Stuff you should know...

I'm paying homage to my favorite podcasters here, Josh and Chuckers, of Stuff You Should Know fame.

Since it's been a few weeks (okay a month) there's some stuff you should know.

First, I signed up for a half-marathon.

Second, then I signed up for a marathon.

Third, then I signed up for an Ironman.... Not!

But, the first two are true.  I won an entry to the Eugene Marathon/Half-Marathon at the Tumor Shooter race.  I couldn't resist signing up for the half.  I took one look at the course profile, surmised that the finish was going to be in the Stonehenge of American distance running (Hayward Field),  and clicked the mouse button.  Boo-yaa!  As for the marathon, I am one of the lucky runners to be picked for the Brooks Inspire Daily P.A.C.E team.  As a member of the team, I get to race in one the the Brooks sponsored Rock 'n Roll Marathons or Half-marathons.  So, San Diego it is!  My sister, Shorty, will also be racing the marathon for something like the third or fourth time (she had completed nine overall).  Look for me on the start line in my Night-life uniform. Trust me, you can't miss it.

Which brings me to this fine morning.  I am so nervous and preoccupied, that I put four scoops of grounds in the French press instead of three... ye-ah!  My apologies, if the verbage is verbose and frenetic.  It's not my fault.  I swear.

Major props and prayers to the GSM go out to my BFFs the Rydholm's as they race Ironman St. George. Also, sending mojo and juju to fellow Corvegans Gordie (NW Multisport owner) and Nick.

I am headed down to Eugene, OR this morning for the race expo and packet pick-up with a few of my training partners (Ger and JJ)... I checked out the list of vendors and it looks to be a good one.  Also very interested in checking out the Flap Jack Stack competition (they are going for a world record for highest stack of pancakes).

And who says it doesn't pay to be a superfan of track and field?  I followed the Drake and Penn relays on FloTrack last week-end.  They had a competition going to guess the winner/winning time of the High School Relay events.  Guess who won a free pair of shoes from RunningWarehouse.com for correctly prognosticating the H.S. Gilrs 4x800?! Who me?

And on a final note, it is official.  I set a new personal record for the bike commute from my house to work yesterday!  10:52 I didn't have to stop or slowdown at any stoplights.  No pedestrians were harmed in the process.  And, I even had to go slightly out of my way to avoid marching Army squabs in full dress uniform on their way to some flag ceremony on the OSU's Quad.

If you want to try and follow my race tomorrow online, supposedly you can enter my name or number (6723) on facebook or twitter.  I am going to try and set two PRs in one week-end (Friday counts)!

That's all my stuff?  Did I forget anything?

Oh, I did forget something!!!  I won the 200 IM at the Oregon State Short Course Masters Champs a couple weeks ago.  Not to mention, taking second in the 1650yd (20:39), second in the 100 yd. Fr (1:00.43), and first in the 500 yds.  I also swam three relays... butterfly in the Womens 200 Medley, kicking it in with a 30.54!  My masters swim team, CBATS, finished second in the Medium-size team competition.  Very cool.  Stay-tuned for information about our annual fundraiser for Coach Bill's fitness foundation in a few weeks.  Who says triathletes don't know how to swim?

Race report : Pychocross #2, cyclocross on half-marathon legs:

This is the continued account of the two-in-one-day-of-racing. I'm going to keep it short. The focus of the day was the half-marathon. The cyclocross race... cool down?

On a very Oregonian afternoon (clouds, damp, rain, mud), I brushed the cobwebs out of my sore running legs and mounted my 'cross bike for it's last race before Cyclocross Nationals. Ideally, this would have been a tune-up race. It would prove to be more of a skills challenge then I bargained for.

For one, my nemesis materialized at the starting line. Later she would explain that she is working to qualify for the Pro Elite Women's race at Nationals... deservedly and totally understandable. But that meant that this race would hurt. Alot.

I had some trouble getting my core temp up, and I had long since lost feeling in my toes and nose before the stat of the race. My start was lackluster, and my quads groaned into action. Within seconds I was on off-cambor rocky terrain that gave way to cakey mud. More quad groaning. Then a minute and a half into the race, I encountered the eight pack... I saw it, and I couldn't decide whether to shoulder or carry the bike. An eight pack. Eight. Barriers. Huh. Going over them as smoothly as possible, I realized that we had to negotiate this obstacle an extra time as the finish line was just up ahead. Yeah, I was right. This was going to hurt.

Hitting the 8-pack at the start.

A quick concrete section and then I encountered a single, high wooden barrier. After jumping back on the bike (looking down) and taking two pedal strokes to clip in, I plowed right into a sand volleyball pit. Cruelly, the course crossed the pit on one side, flipped a bitch and proceeded across the other side. I took the wrong line, the wrong turn radius, and the wrong simultaneously two-footed bike-straddling dead-stop that caused me to dismount for a third time in less than four minutes on the course. Oh, but that's not all.

I rounded about on a mud/dirt road, only five seconds behind my nemesis. We entered rocky single-track, with hidden logs and sticks beneath the leaf-cover. The course dropped into a dry creek bed and looked as if it would continue straight. Instead, I came to a complete stop, almost endo-ing over the handle bars as I realized my nemesis had made a 180 up a left-hand muddy run-up. Dude... I scrambled up the slope in traffic (two other women passed me here). And immediately entered single-track that wound, whipped, and ripped through the back lot of trees and briar bushes.

I passes one woman on the single-track as she negotiated a dropped chain. Then, I was caught by complete surprise by a submerged dip that buried the front wheel. It was only by the strength of my arms that I managed to plow through the giant puddle and up the chain-breaker hill that followed.

More single track, more turns, one more barrier, some stairs, a couple of 180s... and it was time to do the whole course over again. I worked my way up into 2nd, but I kept losing five sconds here and 3 seconds there to my nemesis. It was on the fourth lap that she exited my field of vision and I was left to consider just how badly I wanted to make chase. I wanted to, but I took a vote among various body parts, and both my legs voted "no" and that was the end of that.

I managed to make the barriers look easy, but everything else in the race was a trial. And I mocked myself by dismounting just before the finish, humbly tripping and stumbling over the line carrying my embattled bike.

In all fairness, yes, I did race a half-marathon that morning... but, Nemesis, you still would have wiped the floor with me. Such was your mastery of the treacherous course and your late season fitness. Props.

Cheers! USAC Cyclcross Nationals race report coming soon!

Ignite Corvalis 2, a.k.a my Thursday Night

I'm checking out my twitter feeds yesterday afternoon. I notice a number of tweets from a "Beer Bus" mentioning that many people from Portland are actually on a bus with beer and wifi that is Corvallis-bound. My first thought was "they have to offer Portlanders beer to entice them to come to Corvallis". But then, I became curious as to what exactly they were coming for. Answer: WIN09 and Ignite Corvallis 2. Click the link to find out exactly what was going on... but I was very interested.

I had seen twitter-fuss about Ignite Corvallis 2 about a month ago. From the website I got the impression that this was the MOTHER of all WIBC events (for the newbies, that is "Wouldn't It be Cool", WIBC). Basically, people from the community get 5 minutes to present a 20-slide powerpoint that is on a 15-second timer. The topic: anything that you feel like talking about. Presentations need to be compelling, entertaining, punchy, and not-necessarily-meaningful. I really wanted to give one (I'll hold my subject for the eventuality that I will get to present someday)! But, I had missed the call for applications. And at the time, I put it beyond the back of my mind and that was that.

Then I see the message about it being last night! A mind-check of the things I have to do suggests to me that there is nothing that can't be put off until tomorrow. I love it when this happens, makes me feel so important (not!). I peace out of work around 6:00 and head over to WIN09... conveniently located on OSUs campus for my walking pleasure. At WIN09, I munched on baked brie, chicken skewers, made a salad out of the dipping veggies, and perused the room for interesting people to talk to. I met a guy who works for Korvis Automation, a company that makes Affymetrix machines (very interesting to dorks like me). He was excited that I knew more about the technology than he did (in all fairness he was an engineer from a different arm of the company and was also great fun to chat up). I received some yummy treats (pumpkin chai cupcake) and unsure-of-the-yumminess-factor treats (bacon cupcake) from a woman that is trying to open Rocket Queen Cupcake shop in downtown Corvallis (still needs a little financing).

After the poster session/chattyhour, it was time to set Corvallis on fire... er, Ignite Corvallis 2. Most presenters did not disappoint. One guy offered a Masters in IT in 1,680 characters by boiling down the 12 classes of his Masters program into 12x140 character tweets (I now have a masters in IT :-). Another guy introduced us to "train porn"... the cult practice of trainspotting, no, taking good pictures of trains. His was especially entertaining because every slide could have been turned into a "that's what she said..." moment, by design. Even the mayor got up there for his 5 minutes... comparing our community to a garden (not a huge stretch of the imagination given the number of gardens in this community!). Other memorables included a woman talking about her mid-life crisis spent couchsurfing around Europe and a guy who compared social networking to sex with a funny yet clear message that the best social networking (sex) is achieved by giving, listening, learning, relinquishing some control, and ending everything you say with the words "in bed", as if you were a fortune cookie.

All-in-all. Funny, fantastic night... amazing to be surrounded by so many people who embrace the WIBC spirit! Sorry you missed it? Ignite Portland 7 is Nov. 18. And even better, there will be a Beer Bus w/wifi going up from Corvallis. I'll try to post info about this when I hear it. And I hear that Ignite Corvallis 3 is in the works. They probably need help making it bigger and better... so get your proposal ready!

The town I live in.

Cow-town. That's right. I live in the Oregon equivalent of Greeley, CO. But, talk to any resident of Greeley (ahem, Leah) and they will extol the virtues of their town. So, I will attempt to give the city-girl impression of Corvallis, OR now that I have lived here for a bit.

Aside from the lack of a 3-second delay (very key in Colorado) between when my traffic light turns red and the opposing direction turns green (making running yellow lights on a bike a bit treacherous), the absence of many big box stores and a shopping center (Target is the most notable of these... even though there is a major distribution center just 15 miles East... Go figure!), and the complaints I hear about how far "Southtown" (the part I live in) is from town proper (a beautiful 15 min bike ride through two riverside parks or a scarce 7 minute drive from the city center... please, let's redefine "far").  Yes, despite all these minor complaints...

Impression #1: Saturday Market. Boulder had one of these. I went occasionally, but often it seemed to me that the produce I got from the market (with a few exceptions) was the same quality I could get from Whole Paychecks or Wild Oats anytime of the week and no cheaper. I went mainly for the ethnic food and the periodic art festivals that sprang up among the food vendors. And it was crowded. Corvallis on the other hand is set on a fairly wide street. It boasts some of the best people watching I've ever encountered. There is cheap, farm fresh produce, meat, wine, cheeses, jams, honeys, eggs and flowers. All brought to you by rough hands and carharts. This is where I saw my first green eggs, got my first taste of marionberry jelly, nibbled my first sheep cheese (once you go sheep, you'll never go...). And lest I forget, you can also meet a black guy.

Jeremy and Tara Stand of the Bronx, with 1-year-old son Osiris, pose with Corvallis resident Jeff Oliver at the Meet a Black Guy booth near the Saturday Corvallis Farmers’ Market. -Corvallis Gazette Times

Coming soon: Meet a Missourian

Impression #2: Berry Picking. Rare is the backyard in this town that doesn't have a blueberry bush, a cherry tree, apple trees, rasberries, or strawberries. I heard a story last Thursday from a guy who had seen a cherry tree overhanging the fence of a friends backyard. So, the tree didn't belong to the friend, but the friend urged this guy to go ahead into the neighbors back yard and pick as many cherries as he wanted... "they won't mind". So this guy takes a bucket over to the tree one evening and starts picking cherries. The residents also come out and pick some cherries this evening and they run into each other in the backyard. Rather than be angry or bemused at the finding a person in their backyard, they realize that they know each other, happily pick cherries, pit some, munch, and chat well into the evening. This also illustrates another small town fact that the "seven degrees of Kevin Bacon" is more like the "three degrees of Kevin Bacon" around here.

Blueberry picking at Anderson Farms, 0.5 miles from Corvallis.
Total haul: 5 lbs (for $6.25) in my bucket. 1/2 lb in my belly.

Impression #3:  Workaholics.  These are a rare breed.  The halls of the office are vacant by 5:30 pm.  Everyone is instead, very efficient at work in order to get out the door to berry picking, family, the rope swing on the Alsea river, or to hit the trails.  You will see people making a conference call from a camp site after mountain biking for five hours.  Stopping in at a wifi hot spot to send off a work e-mail.  Or my personal favorite, pull up on a road ride for a few minutes to send off an important text message.  Because I frequently use my runs and rides to think through science questions as work or organize my thoughts on a particular experiment, I feel a bit of kinship for this type of work ethic.  I call it the Get Out approach to working.  Enjoy your work, but enjoy your life more.

So Corvallisians, I get it.  The never-ending rain (to bring on the fruity bounty), the eight hours of daylight in the winter (more than compensated for by the 16-hours of daylight in the summer), and the 30+ coffee shops in a town of 50,000 (to fuel the awesomeness to be had in 16 hours of daylight).  Props for sticking out that winter.

Mom's Day

Occasionally I like to give props to people I know (or would like to know) for doing something extraordinary, out-of-the-ordinary, or ordinary but with flair. And in the spirit of Mother's Day, I'm giving some major ones to my Mumsters (and my Dad, but his day is later).

Come June 12, Mumsters and Pappa-choos will be riding the Katy Trail in Missouri from end-to-end. That's 110 miles over three days across gravel/dirt paths in some of the most beautiful river bluff country in Missouri. They are doing this to raise money for Habitat for Humanity in an effort with the MO-Hab riders (get it? Missouri, MO, Moab???). And to get ready for the ride, they rode 44 miles last week-end. That is almost farther than I would have biked on a given week-end (we'll get to that later). Freakin' awesome. It wasn't to terribly long ago that Mumsters (aka Maggie) had to get back surgery and had trouble walking because of her knees. And I continually worried about both of my parents lack of exercise because of the draw on their time from their electric business.

So, I just wanted to hand out some props and say that I thought I couldn't be prouder of my Mom. She continues to amaze me. You go girl!