for the past quarter.. I think this is her "I've missed you too" face.

11 days until the solstice

2008-12-10T21:44:00.000-08:00

the quarter is wrapping up, and many people are done with finals, so there's an air of relief and relaxation all around. i spent today in the saddle, mostly, which was awesome since i've been pretty much too busy to ride at all during daylight hours, and have been kind of taking a break since cyclocross season is over for me (sadly). which isn't to say i haven't been active... i just haven't been out on the road. the official milage counter hit 42 for the day, but it took us the better part of 6 hours due to flat tire situations (not mine). major props to gilad for sag-wagoning us from the outskirts of civilization... the error was not having a tube with a long enough valve stem. know your stem length, kids, and always carry an appropriate tube (or two, and a patch kit never hurts). i'm learning that you should multiply this rule for riding with people, because the more people on a ride, the more likely there will be mechanicals. it would have been faster to patch it - we ended up at the side of the road for an hour - but it was beautiful out, and sunny, so i sat by the side of the highway eating a luna bar (given in return for use of tire levers & offer of tube) and enjoying the view.

after a car ride to the shop and a new tube, we set out again, into the chilly afternoon for a loop around north eugene, including mckenzie view drive, which (as the name suggests) includes some nice views of the mckenzie river. i wish i had pictures to post, but sadly, the iphone camera does no justice whatsoever to landscapes...

it's days like this that remind me how fortunate i am: i live in a place where i can ride bikes across beautiful landscapes, through lush forests and fertile fields, over rolling hills and along rushing rivers. it's almost surreal: it's certainly quite different from seattle, or from any other place i've lived.

i think i like it here.

seattle on friday, texas next wednesday.

LIVESTRONG Challenge: help me raise funds!

2008-12-05T14:08:00.000-08:00

Guess what? Cancer sucks. If you don't have a close relative who has had cancer, chances are several of your best friends do. Cancer therapies and survival odds are improving, thanks to research, but there is still a long way to go before we can say we've beaten cancer.

The Lance Armstrong Foundation does a lot of great work, from funding basic research on cancer and cancer survivorship to supporting cancer victims and survivors as well as their families. The work that the foundation has done is amazing, but since cancer hasn't declared defeat yet, there's still work to be done.

That's why I'm going to participate in the LAF LiveStrong Challenge in Seattle on 6/21/2009. I'm registered for the 70-mile bike ride, which is farther than I've ever ridden in a single day, and will definitely be a challenge for me physically and mentally. I'd like to ask all of you to help me in this pursuit. I have to raise at least $250 by June to be able to participate, but I really want to raise a lot more than that. I'm teaming up with Elden Nelson of Fat Cyclist, and hundreds (if not thousands) of other cyclists, runners, and people who have been affected by cancer for the 2009 LiveStrong Challenge as Team Fat Cyclist: Fighting for Susan. (Susan is Elden's wife, who has been struggling with metastatic breast cancer for a few years now. The team is named for her, but I am also riding in honor of my parents, Bill and Cindy Reinhart, who are both cancer survivors, as well as my grandma, Sally Hightower, who is currently fighting - and winning - against breast cancer.) Our collective goal is to raise a million dollars together - and if we all chip in as much as we can, we can easily exceed that. Even if you can only donate $5, every little bit adds up!

To help out, visit my fundraising page (also linked in the sidebar) and donate now, donate later, donate early and donate often! It's all tax-deductible and all goes directly to the LAF to help people with cancer. (Registration fees, which I have already paid, cover the event overhead.) Give $1 or $100, every bit helps!

Thanks for your help!

New wheelset!

2008-12-01T19:15:00.000-08:00

Campy Veloce, campy skewers,mavic cxp22 rims. $140 inc. shipping. Win!

Psycho Cross #4

2008-11-30T16:34:00.000-08:00

I did it! I finally won a race.

OK, so my competitors were two women I've beaten repeatedly in the past and one woman who had never done a 'cross race before. But that doesn't take anything away from my victory... or maybe it does.

I've decided I'm going to stick with the Beginner category through the end of this season, and next year, i'll start riding with the big girls in category B. And this season I may win another race, but i probably won't at all next year.

Oh well - it's clear to me how much stronger I am now than even in September, and much more so than this time last year. It's a good feeling.

home again (quickie)

2008-11-30T00:23:00.000-08:00

343 unread items on my google reader
12:23 AM
1:30 PM race start tomorrow
2.5 hours past bedtime
7 hours on the train
2 bags to unpack
1 minor mechanical to do before race tomorrow

1 sleepy kat

make that 344 unread items. goodnight.

vacation!

2008-11-24T19:23:00.000-08:00

Leaving tomorrow morning for Seattle - I'll be there until Saturday. It'll be so great to have a vacation! I'm bringing background papers to read, but no computer - which means no movie processing, no excel data crunching, and no powerpoint assembly. Vay cay shun.

This is a quickie, since I've barely begun to pack, let alone prep my bike for gear haulin' and rain ridin' rather than mud racin'. To rack or not to rack? To fender is no question - turkey week in the SEA almost certainly spells RAIN.

Looking forward to Thanksgiving at the home of two of my very good friends, Chris and Jenn. They are both awesome. Also awesome are all the other people who will be there - I don't have the full guest list, but I know Rogelio, my favorite Mexican, will be there, and am sure there will be others - all people I miss tons and can't wait to see. We'll all have to chip in to drink enough for Jenn, since they're expecting a baby girl in March!

Anyway, back to packing. Hooray for vacation!

late november already?

2008-11-23T16:24:00.000-08:00

So somehow time has been passing, and it's almost Thanksgiving. How the hell did that happen? I'm still adjusting to the idea of it being fall instead of summer, and now it's almost winter. What gives??

Yesterday was the third 'cross race in the Eugene series. Only 4 beginner women showed up, and I managed 2nd place out of the 4, coming across the finish line about 50 feet behind the winner. If I hadn't dropped my chain after the first barrier on the first lap, I might have been able to stay on her wheel and maybe pass her before the end. Oh well. I seem to manage to drop my chain pretty often during races - always either after barriers or run-ups. I think that when I put together my new 'cross bike for next season, I'm going to go with a 1x9 setup, with just one chainring and no front derailer. This means I can put chain guards on either side of the chainring and pretty much prevent chain drops. No chain drops means no swearing after barriers. I definitely let out a "Fuuh" before I saw that there was an under-10-year-old right there. Oops - sorry, Dad!

Anyway, by my calculations (based on OBRA BAR points awarded for placement in the Eugene series races), I'm currently leading the women's beginner category for the series, despite never having won a race. There are still 2 races left in the series, though, so I have a chance to get a first-place finish, and even if I don't, I'll still feel like I accomplished something. Next season, I'll upgrade to the B category, which means no more top-half finishes unless I work my butt off training.

OK, back to work: analyzing movies of filet-prepped larvae. Trying to confirm that my genetic scheme is actually expressing tetanus toxin in the neurons I think it is - judging by lack of activation of the muscles they innervate. This means staring at movies, inserting reference points, and trying to determine whether there's a difference between the contractions seen in muscles innervated by neurons expressing the toxin versus neurons expressing an inactive version of the toxin. Off to the computer lab - my powerbook can't handle the movies I'm making.

quick cx pic

2008-11-18T13:27:00.000-08:00

pure, unadulterated suffering:

photo from oregonvelo

book mini-review: quantum neurobiology edition

2008-11-17T19:25:00.000-08:00

On a recent (though not the most recent) trip to Portland, I had the chance to stop in to Powell's Books (indeed, what's the point of going to Portland if you can't go to Powell's?). Despite having had several drinks earlier in the evening (or perhaps because of it) I picked up two interesting-seeming books; when I got home from the trip, however, I lost interest or got busy and set them aside. I picked one of them up again soon, and in the intervening time, however, I've been able to finish the first and get about a quarter of the way into the second, and am going to spend some time tonight working my way through the second book. They're fairly similar, despite having been published a decade apart, and extremely timely, despite one being 17 years old.

The first is Information in the Brain: A Molecular Perspective by Ira B. Black. It's an enormous book, despite only being 225 pages (including references and index) - so it's going to take perhaps a whole re-reading to fully understand, but it's basically a great overview of neural signal transduction and how molecules store information. The most salient argument to me is his assertion that biology is behavior and behavior is biology - that there is no delineation between the metabolism of an organism and its behavioral output. The book was published in 1991, so many of the questions he has no answer for have been solved by now, but it's still a wonderfully compact (though dense) introduction to the way brains store and recall information, and an unprecedented synthesis of ideas that any student of developmental or molecular neurobiology should read.

The second is Jeffrey Satinover's The Quantum Brain, with a subtitle sufficiently new-agey to scare away most serious readers, I'm guessing: "The search for freedom and the next generation of man." Smells like woo, right? But so far, it's pretty interesting, and he definitely backs up his claims with good science. It's from a much more computational/AI/systems approach, as opposed to the cellular approach of Black... I'm not far along enough to make a judgement about the quality of the content, but I'm finding the AI/computational/theoretical approach informative, if a bit abstract. From the introduction, I'm guessing that he plans to have a thing or two to say about how these ideas relate to (and redefine) "God"... and the woo alarms will be ringing when this happens, but hopefully he'll save it for the conclusion and leave it at a philosophical discussion.

Anyway, I'll have more to say about both these books in the future, and hopefully will make some sort of insightful tie between the two that will be interesting and informative. On the other hand, I might decide that the Satinover book is just a bunch of hooey (this is the author of a book entitled Cracking the Bible Code - seriously?)... we'll see. I can say that so far, neither of the authors have addressed the problem of how brains form in the first place; I have my own opinions about trying to understand the brain without first understanding its development, though many disagree with me.

(The only thing better than reading for pleasure: Reading for work (ok, indirect work) and pleasure simultaneously! I love it!)

cross crusade #8

2008-11-16T20:25:00.000-08:00

Just got home (maybe 45 minutes ago) from Portland, or actually Hillsboro, where I raced in the last Cross Crusade race of the season. It was on the county fairgrounds, so the course wound through and between barns, over a big pile of hay, and through the rodeo arena - which, incidentally, was filled with ankle-deep mud that ranged from brown water to sticky shite-like consistency. Parts of the rest of the course was also muddy, but it was a nice coherent mud that wasn't really too hard to ride through - it was just a few hundred yards of slog right before the finish line. Fortunately, I only had to do 3 laps, and the elite women only managed 4 in 45 minutes. It was flat, but not particularly fast. Good times, though... I ended up finishing 12th [edit: 14th]in the Beginner category (yes, I race as a beginner, because there are only categories A, B, and beginner... I'm not fast enough to race with the B's, and I've never won a race so I can't be accused of sandbagging...) - the biggest field I've ever raced in with 72 women just in the beginners category. So I figure 12/72 = 1/6... not horrible at all.

Anyway, I'm just blogging while I wait for the washer to finish so I can hop in the shower (I've made the mistake of starting a load and then getting in the shower - not a good idea) and get the rest of this mud off of myself. I still have a few speckles on my arms and a bunch on my legs - even after hosing off. Riding through 6" deep puddles and running through 6" deep mud will get you messy.

Which reminds me of a theory I have about 'crossesrs: we're all just a bunch of kids at heart, who love playing in the mud. After the women's race wrapped up, a few members of the aptly-named Team Beer pulled out a - i kid you not - a Slip'n'Slide. And proceeded to lube it up with baby oil and take turns. As she was unfolding the tarp, one of the women read off the label printed on the vinyl: "Not for adult use."

"That's OK, I don't see any adults here" shot out of my mouth. The other two women looked around, we all shrugged our shoulders, and agreed - no adults present. Problem solved - and Team Beer slip'n'slide open for business. (No, I didn't... yes, I should have.)

Just another of the many, many reasons why I absolutely fucking love this sport.

Equipment upgrade

2008-11-15T14:06:00.000-08:00

equals faster Kat!

big party fun time

2008-11-14T21:31:00.000-08:00

Friday night, 9:30 PM. Getting ready to call it a night. I'm signed up to help the cycling team clean up the basketball court tonight at 10 (ten freaking pm, yes), but I'm going to be a big old flake tonight because I am home and warm and it is cold outside, and I don't have the willpower to make myself kit up for cold, dark riding right now and ride through the poorly-lit park not once but twice, once before ten and again sometime close to midnight, to have the pleasure of sweeping popcorn off the gym floor and cleaning up other people's soda cups. Call me selfish, call me lazy... I am both of those things, for sure. And tonight, I'm going to curl up in bed before ten o'clock and sleep in until after 9 before going in to work and tackling lab reports. (I thought 40 was intimidating and hard to tackle - they've doubled! Ack! Oh god, I sound like Cathy! Double ack!)

Add to that the fact that the people I work with in the lab have been fighting a nasty cold-like thing for the past few weeks, and it's been going around, and I so far have remained immune but can just feel the tickle in my throat. My remedy: Elysian Night Owl (in moderation - like maybe a pint tonight), a spicy curry dinner, some Emergen-C, and good old sleep.

Can't get sick now; must race 'cross in portland on sunday. Bedward ho. Sorry, guys... I'll help again next time, I promise.

the wonders of the interwebs

2008-11-11T22:42:00.000-08:00

Just spent an hour and a half reading about the Korean DMZ on wikipedia. Well, I didn't spend the whole time on the DMZ, there was also the articles on Korea, Division of Korea, and Pyongyang, and the Google Earth flyby of the DMZ and all civilization in the vicinity; looking at photos of the area and marveling at the uniformity of the housing. It's pretty incredible that I can sit here, in my bedroom, and see the houses and buildings and roads of one of our worst enemies. (Something tells me Kim Jong-Il had an aneurysm when he found out about Google Earth. Seriously, isn't it time for him to die or something?)

I'm feeling guilty for spending so much time just dicking around on the internet (it was a matter of national security! really!) but I have a hard time working for more than about 8 or 10 hours a day, and I didn't get home from lab until after 7; technically, making and eating dinner and spinning on the rollers* while watching rachel maddow, don't technically count as work, but I still felt like I needed some down time afterward. The guilt stems not from feeling like I haven't gotten enough done today (crunched a bunch of data and made a couple of nice graphs; took a bunch of confocal pictures; answered several student questions; virgined flies); it's more from the fact that I haven't graded the students' lab reports from last week, and they're turning in a new batch tomorrow and will undoubtedly want the old ones back. I mean to quit procrastinating, eventually, I really do. I think I'll start tomorrow... sigh. I'll try to have the lab reports done by lecture on Thursday....

Add to that a first wave of grad student anxiety: OHMYGOD what if my project doesn't work what if everyone in the lab doesn't like me what if the professor is unimpressed with my work what if the students all hate me and don't learn a thing from this class what if i can't ever do molecular biology what if i get depressed and fail out of grad school WHAT IF WHAT IF AAAAUGH.

Deep breath; stop stressing.

We're in week 7 of the quarter now; the easy part is over and everything is in high gear and stress levels are high. On the other hand (and this is the main reason why I *love* quarters and think I'd hate semesters), the end is in sight now: make it through this week and next, and then it's Thanksgiving; after that, there's just one week of classes before finals. And then - sweet, sweet winter break.

It's weird, being a student again, again; being a grad student still feels strange too. I think I like it. I also think that I like teaching, but I'm pretty sure that I hate grading. And really, isn't that why I just spent an hour and a half of precious time studying North Korean economic geography, and now more than half an hour writing a blog post? Shouldn't I be grading? Or sleeping? Hmm, come to think of it... if sleeping is productive, I'm going to go get shit done.

*rollers: extremely precarious contraption which enables one to ride a bicycle indoors. Not to be confused with a stationary trainer, which imprisons the rear wheel and keeps the bike upright; rollers come with the risk of suddenly finding yourself traveling at 20 mph in the living room should your attention lapse for a fraction of a second.

another rainy sunday

2008-11-09T11:59:00.000-08:00

First: WE DID IT! We elected Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States. For the first time, i voted for the winning guy for president; I also did my (small) part during the campaign, giving what I could in cash money to help the guy win. After 8 long years, we can finally get to work repairing this country and pointing her in the right direction.

Second: Quick race report. Went up to Salem yesterday to ride 'cross at Battle Creek, a former golf course that has now become quite overgrown. The course was flat and fast, and quite muddy in parts. I ended up placing 4th out of 18 women in the Beginner category; helped, no doubt, by the presence of real actual *beginners* - like, "this is my first bike race" beginners. Great to see so many women out - cyclocross is definitely getting more popular among women as well as men. And, keeping with my "strategy" from the past few races, I "allowed" the winner of the A category to lap me close to the end of her 5 laps, and thus didn't have to do another lap. An excellent strategy, though it won't continue to serve me well if I'd like to improve, or (gasp!) upgrade to category B someday.

On the to-do list for today:
#1. Wash my bike from yesterday. Pictures will follow to show just how muddy we got. I washed myself, but the Surly has become encrusted with mud since I was too tired yesterday to wash it.
#2. Ride the Xtracycle in to Eugene and buy a set of rollers off of a guy. With winter almost here, I think I'll want to have a way of riding indoors on days when it is too wet and/or too dark to get out for a good ride.
#3. Go pick up trash with the UO crew after a volleyball game. Evidently we (aka the team) gets paid if we do this. Shouldn't be too hard to go throw some cups and candy wrappers in the trash...

And, almost certainly:
#4. Try out the new rollers; try not to kill myself while learning how to ride on them.

sunday (sunday sunday!)

2008-11-02T17:29:00.000-08:00

Took today off from almost everything; even though I was up by 10 and was moderately productive, it still feels like a lazy day. We're into the dark days of the winter now: with the time change today it's now dark by 5:30. And although I'm closer to the equator while Seattle is closer to the north pole, I can't really tell the difference in day length. Maybe at the solstice it'll be more obvious.

Here's something really cool: Images of the brain by DTI.

DTI, or diffusion tensor imaging, is based on detecting diffusion vectors of water molecules within the brain. The coolest thing about it is that it's noninvasive: you can get an extremely detailed picture of white-matter connections in a living subject relatively easily. Read the full article at MIT Technology Review. There's some awesome brain eye candy in the article; it's worth it just for the pictures. (via SEED daily zeitgeist)

On the edge of my seat waiting for the election to be over... everyone, remember to VOTE! (Duh.) Got my fingers crossed for a better outcome than 2004...

it's fall in Oregon

2008-11-02T13:32:00.000-08:00

no future for you

2008-10-28T19:17:00.000-07:00

Just got my hands on Buffy Season 8, volume 2. I haven't kept up with the comic, but I bought the first paperback volume in December and loved it. Needless to say, I'm excited to read this one. Must resist temptation to read it all tonight.

In the same box (thank you Amazon Free Shipping, for always making me get two instead of just one), I got a new Ghost in the Shell manga (at least I think it's new). "Human-Error Processing." Supposedly takes place in the America of the dystopia that any GITS fan is familiar with; some new characters and some old, as far as I can tell, and undoubtedly plenty of explosions, cybercrime and hot chicks in skinsuits. Because you can always count on those things from Masamune.

A little junk food for the brain can't hurt; it's not like I haven't been working hard lately. Trying to commit as seriously as I am able to cycling and training this winter; next spring will be my first season ever competing as an intercollegiate athlete (from a Division I school; not, however, NCAA) and so I want to do my best - which means a training schedule. And on top of that, there is the more-than-full-time job of being a grad student: impromptu office hours with a student today led to a light bulb moment (which always feels great to any teacher, I'm sure); a lesson in fly genetics taught me to distinguish a really tricky phenotypic marker. It has to do with counting the hairs (yes, I am serious) on the shoulder of an adult fly. I have to hand it to my post-doc/mentor: after 5:00, I hadn't eaten since lunch, and the difference in phenotype is subtle... combine low blood sugar with frustration at finding differences between flies: not at my best to be sure. Anyway, I think I got it; progress is on the march. Hooray for science!

Now, to bed, and to find out what the hell Faith has been up to since they blew up Sunnydale.

flying by

2008-10-26T18:40:00.000-07:00

It's already the end of October, and the election is just over a week away... where has the time gone?

It must be passing so quickly because I'm so damn busy. I love being busy, though - it keeps me productive and sane. When I'm not busy, I tend to get lazy - it's kind of an all-or-nothing approach, I guess.

Anyway, school is going well so far. My rotation work has me working pretty hard, but I am really enjoying the work, and learning a lot. Flies are very different from fish - the turnover of generations is so much faster, you have to really maintain your stocks in an active way. I'm having trouble getting into the rhythms of fly pushing, but I think it'll come eventually. I've got a pretty large data set so far on behavioral analysis, and have acquired but not processed confocal images of the expression of various driver lines I'm using. The idea is to then cross these driver lines to a line carrying a latent tetanus toxin gene, creating expression of the toxin in a subset of neurons, effectively silencing them. The ultimate goal is to understand the genetic control of neuronal circuit formation during development. Pretty awesome, if you ask me. Anyway, that's my research summary for now.

Then there's the other half (ok, much less than half in terms of hours spent) of my life these days: the bicycle. I went for my first ride with the whole UO team yesterday, and had fun. We put on about 35 miles as a group, pushing my daily total (including commute) to a little over 40 miles. I think that's the biggest day I've had since moving here. Got to see a few more of the roads around the area, and got some ideas for changing up my routine solo ride. (The scenery is beautiful on the route I usually take, but something tells me it'll be nice to vary the ride up a bit come November, December, January, February...) Here's the ride we did yesterday.

Today turned into an off-day, due to a missed connection for an afternoon ride. Probably good to take a day off, though, since my plan is to start upping my training for the next few weeks in order to do better at the next 'cross series races in late November. (22nd and 30th; see flier here; come race or just yell and ring a cowbell if you're in the area!) My goal is 3rd in the series, since 1st and 2nd have pretty much been decided unless the promoters enforce a category change for these two women; they're both sandbaggers, as far as I can tell.

Also considering doing the LiveSTRONG Challenge in Seattle next June. Say what you will about Lance and believe what you want about his past; it's inarguable that the LAF does a lot of good in the fight against cancer. And let's face it, cancer sucks. Expect more about that in the future - I'll have to raise some funds to be able to participate, so I'll be begging for money out here in blogging-land as well as IRL.

Anyway, that's the sum of it for right now. Bicycles and science, onward ho!

one more thing

2008-10-20T22:39:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to send some love Elden's way: if any of you ever read Fat Cyclist you may know that his wife, Susan, is struggling with metastatic cancer, and things have taken a turn for the worse lately.

As I saw on a T-shirt a few months ago: Cancer sucks. Our thoughts are with your family in these trying times.

rainy monday; not so bad though

2008-10-20T20:06:00.000-07:00

First, a few shameless plugs: If you don't already, you can follow my twitter and my Google Reader shared items page. I tend to update both of these more often than I blog, so if you need minute-to-minute updates, there you go. Also, you can admire my racing results here. Because I'm awesome.

Anyway, today was fairly good for a rainy Monday; the crappy weather kept me inside during the day in order to get some science (and grading... uuugh) done. Primary antibodies are incubating overnight; secondaries go on tomorrow, then I'm signed up on the confocal for Friday PM. Guessing I'll probably end up spending some time on there on Saturday and/or Sunday as well... confocaling is awesome, and I'll get a bunch of pretty pictures for my rotation talk. I also need to start remembering to bring my hard drive home at night (and install Office on this machine) so I can process movie files at home. I come home for dinner most nights, and don't generally feel like going back into work once I'm home, but I tend to end up sitting at my computer most of the night anyway, so I might as well be doing something productive. Since a lot of what I'm doing with Excel is what I like to call "data munching" - that's different from crunching, mind you - it'd be nice to have the better processor and bigger screen real estate than my little lappy.

Another reason today was better than an average rainy Monday: I met up with several of the UO cycling women this evening with the intent of going for a ride, but as soon as we started riding it started raining, so we headed to Maire's house for coffee and talked about bikes, riding, racing, training, and everything in between. It was fun to get to chat and get to know people, and it was really nice to have Lisa there, to impart all her wisdom and glory to the new generation. Lisa Turnbull is currently finishing her dissertation in the biology department, and then, rumor has it, is going to start riding pro. She's an amazingly strong rider, and also a really nice person. She won't be doing the collegiate circuit races this year, so it's up to the rest of us to step up and win some races for the Ducks this year. Wouldn't we look awesome in these jerseys?

Almost done grading papers - less than 10 lab reports left. Not horrible grades on the whole, but I'm being pretty lenient - it's obvious that lots of people didn't understand the directions or missed something in the lab protocol.

Bleh. Anyway, time to cycle laundry and take a shower. If I get up early enough tomorrow, I can go ride some really fun hills...

please hold...

2008-10-05T13:22:00.001-07:00

new keyboard is on order.

quick one

2008-10-02T22:33:00.000-07:00

since my space bar is not improving, i need a new keyboard like STAT, a quick link sesh:

must read: make-believe maverick
highlight: "According to witnesses, McCain grew enraged, raising his hand as if to strike her before pushing her wheelchair away."

unrelated: today's ride. think i'll be doing the loraine-bailey hill-18th loop regularly - it's quite nice.

Sundays are no longer Slow

2008-09-28T20:48:00.000-07:00

I met up with a couple of other first-year grad students (both women, one artist and one chemist) for a fun training ride this morning around 11. After a minor mechanical, we were on the road - it's amazing how fast you can get out of town and into great road riding territory here. Also, the cars are pretty used to cyclists and are therefore more courteous - usually giving the whole lane, even though we were on the shoulder most of the time.

It was a good ride, but we kept a pretty hard pace for a good deal of the ride, somewhere around 22 mph on the flat sections. I felt like I had trouble keeping up at some points. On the other hand, even though I'm pretty sure they are both stronger than I am right now, we seemed evenly matched enough that I could keep up... though I was definitely a wheelsucker when I could and rarely pulled the whole train, I wasn't the slowest climber. I had fun and got a great workout, and we followed the ride up with a french toast feast! I think we've started a new tradition here.

Aaaaand... classes start tomorrow! Time to see what life is *really* going to be like here. Think it'll go well... got my fingers crossed.

technological failures and such

2008-09-27T13:22:00.000-07:00

I've been a bit light on the blogging due to computer difficulties: it seems the sugary liquid I spilled in my keyboard a few months ago is coming back to haunt me, and the space bar has become very sticky and occasionally broken. I'm going to have to pony up for a new one soon, as these aren't very easy to take apart to clean, and the prevailing thought among people I've polled is that the keyboard-in-dishwasher trick probably isn't good for a wireless keyboard. I'm over the whole wireless keyboard thing anyway; all it does is suck up batteries and keep one cord off my desk. Same goes for the wireless mouse: Its batteries are dead and I'm using my old Logitech, which incidentally has a functional scroll wheel, but is a bit spotty on tracking sometimes.

On the bright side, it is looking like my laptop is going to be fine*! Hooray! My housemate Nick is working on installing the new HD as I type, and according to him, the USB and FW ports *do* work. Odd... I distinctly remember trying to use them several times to no result. Anyway, that is great because then I will have a work computer again, and not have to type emails on my iPhone. (Yes, I got an iPhone, yes, I paid far too much for it, yes, I love it).

Classes start on Monday... not much else to say about that until then. Don't think I'm actually going to be taking any classes, except for rotations, journal club, seminars, and TAing. I think I'll be busy enough, and my committee didn't really seem to think it'd be a problem. So we'll see how the quarter goes... back in school, weird!

* minus all the data that used to be on it

woot

2008-09-25T18:26:00.000-07:00

race results are in. not DFL! hooray!

cyclocross!!!

2008-09-23T22:52:00.001-07:00

fast one right now, since it's late and i have to get up early, but...

just got back from my first cyclocross race of the season, and it was AWESOME. I didn't place terribly well (3rd from the bottom of my category) but I was racing against women's B category racers, when I'm used to there being a category C or 3 or 4 or whatever. but 3rd to last is not last, and I had hella fun, met some cool people, and am starting to feel okay about oregon in general.

also started my first rotation, and my gut instinct is that i've found a lab i could see living in for the next 5-6 years, and a project that i could see turning into my ph.d. thesis.

awesome. oregon is not horrible.

retreat!

2008-09-17T16:11:00.000-07:00

so I am out at the mckenzie river conference center, AKA the us basketball academy, for the retreat portion of grad school orientation. It's beautiful, relaxing, and science-riffic. Plenty of talks to fill my brain, plenty of beer to fill my belly. Good times. Most of the faculty of the Neuro institute are here, so it's a great opportunity to hobnob with the big guys and figure out who to work with. (no; I have not decided on my first rotation, nor do I know who I want to work with for my thesis.) This evening, it's more talks, then beer and campfire time, hopefully with minimal sing-a-longs. Tomorrow I may stay for the evolution and ecology group retreat, though I may decide to go home and unpack some more... feeling a bit under the weather with a nasty cough that just cropped up during the move and a scratchy throat, yuck. No fun. By I'm choosing to ignore it and focus on the fun to be had... Yay science!

to do:

2008-09-15T16:06:00.000-07:00

- get the bottom bracket and pedals swapped out on my fixie, and get it down here. the Surly is waaay too nice to be an everyday ride in this town! in fact, if you've spent more than $300 on your bike, you're probably in the upper 50% here.

- figure out a way to get frida down here.

- finish unpacking. holy crap i am a clothes pack rat. 90% of it i never wear but can't justify getting rid of, in case i need it someday. but now it needs a home here, and i can't do what i did in the previous 2 apartments, and just throw the boxes of sweaters in the closet and access them from there. closet is too small.

- figure out how to hang art on the walls here. 2 of the walls are outside basement walls, so pretty much concrete. too hard to put nails in; sticky hooks perhaps? the other 2 are rather soft and push pins will work fine, unless the object in question is too heavy. not sure at all about how to hang the diploma.

maps

2008-09-15T14:40:00.000-07:00

it's afternoon, which means the sunlight is finally starting to filter down through the ferns to my little west-facing window, almost convincingly filling the room with a day-like glow. i know, though, that in this room, artificial light is almost never going to be dispensible; the trick is going to be making the lighting in this room as natural as possible.

went out exploring a little earlier today; dropped by the graduate program office and got myself oriented a bit. people in the department are all very friendly, if busy. walked around campus a bit with the graduate coordinator; saw the cafeteria where they filmed the egg-splosion scene from animal house; repressed the urge to recreate it then and there. not a good way to impress new business acquaintances...

went grocery shopping at the market of choice, market of choice. no really, that's what it's called. aptly named, too, for the beer selection there is more than adequate; well, not quite, since they didn't have any elysian beer except for the stout. i'm consoling myself with a ninkasi IPA, considerably more local and arguably as good as the immortal.

leaving the grocery store and trying to find my way back to the bike path, i must have committed a faux pas by crossing at a pedestrian crosswalk. a lady turned left in front of me while making little "tsk tsk" motions and trying to say something. she seemed amused, like i was committing a greivous yet humorous mistake; i was just trying to get across the fracking street to get home! geez. hopefully i will figure out the obscure customs of this land before being thrown out as a fraud.

anyway, there you have it: the mundane details of my day thus far. think i'll spend some more time working on making my room liveable, and perhaps go out for a ride later on.

First day, first post

2008-09-15T11:37:00.000-07:00

New blog. Seems kind of weird to be starting over, but in many ways a fresh start is needed, and since I'm experiencing another kind of fresh start (the IRL kind) it seemed like a good way to go.

Anyway, since I just arrived in town last night and am still unpacking, I don't have much to say, but I think that things here will be alright. Give me a few days to get settled, figure out what is going on with school, etc, and I'll update you.