Racing – Cartwheels and Cake

Falling, sliding, crashing, and winning

Before the Cyclo X series started I headed out for another Wednesday afternoon race in the Back 2 Basics series. This time I entered in the Women’s B field, and found myself starting with about 17 women. It had been windy and rainy during the pre-ride but by the race conditions were pretty great.

Awkwardly trying to hop a barrier at B2B

I managed to finish 6th out of 17 women which I was really happy with! The course had a lot of single track and tight turns which equaled much needed practice for me. The barriers went okay too, … Continue reading

Slip sliding into cross with both feet!

For the past couple years I’ve heard of this sub-sport of cycling called cyclocross. People always describe it as a cross between mountain biking, road biking, and steeplechase, so that’s how I described it too. That is, until recently when someone finally asked me exactly what is steeplechase… to which I mumbled something about horses and barriers and then admitted I wasn’t exactly sure and stopped using that reference.

So what is cyclocross (usually just called “cross” or “CX”)? I’d say it’s a totally ridiculous, fun, and exhausting 25-60min race where you ride your bike as fast as you can … Continue reading

RPI 2022: Year 2!

Last December Paul convinced us to return to Rebecca’s Private Idaho: Queen’s Stage Race. It was our first big gravel race in 2021, and we learned a ton. The hope was that we could apply some of what we learned to do better this year!

While we both fully recovered from COVID, thankfully, we had lost out on a LOT of training in July. That left us just 4 weeks to really train (which was not enough time). So we headed out to Idaho as better racers, but less fit than in 2021, to see what would happen.

♨️🚤 Gravel

But first, COVID:

After UnboundXL June and July were a bit of a whirlwind. Putting on the 10th and final World Domination Summit (which was supposed to happen in 2020) took Paul and I to Portland in late June. Paul raced the Oregon Trail Gravel Grinder while I worked on the week-long event. Despite taking excessively careful COVID measures Paul came down with COVID the day we were headed back to Boulder (via car). And after 20 hours in the car together I tested positive a couple days later. Boo. We weren’t hit as hard as some but we were … Continue reading

UnboundXL gear choices

Just for fun, a review of what I took with me on my first ultra distance race including my repair kit, food, spare gear, and even what I wore. Here we go:

The seat bag:

I used a Topeak medium aero wedge pack (a size up from my usual small bag) with the following inside:

Spare eTap battery (I needed this some 200-odd miles in!)
Two mini bottles of Rock N Roll Gold lube (I had a hot waxed chain, which I was not at all sold on but would absolutely do again for a long race like this, however

In which the unbelievable becomes real

The first part of this story left off at 2:00 AM and, by mileage, not quite half way through the race. Betsy and I are still riding together, and I’m starting to feel sluggish. Not particularly sleepy but more like I’m running out of gas to keep my legs turning over. This might have been because I hadn’t been able to eat a lot for the past couple of hours. My stomach had been cranky, and I’d been giving it some space to settle down. But I knew it was time to keep eating, and I started working on my … Continue reading