Beautiful Representation of Essential Agreements!

Our crew chief Anne used our essential agreements that we created at the crew retreat to make this:

I really love it!

Crew Retreat

This weekend, we convinced 8 of our 10 crew (the other two had work conflicts) to come up to the mountains with us and talk about, plan, strategize, and prepare for our race.

Thanks to Moxie Cycling for pretty much always reading my mind! These are the people who are dedicating so much to making our dream happen with us.

 

We all got up to the mountains Friday and just enjoyed a relaxed evening together. Then, Saturday we got up, stayed in our PJ's, and got to work all day.

 

 

We started with the big goal: break the 2 person female record. Go big, right? We are.

Then we started working on what we call "essential agreements." This is our foundation of how we strive to treat each other. It is really important to us to have a strong culture of respect and a common goal on our team, so we spent a lot of time discussing this.



 

 

 

We took a quick break for a little ride, and then headed into the logistics portion of the day. This part included little cars, names to represent people, a spinning clock thing, and a lot of thought!

 

 

Yes, I am holding my name upside down. Anne says that we are just the "jocks" or "muscle" or "meatheads" in this operation, and the crew is the brain. Clearly, that is correct!

Sunday, we had a lazy morning (Did I mention that Leslie brought me those incredible sticky buns from Florida?!! She rode 70 miles with 3 dozen in a backpack to bring to the retreat! Awesome).
Then we headed out for another little ride in the mountains.

Sporting my new long-sleeved jersey from MooMotion that I will tell you more about later!

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend, with some great work and incredible people. We are so grateful for our team already!



Interviews with our Team

Through the Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation, I have gotten the chance to be introduced to Carrie Regan, who is an awesome athlete, coach, and video producer. She was excited to hear about our race, and wanted to interview us. Check them out!

Part 1: My incredible racing partner, Dani

Part 2: Lil' ole' me!

 

 

What do you think? I am a little nervous that I might sound a little crazy...or awesome...or crazy...not really sure!

A week in the life of 2-person RAAM training

This was a particularly fun, and yet challenging week, so I thought I would share :-)

Monday: 5 am alarm, and off to train with Kate, my strength trainer. She works me HARD and I leave exhausted.

Work all day teaching some kiddos.
Head from work to a dinner with the wonderful founders of Moxie Cycling, our newest team sponsor!

Deb and Brooke are phenomenal women who are chasing a dream and throwing themselves into it with all of their heart....sound familiar? They are fantastic, and I can't wait to share more about them with you! It was an inspiring and uplifiting dinner!

Tuesday: AM I do an hour on my bike trainer. There is nothing I have to do in particular, which is nice. Usually, I watch some serious project runway!

On my way to work, I dropped in to get my allergy shots. Yuck.

Worked for a while...with the kiddos

Then, I had an appointment with Dr. Josh Glass to take care of my back and shoulders. He is a miricle worker.

Then, I walked upstairs to see Eddie O'dea who is the bike fitter of 55nine. He has been working with me on my bike fits for a while now. I want them to be the perfect combination of aero and comfortable for RAAM! It is actually amazing--I tell him what is irritating me about my bike, he uses a laser and some tools and TA-DA! It's fixed and I feel better. If you have ANY need to tweak your bike fit (or get a first bike fit), he is very talented.

 Then, I went home and hopped on my bike (inside). I had 2.5 hours of riding however I wanted, so I mix it up to keep it interesting. The last 1.5 hours were a prety tough workout (4 hours total). By the time I was finally done, I didn't want to make dinner, so George made me a green smoothie. He's a sweetie!

Wednesday morning, I headed over to Energy Lab to ride with Dani. It's nice to take quick break and train somewhere different (then my own living room!). We also like to have one weekday where we touch base. Team RAAM means you have to be communicating many times a day to solve problems and plan for the race, so we like to be sure of at least one face-to--face weekday. 

 Wednesday afternoon, I had a faculty meeting at work. Then, I had time to squeeze in a 20 minute run. Then Dani and I headed over to Dr. Stan Beecham's house. He is the sports pyscologist that I worked with before. We sat down and talked about the race, our training, our mental strategies, and most importantly, our relationship with each other! It was an invaluable evening, and we look forward to spending time working with him again before the race!

 Thursday morning is just like Tuesday. I get up and spend an hour on my bike trainer.



Head to work!

Come back home and get on the trainer. This time, I watched Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief (because I am really about 12 years old), and it was awesome. Then, George joined me for the last 1.5 hours (total of 4 hours of riding just like tuesday), where we watched some summer olympics, which was great. It was a HARD workout, and I was SPENT.

Friday morning I went to see Kate the strength trainer again, and I was pretty tired going into this workout. We did a ton of core work, and my belly still hurts three days later!

That evening, Dani, George, Jason, Anne, and I all had dinner to work on the gear list and the race strategy. It was a great evening, and we got a ton done! Jason has prepared an incredible gear list, and we are working hard to gather everything on it!

Saturday George and I drove up to Canton and rode our super hilly ride that goes over Burnt Mountain. We were on the bikes for 5 hours, and it was a great (yet tough) ride!

Then, we spent the afternoon enjoying being with my family in Canton at their new home (my parents are moving closer to me, and I can't WAIT!).  Then we drove up to their house in Dalton.

Sunday I got up and headed out on my bike. The weather was initially beautiful. Then the wind started to seriously pick up. It got rough out there, but I spent another 5 hours on the bike and got up Fort Mountain (and ate a snickers at the top--it's my thing). It was really peaceful, and there were very few cars, which was great. The ride home from the mountain felt like it would never ever end. Eventually I got the magical tailwind and made it back.

Spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing at my parents, and then we drove back to Atlanta. We went to the grocery store to get stocked up for the week. We ended the week by watching the re-premier of the Walking Dead. I love a few good zombies.

Strava January Base Milage Blast

Strava is new to me.


If you are new to Strava, the basic idea is this: social media with your garmin files.

You do a ride or a run, you log it, you follow friends who do the same.

Now, there are plenty of people who take this REALLY seriously, but for me, it is just really fun. Training for RAAM has plenty of things that aren't fun, but getting to see how many miles you ride and compare your ride, is actually a blast.

Now, George told me that Strava was doing a Januay Base milage challenge, and that given what I am training for right now, I should join--so Join I did (along with 46,384 of my closest friends around the world).


Now that January is over, my final over all standing for this challenge is 146th place overall.

And 6th woman! Pretty cool, right?!

I hope some of these other folks who beat me are training for RAAM or resting some in February!

For me, the crazy part is that this is only month number 1 in my training!

Happy riding!