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I had a pretty successful weekend of racing this weekend. I did the LAVRA cup at the ADT Home Depot Center on Saturday night, where I won the women's category and raced with the masters 45+, which is always fun! I had an awesome cheering squad, my mom came into town to watch, Cristin and Daniel Walker and Ian came as well.

The next day I did "Signal Hill Crit" even though it was NO where near Signal Hill, lol! I raced hard, I finished 3rd. I was in a break for a little bit but could never recover so I fell back to the pack when the break was only 6 seconds up the road, I tried to get the other girls motivated to go catch the 2 girls up the road, but no one really wanted to work. I failed to bridge back up and with 4 laps to go I gave up the attempt to catch them and won the field sprint!!

All in all it was a great weekend! I'm glad my mom was able to make it out and see me race! :]

a little recap of my races

 

LA Circuit Race. 

Either I was nervous or bored before the race. The course was about 5 miles long with two 180 turns and the finish was slightly up hill. There was a good group of girls, 3 got off the front about 1/2 way through the race. a group of 4 went with 1/2 a lap to go, including myself. We were holding the break till the last 100 meters or so and then we were swallowed by the pack. I got 19th so not the best result but I did a lot of working during the race to chase down the break, seeing that I was the only person with out at least 3 team mates and everyone else was working for someone in the break. I was happy with the amount of work put into the race. It was a good way to start my 2010 season!

 4/27/2010 El Dorado 6th place in the Masters/Women. Won the field sprint! :]

Palm Springs

I went on a weekend training trip with a few friends: Coryn, Christine, and Jesse. We stayed at Christine's house in Palm Springs and rode Saturday and Sunday. It was a great weekend!

We went shopping at the grocery store to get PLENTY of food to last us!

On Saturday we rode through the desert.

[Christine, Coryn, Shelby, and Jesse]

We stopped to take a group a shot half way through our ride.

We also rode through a shooting range! YIKES!

We also encountered a few dirt devils on the ride.

But, it was gorgeous the whole time!

The trip was so much fun, great riding, great friends, and great memories made!! 

Crazy ride

It has been a pretty solid training week, next week is going to be even more intense but I am pretty excited about  it. I am looking forward to racing again. I have a pretty funny story about my ride with Scott on Tuesday, well now it's funny:
Scott and I started our ride off in the rain then it turned out to be a beautiful day. During the ride Scott had intervals so he would do them then turn around and meet back up with me. Well... after the first one he said this road is going to end turn left at the light and I said ok no worries see you in a bit. The road didn't actually end it just gradually turned into the 405.. YIKES! After I realized I was on the freeway I turned around and got off at the first exit and tried to find my way back to where Scott was waiting for me. About ten minutes later he called me and was like where are you!? I told him and we couldn't figure out exactly how to get back where I was so I told him just to go on with his ride and send me his address and I will just use mapquest to get back to his house and see him when he gets back. Easier said then done my friend! Mapquest on my phone did NOT work out as well as I thought it would. I pulled out my phone to look at the time and realized that I had dropped my debit card one of the times I had pulled it out before, so I went back to go see if I could find it; no luck. There was nothing I could do about it so I went to Lewis and Clark my way back to Scott's house. Not being from around that area and have only ridden there a few times made it kind of difficult to get back. I decided to just turn on random roads that looked familiar and hopefully I would make it back, surprisingly it WORKED! Our Panera sandwiches where well deserved after that day! I called into my bank and told them what happened and they told me that someone had already found it and called it in to cancel it. Which was weird because my own mother tried to call in to cancel it but they wouldn't let her.. hmm? All in all I got pretty lucky!

Berlin

So, I had a random trip to Berlin this past week. Ian and Kit were racing in the Berlin six day in Germany and I have wanted to watch a six day and wanted to see them race so I put together a quick trip to Berlin. I left on Wednesday January 27th after classes and came back Sunday January 31st early in the morning. My dad met me there with 24 hours of notice that I was leaving. I called him and asked if he wanted to go and at first he thought I was joking and after I finally convinced him I was being serious he said, "Sure why the hell not, I've always wanted to go there." Off we were to Germany to watch amazing bike racing and eat schnitzels!

We had a great time, we stayed in a hostel across the way from the track and walking distance to the train and bus stations. We had all different kinds of food, including pepperoni pizza which included cheese and peperchini peppers.. and NO pepperonis. I even learned a few words in German: Druken, auf, Danka, and mit. Meaning: push, open, thanks, and with. LOL! The racing was awesome, I have never seen so many people so enthused to watch bike racing. The boys did a great job and ended up 8th in the Omnium!

Winter Break

After I finished my last final for school I headed staight to the airport to go home to Texas. I was pretty happy to be going home considering I hadn't been home in over two months. I was planning on being there for three weeks but it got cut short by a week when I got invited to go to camp back in Los Angeles at the ADT velodrome. My trip home was nice while it lasted. I got to spend time with friend and family I hadn't seen in awhile, I got to catch up with my two younger sisters, spend quality father daughter time with dear oh dad, and of course go Christmas shopping with mom. On Christmas eve my whole family went over to a family friend's house that I have known since I was born and we had a nice dinner and we all went to to midnight mass. The entire family was in totally shock when my sisters decided to bring home a puppy without asking and no warning. She was so cute no one really got too mad but instead except the fact she was now part of the family. As the puppy was brought home on Christmas eve we decided to name her Eve.

Christmas morning was a little different this year with a new puppy to help us tear up all the wrapping paper. Other than that it went pretty much like everyother year, dad is up before the crack of dawn cooking Christmas dinner, my youngest sister and I are up waiting for my middle sister to get up so we can open presents while mom is lounging around in her Christmas pajamas drinking a cup of coffee. We had a lazy Christmas and both my parents took the whole week off of work so we could all spend time together as a family. The following week there are three major events that we partake in. My dad's birthday is on New Years eve, my birthday is on New Years day and of course the whole New Years celebration. Every year we have a big party with all our friends, this year was the same. Except, my mom and I did all the cooking to let my dad have his birthday to himself. The next day was my 19th birthday, I went to bed at 2am and woke up at 7am to do a group ride with some friends and ate breakfast at La Madeline's.
The next day, January 2nd I got up early to catch a flight back to Long Beach where I am living and going to school also where the camp is at. As I was saying bye to my dad he pulls out his wallet, hands me some money and says "Here kid, sorry I forgot to get you something for your birtday." As he is not the most emotional person ever I took it as him saying "I love you, please don't make me say it."
I was pretty pumped to be heading back to Long Beach, I was finally going to get see my boyfriend after two and half month of him being in Europe racing. I was home two days before camped started which was on January 4th through the 13th. The camp was ran by the national team coaches and had about 20 racers participating in it. We would have track sessions in the morning that consisted mostly of team pursuit work for the women and juniors. Then in the afternoon right after the track session we would go for a road ride anywhere from an hour to three hours long. I would go home devour whatever food was accessible, clean up and pass out for the night. This went on all week then on Saturday there was a track race in the afternoon that a bunch of locals and most people at the track participated in. I was pretty excited to race and it was my first race of the season. It was an omnium with three different races, tempo race, points race and scratch race, I ended up in 4th place for the omnium.
I started my second semester at Long Beach City College where I am taking 15 units.
Right now I am just trying to get better from this cold that is going around!

Fun Rides

The first week home was a lot of fun and full of parties and great rides with great friends!
Thursday, Andy and I set out to go on a ride in the pooring down rain in 47 degree weather, we made it about an hour and a half and decided taht we would go to the shop that he works at and ride the trainer to finish the ride.. that was probably the best idea we had.
Friday, Cristin, Daniel and I did the Monday/Wednesday/Friday group ride and we had a great time catching up because we hadn't seen eachother in a few weeks.

Saturday, I rode with a bunch of my old teammates, now on Shama Cycles and my teammate Angela out in Chappell Hill. They are some of the greatest friends and riding partners you could ask for. Some of us did 2 laps of the race course and the others did 3. We all rode as a group chatting and catching up all enjoying a great ride together in the hills.

Here is a picture Doug took of Angela and I -->

After the ride I went to 2 different parties, Southern Elite's Christmas party and the Boyd's annual christmas party. I visited with friends I haven't seen or talked to in a long time and got to see Aimme and Trey's new baby Eva, she is soo adorable!

Sunday, I went on a "recovery ride" which turned out to be a smash fest. I was not too happy about that but made it the best it could be because I had great friends with me and when we stopped for our rest stop break I had some delicious hot coffee that I rode with for the next few miles. This is a picture of some of the girls that makes riding so much fun! The awesome thing about this ride is that it was Aimme's first ride back from having Eva! :]

[L-R] Stephanie, Aimme, Me, Joyce, and Laura

I rode from Philip's shop for the "recovery ride" Philip is an awesome guy and is responsible for originally getting me on Sugar Cycles. Now he owns his own shop, Shama Cycles! End of story he is awesome!

After the "recovery ride" Joyce, Doug, Philip, Eric, and Chris all went to eat mexican food and had a great time watching Doug eat a whole fish and drinking Horchatas!

So far it has been a great Holiday break home and Ian comes home tomorrow from being in Europe the last 2 1/2 months!