Time is Relentless

“The thing about time, Dominic knew, was that it was relentless.”  That is how my favorite author, John Irving, describes time through the eyes of his main character in his new book, Last Night in Twisted River.  I am getting a lot of reading done lately.  I have a lot of time on my hands as I have been forced to step off the bike and wait out an injury.

The pain came on slowly, a nagging little ache at first.  Two weeks ago I couldn’t bend my knee to swing my leg over my bike after finishing up my ride.  Everybody who is not an elite athlete says how elite athletes are so absorbed in their sports that they ignore injuries, push through all the warning signs, and push through the pain.  I have to admit that this is true and that I am no exception this time.  The last few weeks riding I was feeling  in the best shape I was ever in.  I was loving it and it was hard to not keep pushing on, seeing just how far I could go.  So I didn’t stop.  And now I’m paying the price.

These have been a frustrating past two weeks as I have been forced to admire my bike, which is such a big part of my life, from afar and to imagine my body undoing all the internal improvements I trained it to do pre-injury.  The time keeps ticking away, getting closer and closer to the goals I should be training for, but yet it moves so slowly as I spend boredom hours doing little when I would have otherwise been training and getting closer to reaching those goals.

During some of my boredom hours this morning I was watching coverage of the winter Olympics.  The topic was of Olympic athlete Lindsey Vonn’s shin injury and how it could put her Olympics in jeopardy.  The host described those goals of elite athletes as “fragile Olympic dreams.”  Could it be more true?  I am at least grateful my injury is occurring now.  There are three months until the qualification procedures for the 2012 Olympic Games begin for my sport and over two years until the goal actually arrives.  But, as Dominic and I know, time is relentless.

www.kimgeist.com

Procyclist: Training in Tucson, AZ

Once I got my preliminary race agenda from the team director at the beginning of the month, I decided to head south to Tucson, AZ for some warm weather training.

It seems that a lot of cyclists try to find somewhere warm to start off training for the season, it kind of refreshes the mind and gives you a fresh look on things. I actually ran into one of my former cyclocross teammates on one of the rides. She recognized the team kit and ended up riding with me and a fellow cyclist for about 10miles. Friends sure do help pass the miles quickly! Unfortunately she is racing for another team.  I think she is a cool chick and she is going to be one heck of a force to deal with but….that’s racing. We are friends off the bike but on the bike, we have to fight each other for OUR team goals. As long as you can keep the two separate, things are fine.

So I’m headed back to Dolores, CO tomorrow. I’ll have  time to pick up my dog, check out everything at the house and get ready for my next trip.  I miss my sweet Lab, Miller, and I have to make sure after three feet of snow in less than two days that everything at the house is fine. Then either I will head back to Tucson for more warm weather training or hopefully head to Santa Cruz, CA. I’ve never been there before and I love new places! Plus, that is where training camp is in March, so I would like to check it out! Or I guess I can wait and experience it with the team, either way is good with me.

Part of being a professional athlete is being able to go with the flow. People will be late, dinner will take a long time, plans will change…you have to be able to adapt and not let things like that worry you one bit, if not it just adds to the overall stress. We should have enough to worry about with winning, team goals, communication with others, personal goals and failure….yes FAILURE, no one is perfect, no one team is perfect and everyone has to deal with adversity. It is how you handle adversity that can take you to the next level. So think about that the next time someone gets in your face about something e.g. the boss is being a pain or a teacher is asking more than you think you can give…….

Maybe they are just seeing how you can handle adversity and see how you overcome it…..a true leader? Winner? Or someone who caves…….your call.

Me, I love it all and I feel blessed that I believe I can come through anything and  be a winner and a leader no matter what comes my way….

(Editors Note: Lauren Hall quit her job of five years to pursue a professional cycling career. She moved from Mississippi all the way to Colorado for the best training anywhere and has embarked on her first cyclocross season.)

2010 cyclocross season officially begins

Well the 2010 road season has officially begun.  I got the call from my team director regarding the first races I will be in and they are at the end of March. Team training camp will be in March as well, so it is time to put in the hours on the bike.

I headed south from Colorado to Tucson, AZ,  where some friends are letting me stay in their extra apartment while I’m there, how nice! And so today, I jumped back on the saddle for 3hrs and 10min for my first official long ride since October. I will be putting in these kind of hours the rest of this week and hopefully into next Tuesday and then head back to Colorado for a small break and figure out where to go to next!

I signed on with Pretty Tough last year about the time I started cyclocross, so now you guys get to experience my first year as a professional road racer with me. How exciting!

This year, I’m racing for the pro team Vera Bradley Foundation.

See you gals on the road. And remember, no texting and driving, I’m out there! :)

Recap: Cyclocross Season and Nationals

Well the cyclocross season is over and I miss it tremendously. I never would’ve thought that after three months, I would have become so attached to the sport and want to continue so bad. The atmosphere, the racers, the courses, all of it was new and exciting and so refreshing to be around  -even in single digits!

I started my season on Halloween in Boulder, Colo. at a race that Katie Compton was in.  The outcome?  She lapped me with one lap to go. I finished my season with Nationals in Bend, Oregon on December 13th and Katie was there again and she didn’t lap me this time! In my mind I think that is a huge gain in skills and confidence, she is only the best in the WORLD :)

After Nationals, I flew back to my home town of Vicksburg, Miss. If you’ve never been to the South you should definitely check out Vicksburg.  It is famous for being a critical point in the Civil War;  it has amazing art shops, wonderful downtown Washington St., a perfect coffee shop downtown, wonderful food and amazing bed and breakfasts in antebellum homes. Anyway, while I was home I got to talk to 5th and 6th graders about cycling, the importance of staying healthy and eating right, they really enjoyed the talk as did I!

For New Year’s my biggest treat was to be able to reveal that I’ve officially signed a pro road contract with Team VBF! I’m so excited! We are sponsored by Vera Bradley and we will be racing to bring awareness to breast cancer! So be sure to follow along with our winning season! I will do my best to update Pretty Tough as well :)

I accomplished my goal before I thought I would. In April of this past year (2009), I quit my job of five years, moved out West and said, “OK, I’ll give myself two years of trying to become a professional and if it doesn’t work I will get a job”!  Well I accomplished my goal sooner than I thought, YAHOOOOOO!

So you know what time it is now? Time to set more goals, higher! I would tell you, my biggest, shoot for the moon goal? Make it to the Olympics! How amazing would that be! To be able to represent my country?! WOW! But for this year my goal is to do whatever I can to make my team successful and to win races in the USA! So again, I will try to keep everyone up to date! For random thoughts from me, check out my blog too!

laurenthall.blogspot.com

See y’all later!

Win or Lose, It’s All in the Details

At a certain level, excelling in sports becomes really detail-oriented. When I was younger, I was always amazed by ABC’s Wide World of Sports television program that showed the dramatized inside look at the lives of athletes, especially into the lives of Olympic athletes since I have been obsessed with the Olympics for as long as I can remember (I originally thought I would go as a soccer player. Kudos to the 1996 U.S. Olympic women’s soccer team for inspiring many!). It was awesome to me to see how the lives of these successful athletes were 24/7 about their sport and then to see how after a bunch of blood, sweat, and tears later, everything finally came together in the end and they were successful, at the very least in their own eyes.

The past two months I have been traveling all over the world training and racing my bike. I have reached that point where it feels like my life could be a fairly engaging documentary. One of my training partners and I actually had a conversation based on this fact a few weeks ago. We discussed how we get up early, we ride to the track with our backpacks packed with the day’s necessities, we have a discussion over who’s iPod contains the most motivating playlist, we put that iPod on the stereo system, we ride efforts to the point of nausea, we adjust equipment to try to get the most speed out of ourselves, we try out the new and supposedly most technologically-advanced and fastest equipment, we discuss video feedback of the efforts we just did, we push ourselves even harder on the next efforts, we play cheerleader for our training partners and teammates who are just about on the point of not being able to do any more, we head out of the road for more hours of training, we come back to housing in the late afternoon and eat ridiculous amounts of food, we stretch and try our best attempts at recovery technique some of which include unique inventions of tight pants or humidity, we sleep, and then we start the same process all over again the next day. Some days we crash, and doesn’t that add even more to the appeal of a documentary?

The most interesting part of the actual documentaries to me was what happens after all the training and after the competition. No matter if training goes well or not, if the athlete meets the goal during competition or not, there’s always a reevaluation period. There’s always a flurry of questions as to what went well or didn’t? What could have been better? What can be improved upon next time? When you get to the point where your sporting life seems like documentary material, finding answers to these details consumes more time and effort than I thought was possible from watching the documentaries.

These past two months I took part in two national team camps and competed in two World Cup competitions. The camps went fairly well but my performances at the World Cups were not what were expected. Turn on the cameras; there have been some serious periods of reevaluation. There have been consultations with many people, the stuff ABC eats up. I have had to question all my preparations all the way down to the most basic, even where I live. I’m at that level now. There are checkmarks next to 24/7 and the blood, sweat, and tears boxes. Is there a checkmark next to the successful box? Only time will tell. For now that depends on the details.

www.kimgeist.com

Cyclocross practice, first ever [Video]

(Editors Note: Lauren Hall quit her job of five years to pursue a professional cycling career. She moved from Mississippi all the way to Colorado for the best training anywhere and has embarked on her first cyclocross season.)

Surviving Boulder Cross

(Editors Note:  Lauren Hall quit her job of five years to pursue a professional cycling career.  She moved from Mississippi all the way to Colorado for the best training anywhere and has embarked on her first cyclocross season.)

Haunted Cross and Boulder Cup

Finally my first cross race and it was UCI, what was I thinking!? Hind sight, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. It was a chance to race with the best in the world along with some of the most experienced girls in the sport today.

It has been a fast progression from being offered the opportunity from Hudz-Subaru to be a development rider, to learning how the races actually take place to the cross lingo and finally to a full on race. I would call myself a decent mountain biker with some skills but nothing could have prepared me for the mud and sand of cylcocross. I’ve been practicing and learning technique for less than a month with Chad Wells and the Fort Lewis College training races when I decided to try my hand at a race.  At the time, I had no idea of the ramifications of going to Boulder for this race. It was the hardest 45 minutes I’ve ever experienced and loved every minute of it.

If you are thinking about getting into cycling, I highly recommend cyclocross. It is perfect for beginners because you can learn how to handle your bike, work on clipping in and out of the pedals, get a heck of a workout in a short amount of time as well as play in the dirt, grass and sand. The race venues are full of energy and it seems everyone is willing to lend a hand, racers as well as spectators. It is family friendly, pet friendly and a blast to watch.

Driving to Boulder I quizzed Chad on what I should expect. His response, “It will be muddy, technical with variable conditions.” As a mountain biker he was looking for more mud and more technique  and was a bit bummed when the Sunday race was moved to the reservoir because he knew it would be more advantageous to a road racer rather than a mountain biker.

Sunday was just as hard with the sand pits and I struggled finding a smooth or fast line through the sand. It seemed to just zap any energy and momentum I had. Thank goodness I had awesome teammates and fans cheering me on from the sidelines which just put a huge smile on my face, all that cheering sure does help!

Chad had also said that start position was key. One part of cross races is that the starts are staged, so for example, Katie Compton, Allison Dunlap, Georgia Gould, etc, started at the front based on UCI points and then the rows that followed were based on registration order. I ended up starting pretty much in the back, which was fine with me because I wasn’t confident in my skills and I wouldn’t want to slow up a contender, plus that way I could see the line that most of the women were taking, again another learning opportunity.

Starts are also interesting because as soon as you hit dirt from the pavement, the speed slows down creating a bottleneck situation with everyone fighting for the same single track. In part of the race on Saturday I ended up carrying my bike over a whole section that the leaders rode because of the slow speed and bottleneck situation. It was so muddy, some of the places it felt like you were pedaling in place and I was covered from head to toe in mud from the riders in front of me. A couple of the sections I never found the right line and it was so slippery I just fell over or just totally clipped out and picked up the bike and ran while the skilled riders rode through. Skills will come in time  with more racing and different conditions, along with being more smooth and efficient over the barriers.

My progression from this weekend will be to work on becoming more smooth with my mounts and dismounts and just overall being more confident on the cross bike. I know it will take more than just one race to get it down, heck for that matter it will take this whole season and then some to become a contender but I plan on making it happen for sure.  I will continue to race throughout the fall and winter and I’m signed up for cross nationals in Bend, OR in December. So keep checking the results at www.cyclingnews.com and see how I progress this season.

Www.hudzsubarucycling.com
www.prettytough.com
Www.laurenthall.blogspot.com
Haunted Cross and Boulder Cup

Learning Cyclocross

(Editors Note:  Lauren Hall quit her job of five years to pursue a professional cycling career.  She moved from Mississippi all the way to Colorado for the best training anywhere and is about to embark on her first cyclocross season)

First off, cyclocross is a lot harder and ten times more fun than it looks. My first experience with the sport was this year at Cross Vegas; I was a spectator cheering on my teammates and just taking it all in, the fans, the barriers, the hurt. I couldn’t believe how much fun I’d been missing out on all these years. Coming from Mississippi there isn’t a prominent cyclocross series, group or anything too accessible so I didn’t even know about the sport until that event.

For those that don’t know, cyclocross is a form of bike racing.  Events consist of many laps of a short course featuring pavement, wooded trails, grass, steep hills and obstacles requiring the rider to quickly dismount and carry the bike while navigating the obstruction and remounting in one motion. Many of the best cyclocross riders cross train in other cycling disciplines since the emphasis is on aerobic endurance and bike-handling skills.

So now, I have been given this beautiful opportunity from the Hudz-Subaru team to be a development rider for their women’s team which is full of awesome talent that I can learn from and be a part of. After Cross Vegas I received my Blue frames and two kits.  It was all falling into place and time to learn what it means to race cyclocross. Once the bike was all together, I took it on a couple of easy dirt road rides just to get a feel for the bike and the difference of road versus trail versus a mountain bike. Wow -  what a combination of bike.

Next up was learning how to mount and dismount and jump over barriers, so off to Durango I headed for some help. I met up with Chad Wells and a couple of girls from the Fort Lewis College.  He gave us a quick lesson on the mechanics of throwing the leg and where to grab the bike when jumping off; then we practiced on the grass and gradually made our way to the barriers. It wasn’t pretty but I managed to slowly dismount, make it over the barriers and then get back on, a small goal obtained!

After a couple of weeks and LOTS of practicing, lots of falls and more bruises than I can count, I wanted to go back to Durango to try my hand again – this time at the practice races. I was nervous, even if it was practice I like to see how far I can push myself and I didn’t want to embarrass myself or interfere with anyone else’s rhythm. I was slow, sloppy, choppy and wasted so much energy trying to make it all come together. But over the next three days, I became more fluid, more efficient, and more comfortable pushing myself to the limit while still managing to make it over the barriers.

It is a different hurt but like Rebecca Much said, it is so much fun hurting that bad when it is cyclocross.

So here goes, my first pro cyclocross season, my first race this weekend and I can’t wait. Come back in a week or so and check out the progress of the team and see if I survived my first race :)

Cierra Smith – Mountain Biking

Sport: Mountain Biking – Downhill
Home: Nevada
Birthdate: 8/9/95
Other Sports/Accomplishments: volleyball, soccer,  and I get good grades. (or I can’t race)
Favorite Athletes: Steve Peat, Racheal Atherton
Favorite College Team: UNR – University of Reno Nevada. Go Wolf Pack!
Favorite Pro Team: Well, for bikes. Santa Cruz Syndicate.
Favorite Sports Drink: Gatorade!
Favorite Workout Music: Rap
Favorite Place to Shop: Hollister, Aeropostale
Hobbies and Interests: Listening to music, hanging out with friends, and riding my bike
Superstition: Hmmm, I don’t go to the bathroom before a race because I think it makes me go faster.
Best Moment: winning my first natioanl title
Dream Job: Professional downhill mountain bike racer.
Favorite Books/TV Shows: I have so many I can’t narrow it down.
Pet Peeves: Really thick socks

What has been your biggest accomplishment?
Getting on the team I’m on and winning three national titles.

What advice would you give to up and coming female athletes?
Don’t get frustrated. If someone tells you you’re not good enough or fast enough make that your motivation to prove them wrong.

Competitive Highlights: 2009 USA Cycling MTB National Championships, 1st Place; 2009 Mammoth Bar Downhill, 2nd Place Pro Women; 2009 National Gypsy Downhill, 3rdPlace  Pro Women; 2009 Northstar Downhill Series Race, 1st Place; 2009 Spring Thaw Downhill, 1st Place Expert; 2009 Sea Otter Downhill, 1st Place; 2009 Fontana City National, ist Place.

Phenomenal Women Everywhere

(Editor’s Note:  Pretty Tough Team member Heidi Johnson-Fry is a champion duathlete from Montana. This is her account of the recent World Duathlon Championships).

Phenomenal women everywhere!

I just returned from the World Duathlon Championships, in North Carolina, thinking just that. The weekend was an amazing experience. Women, of all ages and from all over the world, worked incredibly hard to get there and we all shared a similar passion.

I finished the race, in the pouring rain, 4th in my age group and was the 1st American. I was ecstatic, thrilled and totally pumped about my race. However, I personally thought there were women there who were so much more impressive than I.

Participating in the World Championships,  I realized that a role model doesn’t have to be older than you, faster/better than you or famous by any means.

During the course tour, I met a woman from Canada who was racing in the age group above me. She had a full time job, is the mother of two young daughters and here she was, pursuing a dream. You working moms have my utmost respect. How on Earth do you do it?

As I was stretching, on race day, I saw two older women from Great Britain. They seemed so excited to be racing and I glanced down at their calves (where they mark your age group) to see that are in the 65-69 age group.  In that moment, I thought, “how cool are these two!”  These women are officially role models to me.

As I silently mouthed the word “wow” I glanced to my right. There was my own daughter, mimicking my stretching. I smiled and threw back my invisible cape as I hugged her and she gave me a high five on the way to the starting line.

There, I met a fellow American who was worried about her uniform because she was self conscious of her belly area. I asked her why and her reply was “I just had a baby.” Mind you, this race is a 10K run (6.2 miles) followed by a 40K bike (24 miles) and a 5K run (3.1 miles) AND you had to qualify to get there.  In absolute awe, I ensured her that she looked great and reminded her that she was, after all, at the World Championships. Wow, again.

By now, I was just smiling at the oh-so-impressive company I was in.  In complete and utter amazement, I focused for my race start.  It was raining like crazy and I was feeling so blessed to be surrounded by the athletes participating in the competition. Before, during and after that race I thought to myself, “wow, phenomenal women everywhere” just like the ones I am writing about now!

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