Nothing but the bike, Perpetuem, Clif Shots, road kill and hills, lots of hills

My ride on Thursday was incredible.  First of all, my Heat Transfer class was cancelled so other groups could present their projects.  My group presented earlier in the week leaving my a gigantic block of free time.  Of course, when faced with this situation and the choice between studying or riding my bike which one d you think I'm going to chose?!  The bike won again.  I'll keep this one short and just say that the ride was awesome.  It was cold but incredible.  I attacked up every single hill and pushed my legs hard the entire way.  Clif shots saved me on this ride.  I felt myself fading at the top of one of my last climbs, popped a few and was right back up to speed.  It's amazing how big of a difference such a little bit of food can make on a workout.

ACUMED!!

I got the Acumed internship!  I interviewed with them last Thursday and got the call on Monday.  When I picked up the phone and they told me I had the position I almost reacted the way one of my female engineering friends ('Andrea' in the New Orleans blog) would have:  jumping, celebrating, hitting everything I saw and just generally acting like I was on crack.  Anyway, with this job everything kind of fell into place.  I was really torn between Walla Walla and Portland (but not really).  Walla Walla would have been nice because I would have had access to a car, readily accessible training partners, an easy job with connections and it's Walla Walla: everything is close.

Long, draining weekend

Now that the weekend is winding down/over I realize just how busy it's been.  Between the three huge projects due next week, the Ronde De Portlandia and the trying to stay caught up on homework I managed to stay busy. The pie chart depicts my time allocation this weekend (Friday through Sunday).  As you can see, not a whole lot of down time.  Granted, I did a lot and accomplished even more but this weekend was incredibly draining for me on a physical, mental and even emotional level.  Physically, obviously because of the Ronde which I'm sure I'll be recovering from for the next few days; mentally because of the insane amounts of homework and projects I managed to accomplish.  I'm not kidding when I say that I worked from noon until midnight today on engineering projects (like assignment projects, not fun ones) and class work.  

De Ronde Van West Portlandia

By far my favorite group ride and rivals my all-time favorite ride.  End of story... Ok, well I guess I could tell you a little bit about it.

This ride has become a legend within its own time for its brutally hard climbs and varied terrain.  Created in honor of the Tour of Flanders (one of the Classics pro cycling races in Europe) this ride which has become a legend in its own time.  Organized by none other than Brad Ross of the Cross Crusade series this ride started in 2007 (I think) and the numbers have swelled from a few dozen to 600-700 last year.  I don't know what the official count was this year but I wouldn't be surprised if it exceeded last year's numbers.  HERE is a link to the Bike Portland story about the ride last year and HERE is a link to the route.  Don't use the elevation tool, it lies.

A win to finish a week of hard racing

The Tuesday Night PIR race marked the end of my 5 races in 8 days streak. As of an hour before my race I was still debating whether to race the Cat 3/4 or the 4/5 race. I had two teammates who were going to be in the 4/5 race but I knew that if I placed I'd earn points in the 3/4 race. Part of me wanted to go out and beat up on the 4/5 guys and then I started listening to my body (stomach in particular). I knew that I'd had a hard stretch of races so I knew my legs wouldn't appreciate it if I went out and destroyed them again. Also, about 2.5 hours before the start of my race I'd eaten a HUGE bowl of pasta with a bunch of cream and meat in it. Oh yeah, and 3 Doubletree Chocolate Chip Cookies-at least twice the size of the ones pictures-(I didn't want them to go bad...). On the way over to the race I felt like there was a rock sitting in my stomach. Given this it wasn't too hard for my teammates to convince me to race the 4/5 race with them. Sorry, no pictures of me racing this race, you'll have to settle for the picture of me winning the race on Sunday in Walla Walla.

5 Races, 8 Days

Tomorrow ends my streak of 5 races in 8 days. After a dry spell and going for over 2 weeks without racing I decided to make up for it. The schedule called for a circuit race Tuesday night (4/6) at PIR, a crit in Hood River Thursday night, collegiate road race in Walla Walla on Saturday, a collegiate circuit race on Sunday and another circuit race at PIR the following Tuesday (tomorrow, 4/13). I'll just give a quick recap of each race and throw in what pictures I have.

New Orleans

So I went to New Orleans for Spring Break. I tell people that it was for a friend's 21st birthday (one of the people I was traveling with turned 21 the day before and her party was the night before we left) but the real reason is that a HUGE conference for biomedical engineering research and devices was being held there. I have no way to describe the city other than "completely insane."

I really can't do justice to the experience in words. HERE is a link to pictures. Take a look and I'll try and touch on the highlight below.

First of all, the plane ride there was fairly eventful. My friend who turned 21 the night before (let's call her Andrea) was in surprisingly good shape. If you knew her you wouldn't be surprised, she's Greek, hyper and I guess kind of ok to hang out with (sarcasm). So, our flight was broken up into three legs, Portland to Kansas City, KC to Dallas and Dallas to New Orleans. For me the flight to KC was just fine. The two 1.5 hour flight really did me in. We'll just say I'm prone to motion sickness but usually it's not too bad. The turbulence changed that. I'll keep this decent and just say that I had three 'presents' for the flight attendant.

Racing recap

So obviously it's been a while since the last post. I owe that to a variety of reasons, mainly school getting incredibly busy over those weeks and my computer suffering massive injuries for warranty purposes. I'm going to try and give the best summary I can of those weeks, the races and what I've been up, while keeping it as short as possible.