Adventures on bicycles: September 2009

Whew! It's been sort of a crazy month and the blog has gotten neglected once again. Here's a recap of the first two weeks with an emphasis on photos.

Labor Day weekend involved heading to St. Louis for 4 days of crit racing with the Gateway Cup.

Super talented fields of riders with about 60 women per day. The last races for me on the road for this season and it was a really fun weekend. Kenda was represented by Kat, Catherine, Christy, and myself. Here's Christy showing us her serious side.

I felt good about how things went and tried to stay active up front and go with some moves. Finished in the mid 20s every day.

Huge thanks to Carrie and Chris for helping make this year's event so great.

They brought in some talented racers and made sure the support was there for the women.

They also helped us get really great host housing. Here we are outside of our awesome host house - thanks so much Edgar and Julie!

After our big crit on Labor Day we got to see the start of the Tour of Missouri. Lots of Pro Tour teams in the States for the event so I turned into a crazed cycling fan and tried to get photos of the pros.

Jens Voigt

Mark Cavendish

George Hincapie's leg (sort of creepy!)

Paul Sherwin and Frankie Andraeu

The next weekend was the Wisconsin Ironman. Dave competed in his 3rd IM and the predicted hot temperatures had him a bit nervous. It was a beautiful morning for watching 2,000 people flop around in the lake.

He had a solid swim and looked good coming out of transition.

The bike was going well until his stomach started to bother him during the last 20 or so miles.

He stomach continued to bother him and he ran half of the marathon feeling really bad.

He walked for about 3 miles and at mile 18 his stomach had shut down and he decided it wasn't worth pushing it to end up in the ER (we've been there before!) and dropped out. He sat in the medic tent for over an hour before they released him and we enjoyed a nice dinner with both sets of our parents. It's unfortunate that he wasn't able to get some closure on his season and capitalize on his excellent fitness but I'm super proud of him nonetheless. It's so hard when you train a whole year and race only a handful of days. Everything has to fall perfectly into place and there are plenty of things that you just can't control. So it goes, though, and he's enjoyed the process of preparing for the event. No IM this next year though and he's already planning on mixing it up this fall with some cyclocross races! :)

The next weekend we headed up to Madeline Island up in Lake Superior to spend some time with Dave's family and go to the wedding of Ryan (Dave's youngest brother) and Rachael. It was a really great weekend - the weather was phenomenally warm and it was a lot of fun to ride bikes with the boys, spend some time with family, and we got to meet our new nephew Adrian. A nice way to cap off the summer.

Cider and I enjoying the fresh air

The happy couple

Wedding on the water

Mike and Adrian on the ferry

Riding on the quiet island roads

Dave might have a future in push up contests - here he is demolishing the competition at the post wedding bash.

Well that should suffice for now. Immediately after our weekend up north I flew out to Las Vegas for Interbike. I'll save the Interbike/Cross Vegas/USGP Madison weekend for the next update. Perhaps by the end of the week? Thanks for reading despite the infrequent posts!

So I've been a bad blogger the past few weeks and neglected writing any updates. Here's a recap. Elite Crit Championships in Downer's Grove a few weekends ago was pretty fun. Big fields of women show up for the chance at the Stars and Stripes jersey with 90 starters on Saturday and 70 on Sunday. The 8 corner course with a couple of hills is always fun and we were all curious to see if Tina Pic would try to reclaim the jersey from Brooke Miller. Team Kenda had Christy, Kat, Catherine and I on Saturday with Jackie added in on Sunday.

We went for a couple of primes on Sunday and tried sticking in the mix at the end. I was 22nd Saturday, 26th on Sunday - Jackie was our top finisher in 20th on Sunday.

Solid enough results for me as the legs aren't feeling incredibly snappy this time of year. I'm back into base/build mode in preparation for the fast approaching cyclocross season.

Speaking of cyclocross . . . have you heard the big news??

American cyclocross superstar Katie Compton has signed with Planet Bike as her title sponsor for this season. Pretty unbelievable. She dominates this sport in the states (she's won the National title the past 5 years) and consistently finishes top 3 at World Cups and races in Europe. It's super cool that she's signed on with Planet Bike and I look forward to racing with her in the early season before she heads to Europe for the majority of the fall.

We've got a great team put together for the upcoming season. All 3 LaLonde brothers will now be sporting the Planet Bike colors as well as Minnesotan Linda Sone. Wisconsin is a hot bed of young cyclocross talent and we've also brought on 2008 National cross Champ Sarah Huang (age 13-14) and bronze medalist Kaitie Antonneau (age 17-18). It's going to be a fun year!

Life has been sort of hectic but good the past couple of weeks. I've been working a lot and splitting my time between Planet Bike and Machinery Row. At PB we're ramping up to Interbike time and I'm really excited to be headed out to Vegas for the biggest bicycle industry tradeshow in the nation. In addition to working in the PB booth I'll be racing in Cross Vegas which should be a blast. A wicked way to start the cross season but with a planned schedule of mostly UCI events I might as well get used to it!

Cross Vegas is on Wednesday night September 23rd and then it's a flight back to Madison Friday night to prepare for our BIG Planet Bike USGP race in Madison that weekend. I'm super excited for the event and it will be a who's who of North American cross racers with a few European guys thrown in for good measure. I can't wait.

As a preparation for cross I decided to do a WORS mountain bike race last weekend up in Green Bay. The course is literally a mile away from my parents house so it was fun to go home and do the local race. It was a looong race at 36 miles but a fairly non technical course with some fast singletrack and some doubletrack for roadies like me ;) I used to race a few MTB events back in the day but it's been 3 years since the last one and I was admittedly a little nervous.

I'd only been on the bike twice before the race - Dave's sweet Specialized carbon hardtail. It's very convenient than we ride the same size bike! The race was super fun although my back was killing me midway through. My singletrack skills are severely lacking and I couldn't stick with the lead two riders and they pulled away at the end of the first lap. After a couple of crashes I was in a group of 3 other women and by the start of the final 3rd lap I pulled away in the open stretches and tried to maintain my lead.

Thanks Gary for the photo!

I'm not used to a 2.5 hour full on effort though- that last lap I was hurting! Another crash with a few miles to go almost had me losing my position but I pushed through the final doubletrack section and finished in 3rd place overall.

Thanks Amy for the photo!
It was an awesome day to be riding a bike out in the woods and it was nice to have my parents and some friends cheering me on. Cyclingnews report

One final weekend of crit racing in St. Louis starts tomorrow with Gateway Cup and the Tour of Missouri womens crit on Labor Day. Racing will be fast and furious with lots of the nations top riders coming out for this fun series. Team Kenda will have 4 riders in the races and it will be a great way to finish off the season for us.

And then next weekend is the event we look forward to all year in my household . . . the Madison Ironman. Dave has been training really hard for his 3rd IM and I'm looking forward to being a superspectator again. He puts in so many hours throughout the season in anticipation for the big day and his fitness is really good right now. Will be a fun day!

It's been nice to hang out more with Dave the past few weeks with some weekends at home and with no racing.

We celebrated his birthday by riding bikes to our favorite local burger joint . . . mmm, burgers!

We are also very excited to announce we have a new baby nephew! Congratulations to Dave's brother Mike and his wife Karla on their beautiful son Adrian. How cute is this!?