Hooray for short weeks!

Our weekend in Durango was great - somehow it didn't rain or snow while we were riding our bikes - but also pretty exhausting! So I am very glad that this is a short week. I haven't been doing too much training but masters swimming Tuesday and tonight was really tough so that's added to my exhaustion.

Yesterday I set a date for my prelim. Scary! I have to turn in a research prospectus in about 2 weeks. Then 2 weeks later I take a two-day written exam. Then the next week (on July 1) I take an oral exam with all of my committee members. It is an intimidating process. Apparently prelims are done different everywhere - in my dept you are supposed to take them within a year of defending your Masters. So it doesn't necessarily mean I am any closer to finishing my PhD!!!! Haha, that is a funny thought, finishing my PhD - I hardly feel like I've begun. Anyway, June will be very busy.

I'm hopefully going hiking (snowshoeing?) with Chris, Nick, and Levi tomorrow night and Saturday up near Mt. Bierstadt and Mt Evans. So I want to do some picking up around the house so I don't have to do it Sunday! I'm going to upload some pictures from last weekend and then start cleaning. :)

Chris riding back to Durango after the time trial. I came in 3rd in my category :)

We decided good motivation for me to go fast in a TT would be to attach a donut to the end of my aero bars and say when I catch it, I can eat it. (Actually a donut in the middle of a race may or may not be a good idea)

We took a trip to Mesa Verde on Sunday. This is from Balcony House - very cool!

The devil cheering on riders on the way up Coal Bank Pass

Iron Horse Classic or bust!

Well Chris and I have the car packed and are ready to go to Durango! We've literally got a car full of wonderful things like bikes, oatmeal, water bottles, cd's ... what else could you want? One thing I would love is for the forecast to not be calling for an 80% chance of snow on Saturday in Silverton! I am going to remain optimistic that we will get to ride, and I'm trying to prepare myself for a slightly uncomfortable (wet/cold) ride.

Chris succeeded in raising $550 for the Lance Armstrong Foundation - that is great! I'm really looking forward to spending the weekend with him. Here is the profile of the ride, which will top out at 10,867 feet!



Oh yeah, today was a great day at work mainly because I had an amazing meeting with my adviser and some other folks. We talked about my ideas for research and they agreed that they sound good (yes!) and were anxious to get me started. Also Scott read my paper and said it looks ready for submission. So, maybe sometime before June 2010 I will be a published scientist. :) On top of all that, there were leftovers from one of my favorite restaurants at the dept and so I got to have saag for lunch. AND my coffee group had breakfast at Matt's house. What a day! :) Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

PS Here is a picture from my ride to Wyoming with Matt. No welcome to Wyoming sign for some reason ...

Doing Stuff

Well I have been psuedo-busy lately. Here are some things we've been doing (I like bullets) ...
- rode my bike 75 miles on Saturday and could have gone farther. Wow my legs felt good! I was with my friend Matt and we went at a good pace which I think kept me from bonking like I usually do on long rides.
- cooked out with friends Sunday evening - it is finally summer-like weather here! We spent a surprising amount of time talking about Chris shaving his legs and/or wearing a speedo.
- The National Science Foundation center I'm a part of is going through its annual review. I think it's a good process and helpful for the center. It makes total sense that we should be accountable to the NSF for how we are spending the money! Monday we had a rehearsal of all of our presentations that lasted from 8:30 till about 8 PM (although I left a little early to go for a run!). Then yesterday was the real deal. It was very exhausting but I'm glad I got to be a part of it this year (I gave a pretty short talk on my research).
- There is a 40-50% chance of thunderstorms in durango and silverton on Saturday. Oh no!!!
- I did my part to empty horsetooth reservoir on Monday night by beginning my annual (doomed to fail) campaign of having a nice yard. On the plus side, we have invested in some lawn care (weed killer and fertilizer applied every 6 weeks), so there might be hope this year. I always feel torn about watering my lawn. On one hand I want it to look nice, on the other hand I feel morally obligated to not use too much water. Also our irises are blooming for the second time since we moved in and they are so beautiful!
- As I said, I ran on Monday night and did half-mile repeats at a 7:30-7:45 pace! It was hard but good!
- I cooked green curry veggie stirfry last night. It was good but way too spicy! I realized this could be a good weight-loss tool - I can only eat so much spicy food.
- I love that I can watch the Giro online. Who needs cable? :)
- Tomorrow I meet with Dave and Scott to hopefully nail down some plans for proceeding with my research and setting a date for my prelim (yikes!). I wish we met today but I am trying to stay busy until then making pretty plots and maps and thinking about what they mean. Oh the life of a scientist.

my personality

I realized this weekend I might not be that nice of a person. As with all great moments in my head, this happened while I was riding my bike. Riding up Rist with the Georgia cyclists, the 2 girls on the team were initially lagging behind. I was caught in between them and the guys and thought, "I should wait for the girls, so they can ride with someone who can tell them what to expect, how much farther it is, etc" Then I thought, "But if I push it a little harder I can catch those boys (and Chris, who always tortures me on hills)!" So did I do the nice thing and wait? Nope. However, neither did I ever catch up to the testosterone train. Plus, about half way up we all stopped and waited till every one was together. Then one of the girls proceeded to drop me. Serves me right.

In the end though, I am always happy to be riding with someone else and appreciative to have a riding buddy - just don't take it personally if I'm cursing you as you ride away from me.

bikes, beer, bulldogs, and boots

This has been a great weekend! One of the reasons it was so great is that I took Friday off. Also I it was the last few days of my rest week before getting back into tri training (13 weeks till the half!).

Of course, I can't take a day off to just relax, so Friday was still a busy day. I spent most of the day either volunteering at the road races (starting at 7 AM!), watching the road races, or volunteering at the Matthews House. The wind was crazy! I am ashamed to admit this but I ended up walking my bike up stadium hill to watch some of the action because the wind was blowing me side to side more than my legs were pushing me forward. Then my bike almost blew away - maybe the only 'con' for owning a carbon bike! I am impressed with all the racers, it was a brutal day.

Finally I went home for a couple of hours, and Chris and I cleaned up and started cooking dinner for the UGA cycling team. This is how excited we are to have bulldogs around - we cooked dinner for 7 hungry cyclists who we had never met before. But it was a lot of fun and I'm glad we could help them out with some free food. They gave us some Georgia jerseys in return so we will be sporting the red and black this summer! The busyness of the day finally ended around 9:30 and I was exhausted!

Sat. was much more relaxing - we watched the criteriums in old town with our friend Matt, and also Jeramy and Christine stopped by for a bit. CSU did really well - all of the women finished the race strong and the men had 2 guys in the top 10. Way to go Rams!! :) They finished the weekend in 3rd place, I'm really happy for them!

After watching all of those really fit people ride in circles we decided we wanted some beer. Luckily for us it was a beautiful day and we got a table on the patio of one of our favorite bars. Rachel joined us and we managed to kill about three hours just hanging out and chit chatting over a couple of pitchers. It was super nice.

Next Chris and I rode our bikes to REI to see what we could spend our money on during their Anniversary Sale. We bought a bunch of stuff for our Alaska trip, including a bear vault and bear spray. The funny part was when we remembered we were on our bikes. Chris managed to tie the bear vault to his bike using his rain jacket - it looked absolutely ridiculous. We probably looked like the most paranoid cyclists in the Fort.

Today has been nice too. I bought a pair of boots for Alaska (plus hopefully the next 10 years of my life). They were $250 but Jax gave me 20% off because I brought in a coupon from REI that they matched. Goretex Asolos 520 full-grain leather - man, they are nice! I probably spent about 5-6 hours trying on boots over the past week and I am pretty happy with these.

Chris and I also rode up Rist Canyon with the UGA cycling team. They borrowed my car to get to the TTT but decided it was too cold and wet to race, :) so they had some energy left over for some climbing (I don't know how). They took it to us, I'd say they've adjusted to the altitude. But it was a nice ride, minus the finger-numbing descent and those awful switchbacks at the top!

Now I am sad the weekend is over. I will be getting busier the next few weeks as I prepare for my prelims next month and ramp up the training again. good night!

Road race!?

Yep I am doing a road race Memorial Day weekend. It is insane - 47 miles with 5700 ft of climbing! Two mountain passes: one at 10,500 ft and one at 10,867 ft. Yikes, um what was I thinking? Well I am excited. Who knows how it will go, but even if I get dropped like a bad habit it will definitely still be a beautiful ride. There is a "citizens" ride that Chris is doing, and he is trying to raise $500 for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. We'll be staying with an old teammate/friend, Megan Cassidy, and some other crazy bikers. There are crits to watch on Sunday and I'm racing a time trial on Monday. It will be a fun weekend, but I am going ahead and starting to pray for nice weather now because that could make or break it! Check out the website.

More bike-related postings to come since collegiate road bike nationals are in town this weekend!

two good recipes and a great cause

About a year ago I started volunteering at the Matthews House, which serves at-risk youth ages 16-21 who lack significant family support in their lives. The idea is to create opportunities for positive life change for these youth as they make the transition to living on their own. Many of these youth have not had the influence of a stable caring adult. It's a pretty neat place. At first I mentored a 19 year old young woman who constantly impressed me by how together she was and how much she had learned from her rough life so far. Now I go there once a week to hang out with and offer support to any kids who come by the house. It's usually pretty quiet when I go, which I liked at first. Then I was there on the Friday of spring break and there were about 6 kids there - it was much more interesting. Some of these kids have had many problems - both self-imposed and not - but it is neat being a part of something that is hopefully turning them into adults who can have a good life.

Anyway, I'm bringing this up because they're doing a fundraiser (called Cultivate Hope) next Thursday at 6:30. There will be food, beverages, and a garden-themed auction (neat things like handmade flower pots), and a bluegrass band. It's $25 and I can vouch for what a great cause this is. For most of the youth, the Matthews House is their last chance to take control of their lives and shape positive futures for themselves. I hope you'll consider going!

Part two of this blog has to do with recipes. I like to cook things while I'm there so any youth coming by can enjoy them. Here are 2 that I've done the past couple of weeks. I'm hoping you might have something delicious and relatively easy to share. I'm only there 1-1/2 hours so it can't take too long to cook!


Blueberry cornbread (from Womens day magazine - I have no idea why I get this magazine)

Granola (from my friend Kate)
6 cups rolled oats
2 cups coconut flakes
2 cups chopped nuts
2/3 cup wheat germ
2/3 cup bran flakes
1/3 cup sesame seeds or sunflower seeds
½ cup canola or vegetable oil
½ cup maple syrup or honey

Thoroughly mix all of these ingredients. Spread onto lightly greased baking sheets/pans and bake at 325F for 25 minutes stirring the granola at least once during this time. Once out of the oven and cooled for a bit mix in 2 cups of dried fruit of your choosing. Makes enough to fill 2 half gallon mason jars.