Race Predictions - Two days to the Enduro

It started with that heavy-head feeling. Then a few errant coughs and sneezes. Soon after, the throat was sore, and my body was tired. It’s official … I’m sick.

Of course. Two days before the 72.5-mile ride I have trained five months for, I get sick. I suppose I could blame the recent bout of cooler weather, or my husband who brought the vile virus into the house to begin with, but I won’t. People get sick. That’s life. Correction – that’s my life two days before a race.

Nevertheless, I thought it would be fun to make some race predictions, at the risk of what superstitious people might see as jinxing myself. So here it goes.

I predict I will finish both the Laramie Enduro Mountain Bike Race and the Copper Triangle road race, which takes place next weekend, Aug. 7. I predict it will take everything I have and more to finish the Enduro. I predict I will feel like crying, quitting and dying, but I will do only the former of the three. There may be tears – there will probably be blood.

After doing a solid 50 miles of singletrack last Friday, I took two epic crashes, both of which dotted my body with a nice painting of black and blue marks and red scrapes. I predict I will probably add to those on Saturday, although I predict I will not actually hurt myself badly enough to stop. I predict I will wish I had given myself an excuse to stop, but, finding none – I will continue until I die or finish. I predict despite my massage yesterday and daily treatments and stretches, that my neck will hurt so bad I’ll want to yank my head off.

I predict it will be fairly cool with some decent cloud cover. I’m an optimist, so I predict it will not rain. I predict I will have to walk the last climbing section of the headquarters trail (fellow Enduroans know what this means).

I predict (and pray to any God who will listen) that I will finish in less than 10 hours, and at the finish line I will want to drink lots of beer, but I will be too exhausted to do so. I predict my race partner, Jim, will lift my spirits and I will lift his. I predict we’ll have several good stories to tell by the end of the day.

I predict I will tell myself I am never doing this race or any other of its kind again. I predict this will be a lie.

So there it is. The day after the race the plan is to go up to Yellowstone and Jackson to detox from the saddle for the few days, then come back to town and repeat on a road bike the following Saturday. I predict I will worry less and take that race easier than the Enduro.

Hopefully I will come back a winner for having finished both races. I can’t even consider having one of them being the first race I don’t finish in my cycling life. Positive thoughts.

One final prediction: I predict these next two weekends will be fun in only the sick way races that take all day to complete can be. Wish me luck … I might need it!

Too bad, so sad

Have you ever found yourself reading a really good book that happens to be really sad? More importantly, did you ever notice that a huge proportion of books ARE really sad?

This is the realization I came to a few weeks ago when a friend came over to La Casa de Hughes (actually, more like La Duplex de Hughes) for dinner. She works as an LPN at a nursing home, and had a depressed patient she was worried about. She thought it would help cheer her if she could spend of her ample free time reading some good books.

“No problem,” I told her, knowing that my husband has fought to keep every single book he’s ever owned, including his textbook on Medieval Russian Literature from his junior year of college. Let me tell you how thrilled I have been to lug heavy boxes across the country in countless moves for books he will never so much as open again. Yet I digress.

What this means is we have one of those huge, industrial shelves that normally hold pots in a restaurant holding books in our office.

So, taking my friend up the stairs, I was sure I’d find something for her patient to read. After all, I had read almost everything on those packed shelves, and there are many wonderful books in there I really love.

“We just need to make sure that they’re not sad,” my friend said. “I tried looking through my books at home, but I couldn't find any that weren't sad!”

I started diving through the spines on the shelf, reading out some of my favorites.

“A Farewell to Arms – sad. The Color of Purple – kind of depressing. Book of Lost Things – gloomy. Marley and Me – God no!”

Textbooks notwithstanding, it seemed almost all of my books were either weird (I love John Irving, the freak) or super sad.

I’m not sure why I didn’t realize this before. I even made the mistake of taking Cormac McCarthy’s The Road to read during our Costa Rican honeymoon last year, only to end up buried for hours in the hammock on our private patio overlooking a magical rainforest, hiccupping sobs of tears with each page I turned. And this is my idea of a good time.

So I settled on Seabiscuit and Memoirs of a Geisha – not entirely uplifting, but at least not bawl-your-eyes-out reads.

The experience got me thinking about good books, and why they’re sad – why they almost have to have some sort of sadness to make them interesting. Perhaps it’s the genre I’m into – I don’t dig the scifi or mystery or romance stuff, so I guess the kinds of books I enjoy must rely on drama to build climax because they can’t rely on other tools of storytelling, such as mystery or a lot of suspense. I love following awesome characters in their stories, and to identify with awesome characters' trials and tribulations, there might be some tears involved.

Below I’ve created a list of books I love and think are great reads, but I’d love to hear about your favorites. Give me your suggestions – and what do you love about the books you love? I can’t wait to hear. I’m always looking to add more to my list, and don’t worry — I’ve got plenty of Kleenex.

Kat’s list of five favorite summer reads (nothing too heavy):

1.) Three Cups of Tea

I’m in the middle of this book right now, but I’m in love. This is such an uplifting and inspiring story of a man’s journey to build schools in war-torn Pakistan. It puts our lives as spoiled Americans in perspective.

2.) Travels with Charley

What a great summer read. The story of John Steinbeck, touring America in his camper with his poodle, Charley. My favorite part? His observation that the interstate system has homogenized the American experience. And this was in 1960.

3.) A Prayer for Owen Meany

This is my favorite book of all time. I love it for the way John Irving pulls you into his weird tales of perfectly ordinary people.

4.) The Secret Life of Bees

A tale of triumph and the female sprit, as well as a lesson in entomology, all wrapped into one heartwarming and empowering story.

5.) Water for Elephants

An enchanting tale of the circus life and the depression, which leads to a lot of action and a fantastic finish.

Bike to Work Challenge: DAY 50!

Riding to work today felt just a little different.

The wind blowing in from the west was the same, as was the flow of traffic and my path to work.

But there seemed to be something a little different - maybe it was the smugness I was feeling at achieving the first quarter of my goal.

In March, I issued a challenge to myself to Bike to Work 200 days this year. I think this is quite a feat considering I live in a place with some of the shitiest weather you'll ever see - but that was kind of the point. If I could do it here, people in other places really have no excuse.

In the past three and a half months since I began, I have slipped and fallen three times on ice, ridden in 50 mph winds more than three times, and witnessed some of the most amazing vistas right down the hill from my house. One morning, when I was pedaling with my head down, I almost ran into an antelope buck who was crossing the street, trying to get out of my way. I think it freaked me out as much as him.

50 days of riding means I have biked to work an equivalent of 300 miles so far. It's not an earth-shattering number, considering I ride 100 in a weekend with my training, but it has saved nearly a full tank of gasoline for my car.

Of course, my feeling of smugness eroded somewhat when I realized that 50 days in 3.5 months puts me exactly a half month behind my goal, and if this is when it's warm, how many days am I going to get when it starts getting cold?

I didn't know if 200 days was a realistic goal when I set it, but once I started looking at the calendar and realized that vacations, retreats and travel for work would eat up my possible slack, I decided I would allow myself to make it up with bonus trips. These are trips I would normally take with my car (like visits the store, to run short errands, etc.), but I count them as a day if I do them on my bike and they are a comparable distance.

In short, I have lots more work to do - work that will get much more interesting once the snow starts again in September. But until then, I'm enjoying the sun on my face and the beautiful ride that is Laramie in the summer.

The Delinquent Blogger — Me

There are some people in this world who are on top of things. They go to the dentist every six months. They get their movies back to Blockbuster on time. They get their oil changed every 3,000 miles like clockwork. In short, they are in tune with the demands of life and they excel at meeting them.

I am not one of these people.

I am from the other kind of people. I lose my keys frequently. My cell phone goes dead on a regular basis from me forgetting to charge it. My house goes through cycles of clean and unclean, tidiness and disarray. My family members always get to celebrate their birthday with the arrival of my card about two months after their birthday. Sometimes I feel guilty about it, but mostly I think others should lower their expectations for me. It’s worked for my brother for years. If I had to characterize “untogetherness,” I would defend it by saying I’m not wholly neglectful; I’m merely a person who operates on cycles.

So it is not surprising to me to pull up my blog, only to see that my last post was March 24, when I began my personal bike-to-work challenge. You may be disappointed in my ability to keep everyone updated, but I want to tell you that you can at least feel satisfied knowing I will update eventually — I just like to build the suspense. For about four months. Once again, low expectations.

However, now that my summer classes and vacations are done until my mountain bike race July 31, I have my blog on my to-do list. So, although I’d like to pretend that I’m jealous of the first kind of people — the together, oil-changing, birthday-cards-on-time folks — I realize I’m somewhat flighty, preoccupied and unreliable in this sense. And you know what? I’m OK with that.

So stay tuned … I’m in a cycle of busting out some blog entries this summer. Finally!