As I was out running this morning from my parents’ house, two ladies were outside their houses directly across the street from one another. Running by, I overheard one lady give an open invitation to her neighbor, “I’m having supper at 6:00, if you wanna come over…”

I didn’t get to hear the rest of the conversation, but it brought back a lot of nostalgia for me… being that it’s Thanksgiving Day, and that I’m back “home” in Drexel, North Carolina, running a route through a neighborhood that I used to run at least 4 to 5 times a week.

It made me think about when I lived here. How hearing those kinds of conversations were normal… simple southern hospitality.

When I started thinking about the past, it’s really interesting to relate my past to who I am now… and also to see how it’s shaped who I am now.

10 years ago: Thanksgiving 1998
I was fresh off of winning my first state championship in cross country at East Burke High School. Thanksgiving Day I ran 3 miles easy in the morning from my house to downtown Drexel with my dogs Symba (my little brown dog) and Max (my brother’s lab). I was getting ready to run Footlocker, the big cross country race that would qualify me for high school cross country nationals in Orlando. Symba was a year and a half old. He ran with me all the time, even when I ran 60 miles a week. My relatives all came to my parents’ house to eat Thanksgiving dinner. We ate around 11am, and then sat around and talked the rest of the day. I was full of anticipation to run Footlocker that weekend, and my relatives all asked about how much I ran and stuff. I was not married, obviously, since I was still in high school. I hadn’t even met Joe yet.

4 years ago: Thanksgiving 2004
I was a newly-wed. Joe and I had been married for just about a month, and I was finished with my first season on the US pro-road cycling circuit. I was set to race with the Ford-Basis women’s professional cycling team for the next season, and Joe had just started his first job at Infineon. I had no responsibilities except for to ride my bike and “keep house.” I was very focused on being the “perfect wife.” I loved house-making, and anything to do with being a domesticated goddess of the home. We had Thanksgiving at my aunt and uncle’s house in Fuquay-Varina, just down the road from our the first house we owned together in Holly Springs. I woke up really early that morning (at like 5:30am) to be out on the road bike by at least 6:00am so I could cover 3 to 4 hours before we needed to go over to my relatives’ for Thanksgiving. It was really cold, and I rode alone. I wasn’t running any at all, only riding. Symba was with us at our house in Holy Springs, although since I wasn’t running anymore he didn’t run very much either, but he still loved being outside.

Present day: Thanksgiving 2008
I went for a 10 mile run by myself from my parents’ house. I covered a lot of the same grounds I used to cover running with my dad when I was in high school training for cross country and track. We went over to have Thanksgiving dinner at a friend’s house, where we met up with several other families that I grew up with. Joe and I have been married for 4 years now, and he is in Florida visiting his grandparents. I no longer focus completely on being a home-maker. I like the balance of working, training, and being a wife. I teach at Athens Drive High School, and I am coaching a cross country runner who is getting ready to run the same Footlocker race I was going to run 10 years ago this weekend. I’m still biking… but now it’s all about the mountain bike, not the road bike. I’m running again, but Symba no longer runs with me. He’s 11 now, and a little too old to run. I now have another dog, Sheldon, who looks very much like Symba and has a ton of energy.

It’s interesting to see how I’ve come full circle, how I’ve ended up where I am now… and it makes me wonder where I’ll be in 10 more years. Really though… things have changed over the years, but are still very much the same.

A short list of some things I’m thankful for this year:

1. My parents- both of them are in good health and have always provided the support and love I need to succeed.
2. My brother, Greg- he used to just drive me crazy, but now he’s really matured and we actually think a lot alike.
3. My husband, Joe (of course!)- he loves me, no matter what. And I him. What else can I say?
4. My friends- you all know who you are, and I appreciate you more than you know!
5. My health- I’m so thankful that I’m healthy, no injuries or diseases… and I’m able to live life to the fullest every day.
6. The mountains- I feel at home anytime I’m in the woods. It’s peaceful and solitary. Being in the mountains is part of what makes me happy I’m alive.

I’m normally not so sentimental, but ’tis the season, right?? I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving Day, and take time to remember what you’re thankful for.

Finally it’s time to write a brief recap of the Shenandoah 100 that I completed over Labor Day weekend. Wow, I can’t believe it was that long ago! I’ve been really busy at school, but things are going so well and I am really enjoying my new position as the Beahvior Support Teacher (BST).

All I can say about the Shenandoah 100 is that is was definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I’ve never finished a ride/race and felt sore and tender to the touch EVERYWHERE. My arms, shoulders, neck, legs, fingers, toes, butt, core… you NAME it and it hurt. No lie.

My hands started to give out on me the last several miles of the ride. They would cramp up anytime I applied the brakes. I just thought to myself, “dear LORD, please just let me brake so I can survive this single track downhill… I’ll be finished soon, hands JUST WORK please!!!”

Yeah, it’s pretty bad when you start talking to your hands during a race.

And I was also thinking about the Seinfeld sketch where he talks about scubadiving and sings the song, “Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die… There’s a fish, there’s a rock, who cares! Don’t Die, don’t die, don’t die!!!” Yeah, all the rocks and descending had me thinking “don’t die”… HA!

The course was awesome though. I loved all the climbing and the singletrack was challenging. It was cool to crawl up those singletrack climbs and pass people walking. Just to be able to ride that stuff was an accomplishment for me.

There was a 20 mile gravel road climb at about mile 60 or so. This section does in most riders. Mentally it’s hard to keep pushing up this long climb, and there’s no singletrack to make it more interesting or anything like that. I love gravel road climbs. I don’t know why. I just keep looking ahead, keep pushing, and I can stay extremely focused. Which is odd. Oh well… who ever said that I was normal??

I started passing a lot of people on this climb, and one guy that I passed stayed with me for the majority of the climb. He ended up introducing himself to me at the top, and thanking me for helping him up the climb. I just told him that he did all the work himself, and he definitely helped keep me going too!! So it was nice to have a person to “help” me get to the top.

After finishing that climb, my legs were completely trashed. We still had 20 miles or so left to ride though! That was when everything started shutting down, and any little rise really hurt.

However, the cool thing was that I could still crawl up the steep climbs when everyone else was walking. I think that this endurance mountain bike thing could be my style, we’ll see. I plan on doing more next year. I think for whatever reason my body is designed to tolerate long endurance challenges and it takes punishment really well. I suppose I’m lucky?? HAHAHAHAHAAHA… oh jeez!

What have I gotten myself in to? Now I’m already looking at the NUE (National Ultra Endurace) Series and looking at what 100’s I can do next year.

Not to mention the Xterra’s and other mountain bike races I want to do. Agh, I’m going to be busy!

For now, I’ve got a couple more endurance mountain bike races I’m going to do and some cyclocross races. Fall is definitely here, and I’m loving it!!! This is my favorite time of the year…. cross country, mountain biking, cyclocross… can it get any better?

Normally I’m not into fortunes too much, but I opened my fortune cookie after dinner one night last week to see this:

A solid challenge will bring forth your finest abilities.

How appropriate this fortune is on so many levels… especially after the day I had at school when I first read it… I just can’t put into words.

And I say, “BRING IT.”

Time has passed since Xterra Charlottesville. A couple of weeks. But it’s taken me a couple of weeks to absorb all of the travel, racing, and “life in general” since…

I’m back in school now, teaching at Athens Drive. This year I am one of the behavior support teachers (we have two at our school). Things are going well, and I’ve managed to get the first week of school under my belt.

So, Xterrra Charlottesville…

After my week of fun riding in Crested Butte, I wasn’t sure what to expect at this race. On top of all the riding and being at altitude for a week, we had a crazy travel schedule once we arrived back to North Carolina. Joe was in a wedding on Saturday up in DC. We arrived in Charlotte about 4:30pm on Friday, and immediately got in the car to drive up to DC for the wedding the next day.

The wedding was really nice, and even though we were exhausted (we all slept until 10am, and I could have slept much longer) we had a lot of fun. We danced and had lots of really good food… and then late in the night drove over to Charlottesville so I could race the next morning.

Since I didn’t arrive in Charlottesville until 1am, obviously I had no chance to pre-ride the course. I was hoping that it’d be a two loop bike or something, so that way I could just kinda “ride” the first loop and figure it out then hit the second loop hard. Ha! No. The course was awesome– one big singletrack loop. There were lots of power hills, log stacks, logs, a creek crossing… all things that I could ride if I had pre-ridden and “known” what to look for.

Well, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Race morning: 5:45am, wake up and eat… throw stuff in the car. We arrived and I registered, then I set my stuff up and warmed up. The usual pre-race stuff.

Swim: We had a two lap swim with a run along the beach. I love these swims. I love having to run out and then run back in. It’s fun. So sweet, bring it on. I swam alright, I guess… considering I hadn’t swam in over a week before leaving for Crested Butte. I was happy that I remembered how to do freestyle and not drown.

Bike: Okay, this was my biggest “obstacle” of the day. The first few miles were fine… fast, flowy, nothing real technical. I was thinking “sweet… okay, so far…” then I started hitting power hills out of no where. Alright, I’d make it up most of them, sometimes I’d have to dab at the very top so it didn’t slow me down much. But then I really started screwing up. I’d be over-geared to make it over obstacles because I’d be hauling and then all of a sudden come up on some log stack or rock pile or creek crossing and be like, “Agh! I can’t ride that in this gear!” I have a nice “tatoo” on my right leg from the last time I rode something and was over-geared. What made things worse… my bike wasn’t shifting into gears under load. So instead of going in a gear when I really needed it, my gears would grind and skip… sometimes even on flat sections. I thought I was going to scream. And I think I did at one point. I know that I did remember thinking, “If I have to go over one more f*$king log stack, I am going to scream!” Yeah… not one of my finest bikes at all. Ha, it’s almost comical now when I think about it.

Run: So I make it to the run, and the good news is that I still have some gas left in the tank… since I wasn’t really ever in any sort of groove on the bike. I still haven’t been running except for a couple miles in the morning, so considering that’s been my backbone run-training… my legs actually felt more like I raced the whole run instead of just surviving it. It still wasn’t any where near my run form, but I didn’t feel like I was trudging through. A step up… I’ll take it.

Overall I ended up 2nd. I had a really nice guy who paced me through the run, helping to push me the entire way. He realized that the woman behind me had started in the second wave, so I had to finish two minutes ahead of her in order to win the race.

I ended up crossing the line first, but she came in a minute or so later… effectively beating me in overall time.

I was pissed at first. I won’t lie. I was mad for about 2 minutes. I snapped at Joe when he first talked to me. But that’s the competitive nature in me… where would I be as an athlete without that determination? When I race, I wanna win. That angry emotion lasted for all of about 2 minutes, and then quickly faded away.

I was beaten. Fair and square. I had known that this race was going to be crazy to even try to do after all of the riding I did in Crested Butte, the travel, the wedding, you name it. I had wanted to come do this race to see “where the cards fall” … to see how my body would react after all I’d been through. And heck, I’m happy with 2nd!

One thing I really have to learn to do is accept less than the best sometimes. We all get tired. We all get beaten. No one is perfect. And it’s okay that I finished 2nd to another person who had a great race. She had an awesome bike (way better than mine!) and deserved the win.

But next year, you better believe I’ll be able to pre-ride…

Our last day in Crested Butte was spent riding the most difficult ride, evelevation wise, up to the distinct mountain of Teocalli.

Most of the ride is close to 11,000 or 12,000ft high, and the downhill section is really technical. This year the trail was really loose from all the motorbikes that have been riding it, making for a lot of chunky rocks and soft, powdery dirt sections. I was skeptical of a lot of the downhill, and, just like the rest of the week, I was cautious going down… walking what looked weird or tricky. I walked the most of any downhills this day, but it still wasn’t that much all together… only a few short sections… so I was really proud of myself for riding the majority of the downhills that Crested Butte had to offer.

The uphill on this ride was tough. It was really steep double track with lots of muddy areas due to creeks crossing the road and the run-off water trickling down off the mountain. The ridge trail that flows around the mountain was also really loose this year, forcing me to walk more than I wanted to (especially when climbing). I walked because one simple mistake and you fell WAY down the mountain side… something I did not care to do!

Teocalli is an amazing mountain, and I really loved this ride… I look forward to riding it again in the future, and conquering the sections I walked out of fear and caution.

We left Crested Butte that night to drive back to Denver in oder to catch our flight home early the next morning. I was sad to leave, and I watched Crested Butte fade into the background as we drove away until it disappeared around the mountainside.

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Wednesday’s ride in Crested Butte was Reno Flag - Bear. This was probably my favorite ride of the week… although I loved them all very much, I liked this one a lot because it had steep, hard climbs at the end of the ride too. Most of our rides were a big climb, some flat to rolly up and downs and short climbs, then big down hill. Reno Flag - Bear had a big climb, downhill, rolly climbs, downhill, steep climb, and then big downhill with fun switchbacks. I liked the challenge of all the climbing in the middle of the ride, and even at the end.

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On Tuesday we rode Doctor’s Park, which had a lot of awesome climbing at the beginning, followed by some sweet, smooth and flowy single track downhill afterwards. At the very end of the downhill were some tight switchbacks. I took it really easy on those since I had never ridden them before. They were fun! After the ride we got in the river to soak our legs.

Joe made a cool video riding down the switchbacks at the end of the ride. Here it is!

And finally, here’s the trail:

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The second ride we did in Crested Butte was Deer Creek. It is a little less than 30 miles on the mountain bike… through beautiful mountain valleys and lung-busting climbs.

Here is an interactive map of the Deer Creek loop, and the elevation profile:

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I have so much to write about and update…

We’re back after our whirlwind of travel from Crested Butte to Charlotte to DC to Charlottesville to Raleigh. Whew. Lots of flying, driving, and not much sleep… after a week at altitude. It was an awesome trip out to Colorado with lots of great training and time well spent with close friends.

I’ll write about each day in Colorado, along with a race report from the Charlottesville Xterra that I raced in today (I finished 2nd!).

For now it’s an evening laid out on the couch, watching the olympics, and resting up for my next training block before the Shenandoah 100.

We made it to Crested Butte… all be it a little later than expected. We picked up our rental car from Denver and started making the trek to Crested Butte around 11am mountain time. Before we even arrived, Joe and I had both decided to take our drive straight through the mountains instead of following the highways the “normal” way so we could see a little more of Colorado.

I can’t even begin to put words together to describe our drive over here. It was epic, to say the least. And, the road we took… the only other vehicles on it were ATV’s. Yeeaaahhhh…. it was crazy! We came through Hancock Pass which reached over 12,000ft and is the continental divide. Even the locals that we’ve talked to don’t know what or where Hancock Pass is. And… we don’t really either, until we get the GPS loaded on the computer.

I’ll post a video from our drive, once Joe gets it edited and all.

We made it to Crested Butte after 8:00pm. Of course my parents and my friend were worried, but we had no cell service to call anyone to tell them where we were.

Needless to say, we’re safe and sound now in one of the prettiest places I’ve been, and we have already been out on a great introductory ride to the area. Thankfully my friends have been here for several years and know all the good trails to go on… we don’t even have to think or look at a map, we just get to follow along and enjoy it! Pretty sweet deal if you ask me.

Here’s a link to pictures from our ride today…

Tomorrow we’ll do a longer ride, and if I have time I’ll post pictures and a report afterwards.