Weekends. Oh Lovely Weekends.

This weekend involved pedicures, beer, bachelorette parties and bikes. The swelling in my knee has subsided considerably and I was able to get in almost 110 miles over two days, including a Sunday morning team ride that reminded me why it is good to have teammates that you can tease mercilessly.

Back to Short Track tonight. If you can't pick me out of the crowd by my pink bike, the rollerblading knee pad on my right knee should help.

Icebreaker Crit: 200 Miles of Driving, 30 minutes of Racing, 3 Beers and 1 Win.

After a two-week hiatus from racing, we got back at it at the Icebreaker Criterium in Eugene, Oregon. But not before getting in a Team Picture Day on Saturday...HV Style.

Followed by two hours of easy riding. Followed by two hours of easy beer drinking. And, for me, two hours later in the evening of easy stuffing my face with homemade Moroccan food.

Then off to the races on Sunday morning. Four hours of driving for a 30 minute race. Seems insane, right? Not when you simply make the race the mid-day climax to an all-day adventure around Oregon.

Burns and I, as is becoming our tradition, carpooled. I drive and fiddle with the heat every five minutes. She DJs. Usually with a mixed CD she's created for someone else. I'd feel like sloppy seconds, but she has really good taste in music and totally nailed the mix on this CD (including my current favorites by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Starfucker, Jose Gonzales and the Gossip).

Arrived about an hour before race time and immediately headed out to do a few laps of the course before the racing started. All right turns...ugh. Legs sort of dead...double ugh.

Thirty minutes later I'm spinning on the trainer, dripping with sweat and getting a head start on a healthy sunburn. "We Are the People" by Empire of the Sun blasting in my ears over and over again. Getting in the zone.

We line up at around 10:45. It's a small field, Mother's Day attrition leading to a group of less than 15. The whistle goes off and I stand up and start hammering toward the first corner. From somewhere over my right shoulder I hear, "God-damn-it, Lindsay," as I ride away, up front and alone for the first lap and a half. After about three minutes, my legs have finally reentered the land of the living and I coast along and wait for the field to catch up.

Once we are back together, its all about observing and evaluating the strength and weaknesses of the riders around me. Throw in some fast corners and attacks for good measure. I don't contest any of the prime laps, instead choosing to counter after each prime. I spend a lot of time at the front, driving the pace when it dips below 19 MPH. With at least two real sprinters in the field, I figure my best bet at winning is to wear people out and lengthen the final sprint as much as possible.

So I attack with 5 left, 3 left and with 1 left, I tell Anna that it is her turn to throw down some pain. She takes off and I grab her wheel. She hammers into the wind as I try to catch my breath and get into the gear that I want for the final 200 meters.

Coming out of the last corner, I stand and sprint out of the corner. There is about 150 left in the race, but I stay standing and sprinting. I'm hoping that going early has caught people by surprise and that I can get a decent buffer between me and the speed demons.

And this plan of mine, well, it works. Although I can tell someone is gaining in the twenty-five meters, I had given myself enough room to come away with the W. With a nice throw at the end for good measure.

My first W. Ever. In a bike race.

Maybe people get used to seeing empty road in front of them when they finish races. Maybe they acclimate to that rush of being king of the mountain (albeit, in my case, less of a mountain and more like an anthill).

I, for one, will forever have a snapshot in my mind of what that empty road looked like. (And how I could still see the spots in my eyes, and taste the blood in my mouth, for ten minutes following the race. ) It was a pretty sight.

Here I am with the reason I won that race, my leadout Anna, all smiles after a great first crit:


(Thanks Kenji for the photo!)

Then we drove home...and by "home" I mean where we spend every post-race Sunday....HUB. Beers on the patio with my favorite people. Anna, Sally and Jamie showed up with flowers for Tedder, Sam (who survived her first crit on US soil), Burns (who was second in her race, first Cat 3) and I. Mindy also showed up with a crown, which she insisted that I wear for the duration of the evening:

Burns, you'd better watch out...there's a new princess in town.

Or not. She always manages to have the last word.

Special acknowledgments to:

1. Anna, who survived her first crit without killing anyone.
2. Sallyanne, who stayed with the pack and counterattacked on more than one occassion. Rock.
3. Beth, who didn't have to rip my hands off because I stayed in the drops the whole race.
4. Sam, who was here only a week before being nicknamed Party Foul.
5. Jamie, who had no idea what he was getting into when he agreed to race with us and survived anyways. And appeared to enjoy being bossed around by his female teammates.
6. Tedder, who learned on Sunday that "oriental" is not the preferred nomenclature. It's "Asian-American," dude.

Forthcoming...a post on learning to ride the velodrome and Monday Night PIR.

It's Like "Sex and the City" but with out the Sex. Or the City.

Papa Bear is pretty drunk. I don't really blame him. Since 8am, he's been the sole rooster in a pack of gossiping, kvetching, chattering hens on bikes. One hundred miles of that would drive even a puritan to drink.

And drinking is exactly what we're doing, having gone straight to Hopworks from River City. Do not pass Go, do not change out of the sweaty Lycra monkeysuit that you've been wearing for eight hours. Go directly to beer.

We sit there, Papa Bear and three single ladies: the Rough Cuddler, the Blond Ball of Hate ("BBoH") and the yet un-nicknamed nickname generator. With each round, the volume is raised two-fold. Same for the adult content rating of our conversations. We bitch about sex, being single and having saddle sores.

Papa Bear is laughing so hard that there are tears in his eyes. "You two are great...I just don't understand why you two don't have boyfriends." This question is addressed to BBoH and I, as Rough Cuddler's current romantic entanglement does not lend itself to that question.

BBoH hems and haws for a minute. Having given up drinking two rounds ago, I feel like the answer to the question is self-evident.

"I can tell you what my problem is...I spend all of my time with you assholes."

----

I don't have sisters, at least I didn't have sisters before I started taking cycling seriously.

I have a younger brother, a hysterically funny man that is much smarter that I ever hope to be. When I see him, we enjoy our time together, but we never have been particularly close. As a result, the feeling of sibling-hood that I've felt with my misfit band of cycling friends has been a revelation.

With this particular group, I feel wedged between a neurotic older sister, wild younger sister and the crazy inappropriate uncle that everyone loves because he'd give you the shirt off of his back (but not before telling you an offensive joke). The affection amongst us is almost overwhelming.

When I think about my relationships with BBoH and RC, it is the shared experience of cycling that was the catalyst for taking garden variety adult friendships and transforming them into something much more meaningful. We sweat, bleed, suffer, drink together. We are experiencing the best and worst of what competition brings out in our personalities, living the physical and emotional transformation that occurs when hard work, stubbornness, lyrca and Friday happy hour all collide at full speed.

The BBoH and I call each other FT (fraternal twin). We couldn't look any different from each other, but our minds are tuned to the same socially inappropriate frequency. Within a week of becoming friends, we could finish each others sentences. After Table Rock, we were sitting in almost the exact same location at Hopworks, enjoying beers after the epic road trip to Southern Oregon. BBoH returned from the bathroom, giggling mischievously.

BBoH: "Hey FT, guess what I did."

LK (without skipping a beat): "Hey FT, I bet you just stuck your face under the hand dryer in the bathroom." (Hopworks has high-powered hand dryers that create G-Force-like ripples on anything within a 12 inch radius).

Busted. Her faces falls momentarily.

BBoH: "How did you know that?"

LK: "I'm not even going to pretend like I haven't done the same thing a time or two. Or eight."

(I'll remind you at this time that my FT and I are in our early-30's.)

My relationship with the Rough Cuddler followed a different trajectory. You don't become friends with the RC overnight. She's had more life experiences in the past 10 years than most of us will have in a lifetime. With that experience comes barriers that have to be frequently negotiated while building the friendship. There are tryouts that you don't even know you're participating in...the grace with which you respond to heartbreak, the loyalty you have for your friends in crisis, your commitment to the constant improvement of your character, your taste in beer and chocolate, whether you cheat on repetitions in class.

Having RC as a friend and surrogate older sister is not always easy. When I'm being a jerk, I get to hear about it, whether I want to or not. Advice is straightforward to a fault, often loud to the point of head-splitting and liberally peppered with the word 'fuck.' But always worth listening to, if not always followed.

What I get in return for taking it on the chin is unwavering loyalty, an enormous amount of healthy perspective and a recurring sense that I will throw up from laughing too hard. RC is also an important touchstone to how much I've changed in the last year--both in terms of losses (a best friend, two love relationships, 20 pounds) and of gains (climbing legs, confidence, 50 pounds of gear).

So when I bitch about the effects of hanging out with a bunch of assholes, I do so with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek. I plant it there carefully, however, lest it bitten off mid-guffaw.