Country Roads, take me home......

This post will be a departure from my normal blog posts about athletic endeavors, but I felt compelled to put my thoughts into text.

In 2002, I transferred from Arizona State University to West Virginia University for reasons that aren't relevant here. I had never been to West Virginia until the day I packed my little 1992 Plymouth Laser to the brim and followed another car with a flying WV sticker on it, into Morgantown. This marked the beginning of three amazing years of my life.

There's something indescribable about not only WVU, but the state of West Virginia. To sound completely cliche and quote John Denver, it truly is "almost heaven". After having lived in the desert for 2 years, I think I may have shed a tear when that first fall arrived and the trees revealed the most beautiful natural artwork I had ever seen. And there's certainly something to be said about the people from West Virginia, friendly, down to earth and tons of fun, plus they REALLY love football and beer. I'll never forget getting into an argument with my first roommate, Lindsay over what a toboggan was. If you don't know what a toboggan is in upstate NY versus WV, let me enlighten you. In a tiny little dorm room, Lindsay is searching frantically for her "toboggan". Toboggan as I knew growing up here. I'm thinking and saying, "you don't have a toboggan here, it won't fit in our room. What are you talking about?". Toboggan she was referencing here. You can see why we weren't quite on the same page with this one. Regardless, spending three years in West Virginia and traveling to places like Oak Hill (pronounced O'Kill if you're from there) left an indelible impression on me.

While I did not grow up in West Virginia, or spend many years there, I feel as if it's somehow become a part of me. It's hard to describe, but when I hear Country Roads and sing the words, "take me home", in those moments it feels like home and I miss it immensely. It's not the home I grew up in, or the home I grew to know after many years, but a special place in my life and my heart that will always be there. It's a feeling, a connection that's pretty much indescribable.

So when I watched my Facebook feed and news channels start to report the destruction from the recent floods, my heart ached. My connection to WV lives through my friends, some of whom still live in WV or who's families are still there. Their childhood towns decimated by floodwaters and their friends and families directly affected by the devastation. Places they remember visiting as a child, completely under water.

While the sadness was swift to set in, the stories of community and support that started to emerge from the mud were what I remembered of West Virginia. Brad Paisley brought heightened national attention and donations for the flood victims, by starting a GoFundMe account and raising over $500K. WVU Alumnus Ken Kendrick pledged to match $500K worth of alumni donations. My fellow Chi Omega and friend Chelsea runs the Kanawha-Charleston Animal Shelter. She spent, and continues to spend, countless hours providing food, coordinating and donating medical care and reuniting pets who's families likely lost everything. These are the stories, these are the people that make West Virginia great and make it "home" to so many of us that only spent a brief time there.

So what's the purpose of the blog really? Well part of it, was to try and explain an inexplicable connection that I feel, so in that respect I have failed. I can only hope that you have the same sort of connection to something in your life, so you will understand the feeling. The second part of it, was to hopefully raise some awareness and convince you to donate. I've linked donation pages in the text above. So if you've spent several minutes reading this post, please take another 2 minutes and support the relief efforts.

Thanks for reading & thanks for donating today!

~e

Race Report: Church Creek Time Trial (Rain, Wind & Pancake Puppies)

When I purchased my first bike back in 2011, I had no intentions of doing triathlons, but somehow that's where I ended up. It's a wonder it's taken me this long to do my first cycling race. But then again, I purchased a road bike without knowing anyone else who owned one and without knowing how to change the gears. True story, I took my bike out to the park to practice using my spin shoes and ended up walking it home because I couldn't figure out how to down shift. I got out the owners manual, flipped the bike upside down and figured it out. Boy have we come a long way! 

So fast forward to 2016. I've decided to take a break from long distance triathlon and really any sort of hard, scheduled training plan. This year I wanted to just do the workouts I felt like doing, not the one's I HAD to do. Over the last year, I'd heard some talk of a women's racing team out of 90+ cycling and I was kind of intrigued. I decided I was going to check it out. I looked at the race schedule and decided I would try a few time trials before jumping into any other races.

For those who don't know what a time trial is a detailed explanation is here. A summary is basically that each rider starts individually and races against the clock. Lowest times win within your category. This particular time trial was 40K (just under 25 miles) and held on the eastern shore of Maryland. The eastern shore is known for it's lack of elevation and is notoriously windy.

I looked at the local schedule and the first TT I could attend was May 21st in Church Creek, MD. I thought, "Ok, flat but windy. I can do that". I convinced Roy to join me and we both signed up.

Pre-Race:
As the week got shorter, the weather forecast remained the same. Cold (50's) and rainy (100% chance). It looked like it was going to be miserable and a monsoon. The event website said they ride, rain or shine, so I decided that I had already put my mind to racing, so I was going to just figure out a way to deal with the weather. The pre-race communication was non-existant. I didn't get an email after I signed up and the website was a bit confusing referencing a high school and middle school, but no name or address and I couldn't seem to find it on a map. In comes the experienced 90+ teammates to the rescue. I have to say a HUGE thank you to both Nick and Nate for being so informative, supportive and responsive. As my prerace nerves were on the rise and the fact that I knew NOTHING of what to expect except rain, I was getting a bit anxious. Nick and Nate answered every question I had from what to wear, to the address of where to park, to the fact that "packet pick up" was simply picking up your number.  Roy and I, or better yet, Fred and Doris, were on their way to their first road race! :)

Fred & Doris

Race Day:
Roy and I left Baltimore at about 7:15am and arrived at the parking lot around 9:15. It was raining pretty hard when we arrived, so we took our time and tried to get dressed in the car. I figured we should stay dry and warm as long as possible because we had a solid probably 2 hours of being cold and wet, when you calculate in the transfer time from parking lot to start and back. 

Before the race

My start time was 10:20:30 so we left the parking lot around 9:35 just to give ourselves plenty of time. I opted for my Thermo Fisher cycling kit (because I didn't get a chance to connect with John or Nate to get Christine's 90+ jersey), arm sleeves, long fingered gloves and booties. I wore Ramsy's giant Hilti rain jacket to the start to try and stay as dry as possible. I figured I SHOULD be working so hard that I would be warm, regardless of the wind and rain. We got to the start line and it was simply a 10x10 tent on the right lane of the road. ABRT, who put on the race had a tech tent by a port a pot and they let us leave our rain jackets there, use the facilities and Steve/Scott(?) talked us through what to expect and told us to just go and have fun.

TOTALLY fake happy face

Then we rode back over to start. The girl in front of me had a bit of a stutter, so I ended up starting about 10 seconds after my start time, but no big deal or at least I hope I didn't take those extra 10 seconds into my time. Off I went. I really had no game plan except to ride hard the entire time. I settled into low zone 5 HR and just kept making sure I had steady cadence and good pressure in the legs. My average RPM of 96 was pretty good, considering I didn't have that metric on my display. A time trial is lonely. You are out there racing, ALL by yourself. I passed the two women in front of me within the first 2 miles and then didn't see anyone until the very end. And honestly, there's not much to say about this course. It's pancake flat. It was raining sometimes hard, sometimes light, but I was soaked within a few minutes. I had to take off my glasses because they kept fogging up and I couldn't see the road. A few times the grooves in the road were causing deep puddles, so I adjusted where I was riding when necessary. At one point, my bike started to drift towards the edge of the road, it was odd I had all I could do to correct it and I heard the lose gravel kick out as I almost went into the grass and certainly into the overflowing ditch. That would have been a terribly hilarious story to tell, but luckily it was avoided. My garmin was totally off on my mileage for some reason, so I just tried to pay attention to the course markers to understand where I was on the course. The first half of the course had a wicked tailwind. I was cruising, but of course as we all know, a tailwind eventually turns into a headwind and the last 12 miles were excruciating. It took me about 33 minutes to ride the first half, which would equate to about 22.7mph. Then I rode the second half in about 42 minutes, which would equate to about 17.7mph, which doesn't sound too bad, but boy did it hurt, as evidenced by my face at the finish.

Real hurting face

I somehow missed the sign for 15K left and was riding along thinking, this is the longest, most painful 5K EVER and then I saw the 10K left sign and thought, "thank god!". I could JUST barely see someone in front of me, so I thought maybe I'll try to add a few gears and try to close the gap. Nope. I had all I could do to hang on. I crossed the finish line, which to be honest, I wasn't a 100% sure it was actually the finish (It was a blue van with these weird panels to catch your bib) and rode down the road a bit thinking, "I hope I really am done". I grabbed our jackets from the tech tent and rode back up the course to catch Roy and found him just a few minutes after he had finished. Then we had the wonderful pleasure of riding 5.5 miles back to the car. My legs were cooked. I dropped into my small gear and I had all I could do to keep my legs moving, forget about any sort of cadence. This big stupid truck with a trailer on it, decided it had to back into the driveway and didn't get it straight in. So he stopped, pulled out and tried again. So we had to stop and wait for him to finish what he was doing. I was TERRIFIED that if I took my foot out of my pedal and stood up, I wasn't going to be able to get going again. Luckily, that was not the case. Off we went back to the car.

We got back to the car, changed into dry clothes and walked over to check results. Turns out I took 4th in my category out of 9. My only goals were to not come in last and not get hypothermia and I succeeded in both! Then we headed to Denny's for a gigantic breakfast, including the delicious pancake puppies (think hush puppies, made with pancake batter), hot chocolate and a lot of other yummy food.

So lessons learned from my first time trial. It hurts to go hard. Rain and cold aren't nearly as bad as you think they are. Racing against the clock is tricky (I missed 3rd place by 5.3 seconds, but to a 90+ teammate so it's all good). Hot cocoa and fried pancakes are delicious. I'll be back!