Halloween

This Halloween Ro-Ro was Cookie Monster and Fisher was his Uncle Jarom.  Jarom is a pilot for the Navy, he has red hair, and he also has muscles...well more than Fisher that's why Fisher is wearing a muscle shirt under his flight suit.

Fish's Buddies

For Kitty

Here's our pride and joy!
He thinks this is SO funny...in all the pictures we have of him for two months he has a finger in his nose, hilarious. 

 

The Ride

I'm not exactly sure how to start this post.  Should I start by describing my feelings at the start line?  Or maybe the night before?  Well let me start with a description of the ride from their website;

The Gran route is a 103 mile amazing journey of grandeur amongst the towering and enchanted forests that flank the base of King Ridge. The route climbs out of the depths of the town of Cazadero into one of the most breathtakingly beautiful expanses of terrain with incredible rolling ridgetop views of nearby mountains, ridges, valleys and, of course, the vast Pacific Ocean. After cresting King Ridge Road, Gran riders are in for whipping descents and the rolling profiles of the coastal roads until you make your way back towards Occidental via Coleman Valley Road. From there, it’s smooth sailing back into Santa Rosa.

 In the description they fail to mention the 9,201 feet of climbing...I don't want to sound like I'm complaining but that's a lot of climbing for someone who doesn't climb...

So the night before I was reading about the ride and I over heard a lot of people talking about the epic-ness of this ride.  I got a little nervous - maybe I wouldn't be able to do this ride - maybe I went all the way to the other side of the country to fail -  Dangit, I wish I had trained for this ride.  So I asked Seth my trusted truth teller...because he will tell me how it is even when I don't ask him - I asked him if he thought I could do the ride.  He said I could absoultly finish the ride.  Enough said I will conqueror this beast!


And conqueror it I barely did...no seriously...barely.

Okay I will do a quick breakdown:

First 20 miles: fun and fast
Last 20 miles: fast and enduring
60 miles in between:  gorgeous and hellish

Not much more to say. The 60 miles in between the easier stuff was hard.  Really hard.  The climbs lasted forever, they were steep and demoralizing.  Honestly at one point I wanted to get off my bike so I could talk myself out finishing the ride.  I was so slow it was painful! Had I ridden this last year I would have done such a better job because I was in great shape.  This year not so much.  I think it was hard for my pride to get passed by all of those people, at one point I was convinced I was going to be the last one to cross the line. I wanted to have a sign on my back that said "Just had a baby" or something like that.  Even though it was hard, there would be moments when the scenery around me was so gorgeous that I couldn't help but smile even when my legs were shot and every time I turned the cranks over it felt like a miracle.  It was a long ride that would best be described as 'Epic'.

When I crossed the finish line I can't say how sweet it was to see Fisher there cheering me on.  In a way I do it for him.  My Mom later told me I when I crossed the finish line I looked like 'hell', thanks Mom.  I did.  But it was kind of funny as soon as I crossed the line I hurried over to Roen so I could feed him. Ha, I kind of laugh about it.  It was a get back to work moment, I had my fun but Ro-Ro's hungry.  Seth told me later that it was my pride and stubborn ways that made me finish that ride...and like always he was 100% on mark.

Side note: Broken foot be damned, Seth still rode 65 miles. Why? Because he wanted to see the ocean.  How cute/crazy is he? 

Levi's Gran Fondo

This is a post with gloom and doom with a ray of hope at the end.

Tomorrow I do the Gran Fondo which I have been looking forward to all year...well now that it is here I am worried.  I was suppose to be riding everyday after having Roen, but I haven't...not even close.

The Levi's Gran Fondo is in Santa Rosa CA, and it is a 103 mile ride with a lot of climbing like 8k or 9k.  Today when I picked up my registration packet I got a magazine with articles about all sorts of things but one was talking about the ride and I quote;

"To ride the King ridge, a cyclist needs to be fit; the kind of fitness that comes only with riding at least a few thousand miles a year."

Wait do you think he meant to say a cyclist who just had a kid and maybe has 415 miles under them...I'm sure he meant hundreds of miles...not thousands. Right?


So I may not be conditioned to do this ride, but I don't know if that will stop me...I just want it to be a great day.  There are going to be about 7,500 riders so I will never be alone, it's not a race...it's a just a fun day in the saddle.  To tell you the truth any day riding is a good day, even on your worse day. 


I'll take some pictures and post them after the ride.


Kind of a downer tho, Seth was suppose to ride tomorrow but while he was in Moab this last week he may have broken his foot.  Totally sucks!  It sucks for him, but it's even worst for me!  I was going to have him wait for me at the bottom of the hills and have him push me up.  Now I guess I'll have to do it all by myself. 


Overall I am so excited to have an amazing day in the saddle...and if it's not amazing I will just call it a fat camp training ride.

Angst

We were camping this last weekend, while camping Fisher poured gravel on his head...and like an average mom I let him. Finally I had to stop the madness, and tell the boy to stop pouring and rubbing gravel on his hair and this was the look he gave me.  It was a nightmare getting his hair clean after that...not one of my finer moments as a mom.  What could I do? We were camping! He suppose to get dirty.  When I showed him this picture he told me he was mad at mommy. 

This Kid!

Love.

Mommy's Little Boy

 So my little guy has red hair in the back of his head and blonde on top...what's up with that? Crazy huh. Carrot cupcake with vanilla frosting? He has such a sweet disposition, sleeps through the night...well mostly. He eats, doesn't cry much...he has already made up for such a crappy pregnancy.

Alirght it's time...

It's time to post!  I realize I am not blog worthy...I say that because I am sitting here wondering what on earth I should post...my life is not blog worthy, and I doubt it ever was.  But since that never stopped me in the past I will continue to blog for now.  Hmmm how should I start?  I had a baby!!!  Which is pretty exciting for us, we are big fans of our new little guy Roen.  He is a doll, a chubby cute red headed doll!  He is such a good baby, he sleeps, eats, smiles, loves on us, and did I mention he has red hair...I love it!!!  Some of our most favorite people in world are red heads...I just love gingies!

Okay so I just finished typing a long paragraph about stuff and just deleted it because it was ridiculously  boring!  I'm done put a fork in me...am I going to be boring now for the rest of my life...are my kids going to suck all the creative juices from me!  Am I now doomed to cut all my hair off and wear high riding mom jeans...I swear I see it all happening...one day you'll see me at the grocery store in my robe and slippers.  Crap.  The thing is I love being a mom to my little savages, it's awesome...there are so many moments in my day that I am incredibly happy and elated that I have this time with my children.  One man said "Moments are the molecules that make up eternity" and I think about that a lot.  I try to slow things down, take things off my proverbial plate so I can be centered enough to appreciate 'moments'.  Like today I was able to watch Roen sleep and coo, and when he woke up we just smiled at each other and I felt like my heart was about to explode with so much love, or just listening to Fisher, he says the funniest, sweetest, and naughtiest things...sometimes my little savage can be so sweet my heart just melts.  It's such an amazing time but really hard and trying and at times I feel like I am going absolutely  mad!  So that's the stuff going on in my life right now and it's not bloggable (yep I'm making up words now, Fisher does it, why not me)...I guess I should say this part of my life isn't translating well...I feel like this part of my life is being written in my heart, and trust me I know how cheesy that sounds.


Alright if you read all of that I need to give you something:  Hmmm I'm biking again and a few weeks ago I rode 70 miles which was pretty awesome I love love love love being back on the bike.  I am currently training for a ride in NorCal in October it's not a huge ride it's a century but it does have a lot of climbing which will be very painful especially if I don't lose most to hopefully all my baby weight.   I think I will talk and rant about this ride quite a bit in future posts.

Roen

Details to come.  Healthy baby, healthy mom...excited family. 

Fish Face

 

The other night I pass by Fish's room and I notice he is still awake reading and laughing at the book he was reading.  He was reading Calvin and Hobbes, I am beginning to think he picks up on a lot more than I give him credit for.  Look at the bottom left pic of Calvin, now look at Fisher's pictures.  This is a joke for him...whenever you bring a camera out and count to three...he will stick his finger in his nose...or he will fish hook himself.  You tell him to stop, and he'll start laughing...he tells me he is 'teasing mommy.'    

Pix

I know I have been slacking, so here are some pictures. 

Fish-Brain

Fisher is of the ripe age of attitude, it's that great stage in his life where he realize that he is his own person with his own voice.  Which is so much fun...not.  Lately his big thing is to tell us 'no' for everything...we ignored it for a while, then we had to address it.  The rule is he can't scream 'no' at us anymore...so the other day I was trying to get him dressed and instead of yelling 'no' at me he throws both arm in the air yelling 'NEVER!!!!', he continued this throughout the day...he found a loop hole in our rules already.  Is this just the beginning?  Am I going to spend the rest of the next 2 decades trying to out-smart my kids?  I don't think I will be able to keep up...I played with lead base paint toys as a kid...he already has a leg up, he listened to classical music as a baby. I'm doomed...

Guppy

Big News, we are adding a Guppy to the family!  Here's the little man sucking his thumb...what's that you say 'little man?"  That's right Fisher is going to have a Little Boy Dinosaur Brother!!!

We found out the sex a few weeks ago, we took Fisher with us to the ultrasound so he can be apart of the whole experience and try to prepare him for his world to crumble all around him.  When the image came up on the large monitor Fisher yells out and points to the screen...DINOSAUR!!!!  Then he proceeded to stomp around the room roaring like a dinosaur....he even told me he would fight the dinosaur, which I have no doubt about that.  It was really cute...but the amazing part is the baby, I was blown away by how developed he is, he was sucking his thumb, kicking and punching like mad, I loved it...you could even tell he has the same chin as Fisher.  It's amazing!

Here's a problem though, we don't have any names yet...well we do but we cannot agree on them so we are looking for new ones...so please throw those boys names our way...as of now the leading name is Roscoe, so as you can tell we are struggling!

Dead

I know my blog had been dead for about 6 months...I've been pondering if I should make it private, if I should continue blogging...is my life worth blogging about?  No, not really.  So I'm not sure what my plans are exactly.  That's why I've been off the grid. I think I am going to break up with facebook too...it has to be one or the other...if I stay on both that would make me a super ME - monster, I may as well Twitter.  So as for now I am back to blogging...I just may make it private.

Nittany Cross Race

Seth is awesome he dropped his chain like 4 times on this race and passed like 78 people still and got top 20 out of 150 something riders...what a stud!

Cross Racing is a different type of racing...Seth has been dabbling in Cross Racing (not cross dressing...well not that I know of) and I thought it was high time I tried this great style of racing...Seth got started by transforming an old road commuter to Sweat PHAT my cross bike.  This bike is hot, and super ghetto!  So ghetto in fact that when I lined up at the beginning of the race the woman next to me asked me if I welded the bike myself.  Cross is a 40 min race you do laps on grass, trail, dirt, roots, or whatever, and you run over barriers and obstacles, while keeping your heart rate dangerously high all on a road bike! I started the race feeling really good since I did most of my training in low zones, so why not race in zone 5 and zone 6 ( I know you shouldn't have a zone 6 but when you go past your max, you're now in zone 6) I was at the front'ish of the pack for the 1st lap, then slowly kept going further back in the pack....I will take credit for the lack of high intensity training, but most of the blame will go on Sweat PHAT that PHAT beast, she was too big for me and the saddle (seat) was wrong for me...I was in so much pain!!!  I would have given anything to punch Seth...he told me Cross was awesome, amazing, blah blah rainbows...and such but he forgot to mention that Cross is practically the love child of Eddy Merckx and Death himself! Those crazy Belgians!!! So needless to say that was my first and last Cross race so far...I think if I get a MUCH nicer bike than I will go back to it, but a real athlete would never blame their gear...but I'm a poser.

 Here's me faking enthusiasm after the race.

Fisher doesn't even bother faking anything, this is what he thinks of the race...

Fisher's 2nd Birthday

 My little guy turned 2...how all the cliches are coming true. I just can't believe time is going by so fast.  I remember just holding him when he was just born and he was so small...now look at him...go grown up...sheesh I'm going be a wreck when he turns 8.

 Fisher loves Baseball so we took him and his friends over to the baseball diamond across the street to play kickball.  The little kids played with a bouncy ball and the big kids played with a yoga ball.

 This just looked like a bad idea!  Seriously that ball is bigger than Fisher. Yikes!

 Fisher lets Grandma know what he thinks of potty training.

 

 I feel so lucky to have such a great Family.  I love my crew! 

Topsail

 After the Race my sister and I load up the car and head down to Baltimore to pick up Anna my Sister in law from the airport, we were on our way to Topsail, NC to a beach house for the entire week!!!  We were going down to meet with my mother in law and all the sister in laws with 2 extra bonus' Anna's Mom and sister....it was the ultimate girls week.  I had no idea that the water in NC is amazing, the beaches were perfect!!!!  We had a blast - so much fun.

 We would just play in the water for hours, Fisher...need I say it...like a fish.

He loved the beach so much he cried when we left.  I guess that means we will just have to live near a beach some day.

Hardcore 24

It has been way too long for this post - so I'm going to sum everything up.  The 24 hour race was in July in New York and it was amazing! 

 The Team:  My Sister Charlotte came out from San Diego to be my nutritionist. 

  Seth my Husband was the crew chief so he oversaw everything...and took care of all the things I forgot.

So this is how the race worked.  The race start at Noon on Saturday and goes to Noon on Sunday.  The course is a 8 mile loop, the person with the most loops by Sunday at Noon wins.  You get to decided your pace how long you want to rest, you can even sleep if you need it.  For me I had my A, B, & C goal.  My A goal was to get 100 miles.  I had a race plan and a nutrition plan and I really felt prepared for this race...I felt really good. My race plan was to be conservative...stay in a zone 2 which I am convinced I don't have.  I rode about 3 laps staying within my zone 2 and it was hard, because I was going so slow!!!  So finally I just had to ride how I felt, and that meant I rode harder and I was in Zone 3 and low zone 4...but I felt better and I was moving quicker now.  I can't remember which lap it was on maybe lap 4 the clouds opened up and the craziest rain storm hit us!  The trail was dark even though it was only 5pm, and the rain was so heavy that you could barely see the trail.  I had to use my headlamp at that time.  To tell you the truth it was probably the best time I had on my bike.  When else would you ride your bike in weather like that.  Well it gets better...after the rain and when the sun started to go down the trail was covered by the thick thick fog....honestly you could hardly see the trail underneath your front tire.  You had to keep your light on so you can see the reflectors to keep you on the path...the fog was so thick that would could pass right by someone and not know.  Again it was a little stressful, but a lot of fun.  Unfortunately my wrist was bugging most all of this race...but luckily I didn't have too many down hills to pound it. So really my whole goal this race was to be a smarter rider!  Usually I am not a smart rider, I just go out until I blow up and then keep trying to go and enjoy the pain...well I am getting a little older and wiser, so I really tried to dial in my nutrition and with the help of my sister I did just that.  I had the best nutrition plan I have ever had.  I ate real food!  I hardly touched energy food.  I ate burritos that were made with chicken, quinoa, grapes, humus and other good things, I had soup, PB&J's, I ate real food, and the best part was that my sister can read my mind and she would have exactly what I wanted waiting for me with out having to tell her...she's amazing. 

 

 Transitions: This is what a lap would look like.  I would start the trail ride my 8 miles, roll up to my teams pavilion Seth would take my bike and he would clean it and make sure it's shifting well etc. He would check my liquids to make sure I drank enough, and get me clean water and stuff.  I would sit down and Charlotte would bring me something to eat, and stuff my pocket with about 150 calories worth of food I need to eat on the trail.  I would eat and chit chat with the our friends who were there racing.  I would get up stretch and get back on my bike roll though the timing station and do another lap I would be at the 'camp' for 10-15 mins.  It was clockwork.  Everyone was working really hard.

Anyway this post is too long already, but the race continued through the night, and everything was going really well I was on mark to make my A goal, when I thought I was having an allergic reaction to a granola I ate.  I freaked out because it was in the middle of the night and I probably wasn't thinking clearly...and I didn't want to be on the trail and go into shock then I would be in real trouble...so I took half a benadryl, then took a shower and got back on the trail.  Too bad for me benadryl knocks me out, so I was practically sleeping while biking...it was brutal and painful.  I roll up to camp at 3 something, by no I was in First place, but I was so tired I slept for a few hours and when I woke up I did another lap, but I didn't feel right after that, so I called it...and ended the race I think about 8 or 9am on Sunday.  I ended in 2nd place and I only got my C goal and that was 80 miles...I guess I don't regret anything I just wished I didn't take a sedative during an endurance race....but as for everything else, it was great!!!  I had a great time and I think I finally found the race for me.

Huge shout out my Seth who supported me through all my hours of training...He was the one looking after my bike and body, he would stitch me up after work without complaining, he practically carried me out of a trail when I sprained my ankle, he would watch Fisher while I rode...he would check in with me to make sure I was on mark with my training.  He is by far my biggest support in life, and I am not joking when I say, I would not be where I am today without him.  He knows I need outside motivation, what it comes down to;  he knows me better than I know myself....so he knows how hard it was for me to say that.

Suffer-fest

Well, that pretty much sucked.

I raced this last weekend, and it was harsh.  I'm a little disappointed in myself for sucking so bad.  The course was really technical, beyond my current abilities.  I had to walk my bike over and around stuff often...which messes up with your rhythm.  It was also scorching hot...and crazy humid which didn't help things.  I had a few crashes.  Yeah I don't know what happened.  I had 2 good laps in the morning, but by the third lap I was suffering.  The forth lap was just dangerous, I was so hot and I was kind of out of it. By the fourth lap I was having a difficult time controlling my bike properly, so I wasn't as stable, and with this course being as technical as it was I thought it best if I finish that lap and call it a day. That's exactly what I did.

After this race I am more nervous than I was before for the 24 hour race. 

Heading Out

Quick Note:  I'm running out the door to go do my first solo race with some endurance.  It's a 8 hour race about 2 hours away from our home.  We are camping tonight so Seth can race tonight and then around 10am tomorrow I will start racing.  I need to remind myself it's all about preparing myself for the 24 hour race...so I need to ride more conservative and hold back at first....I'm excited.  It's going to be fun.  I forgot to mention this earlier but I sprained my ankle a few weeks ago so it has derailed my training plan, so I am not trained for this race, but I better just pick up where I can and start riding. Okay I need to go pack the car, I'm not even going to re-read this. Ciao