Drop a Gear and "HOPE" to Disappear

This weekend I did my first 12 hour mountain bike race in temecula and loved every minute of it! I want to say thanks for the awesome support from my friends from Team Sole and Intense. Thanks also to Luke for helping me with my lights and to my cheerleaders the mann clan.

We couldn't have asked for better weather with the fall colors on some of the trees down by the lake.. it was beautiful. Slater was out of town for a training camp and I had a bunch of friends going out to race the 12 hours and I wanted to get a long bike ride in so I decided to race also. My goal was to ride the full 12 hours! I didn't even bring a chair to tempt me to want to sit down. Just a day of fun on my bike with 600 other of friends who also love to ride. My first 4 laps were awesome I couldn't stop smiling, I was having a blast and I guess others noticed because people kept telling me that it looked like I was having fun? weren't they?

On my 5th lap I crashed up on the rock garden and busted my back break by the lever, and scraped my arm... shoot...

I was kinda shocked and just started walking, your mind does funny things for some reason I kept thinking how am I going to get back? My friend chuck came up from behind and made sure i was ok and said that I can still get back! That kinda snapped me out of it and I hopped back on my bike and rode the rest of the course with only a front brake... it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be and when I finished everyone was stoked to see that I was ok. I guess chuck spread the word through friends on the course like the "telephone game" and they thought i would be bleeding to death and barley walking and maybe lost a leg j/k but word spreads like fire whether its true or not.. funny ..

While everyone was surveying my bike and I went and washed my face, added more sunscreen and loaded my pockets and bottle for the next lap. The pit crew from intense were going to try to switch out my brake but they only had shimano on their demo bikes but I had all SRAM gear. So there was an Intense Medium Tracer 29er that was itching to be ridden.. it may have been a couple sizes too big but the pedals were switched, seat was moved forward, and I was ready to roll on my green moto machine : )

That bike was a beast. The hardest part about riding this bike was the super steep sandy uphill sections. When I would have to get off to push I would lose my footing and find myself laying down with the bike on top of me sliding backwards on the hill. Pretty funny! Super heavy bike! I was able to ride my last 3 laps on the green moto machine. I was stoked that I was able to finish with a ride time of 11 hrs 42mins and ended up with a third place finish in the Expert/Pro class with a total of 8 laps.

My nutrition consisted of 4 vitargo, 2 perpetum, 1bottle 1/2 vitargo and nuun, 1bottle water, 1/2 chocolate power bar, a couple bites of a turkey sandwich, 1 bag of GU chews, one Hammer GU w/caffine in the evening, DK last lap, apples, bananas, blueberries and grapes.

My kind of Maui!!

I loved the Xterra World Championship Course. During the race I kept thinking to myself how much I love this crazy, loose and scary dirty volcanic rock roads. It was like Vision Quest an Adventure Race and an Xterra all smashed into one. It even went through a dozen of ecosystems from super dry cactus sections to beautiful sandy beaches. The day was beautiful and kept it's cool with the layer of clouds above.


The swim was the most awesome ever with its clear waters and coral below. I was swimming and I looked down and totally jumped when I saw something black below, it was a scuba diver camera man. On my second lap there was this black stuff the was twirling beneath me which I finally figured out was a school of little black fish. It was beautiful : ) Also super stoked that I was able to draft some guy on the the first lap and was able to find him again on the second lap. The three months of master swimming is working because before i was just struggling to make it out of the water let alone having the ability to draft someone!


Out on the bike course i'm always checking the sidelines to see who is off stranded for a tire repair or etc... it looked like a war scene with people everywhere, from far away a couple of the guys looked like slater but as I got close I was wrong. As I was coming down one of the worst sections of the race I saw this guy limping up the steep hill that I was flying down.. "is that slater" it couldn't be, but it was... i yelled "are you ok" and he yelled back "just finish the race!" I kept on going thinking did he break a leg, an ankle???? what happened??? well i figured if he could answer me then he was going to live : ) so i kept on going.


Running on Mckenna beach was beautiful and I love the maui sand, eventhough at that point of the race I wish I was laying on the beach in my bikini soaking in the scenery instead of running my sandy death march! I made it to the finish line and was stoked to see slater hobbling towards me! I was bummed that he wasn't able to finish the race but thanked God he had no broken bones!


After the race we had a couple of days to relax and sight see. We ended up biking up Haleakala from sea level to over 10,000 feet of climbing... I could not have made it without slater towing me up the mountain. We had a fun trip but I always wish we had a couple more days to just lay on the beach and do nothing : )

Xterra Nationals Ogden, Utah

Santa Barbara Bash

I love Santa Barbara!! We had such a wonderful weekend with an awesome group of friends. Chuck was our host and he did a great job of showing us around town. It was nice to have a whole weekend of no driving. Chuck lives a couple of blocks from state street and about a mile from the race start so we had no need to jump in our automated wheels. Life is good. Racing, Eating, Cruz'in the beach cruiser, Eating again and Cheering on friends!

cruz'in around town

Saturday we woke up around 4:30am for the Santa Barbara Triathlon. Our group doing the race this year was chuck, tiffany, wes, slater, sean, lisa, paul and me. Everyone did awesome and it was super cool to see friends out there on the course!

cutie pie

I was able to use slates power tap so I can start gathering info, i guess... : ) I still don't get all that confusing graphs and crap, oh well at least he does... my results were:

1st hour - 138norm watts / 335max / 131avg
2nd hour - 130norm watts / 330max / 119avg

i also shaved about 30min off my time from last year.

More eating sat. night : )

Paul's girlfriend Lisa and her roomie Doreen did the women's only race on sunday, it was both their very first tri and we were all super stoked to be their fan club. We headed out early on the bikes and got coffee then headed over to watch them kill it! Lisa ended up having the 10th fastest bike split overall and it was doreen's first time on a road bike and loved it! They did awesome and are ready for their next race!

Lisa getting yelled at by Ellen because she forgot to put on her lip gloss before the run : )

The Santa Barbara Bash is definitely on the agenda every year!
See ya next time!

The Lovely Luge

It was sooo nice to stay in town this weekend! Slater was off to Palomar for the sufferfest and I was off to my friend Jamie's house for her baby shower on Saturday. It was nice to meet some of her friends and get dressed up for the day! "Tis the season" for boys also, I know about five ladies that are all having boys within the next couple of months.. crazy how it "cycles"!




On sunday we did some exciting errands including our favorite coffee break, barnes visit and lunch. Later that day we headed out to the "LUGE" for a nice little singletrack dose! I was excited to wear my new "Team Duke" kit and was laughing when slate came downstairs in his same kit! He enjoys being twins, and when we get dressed separately somehow we always end up wearing something alike.. I guess the longer your married the more you start to dress alike! I can't wait till were eighty and we can go walking in the morning with our same track suits on! HA ! It was super hot but so nice to be out on the trail! Afterwards slate went for a transition run and i walked down to the corner of cooks to check out all the bikes with motors! There were tons of bikes out with fun & interesting people watching to pass the time until slate got back! Dinner and home!

San Juan Trail

Surf Monkey was on the list this weekend where slater and sean did the 1 mile ocean swim down in oceanside. It was so nice to be home for the weekend so we could attend a local event, ok, local to us is anything less than 2 hours away. Slate did awesome and he said there were tons of rip tides and swells, good thing i decided to watch : )




On sunday we met up with sean, lisa and luke for a ride up san juan! The last time I did san juan was about a year ago and it took about 6 hours. This time it took 4, so i was stoked! Also I didn't roll off the side of the mountain riding up like i did last time, who falls off riding up hill anyways? except me! HA... it was super hot, but luke was loving the cool weather.


View of the switchbacks and the lovely smog! I can't wait to go back and ride it again.

Mammoth Madness

We were off to our yearly mammoth trip and i was super excited to be spending the next four days up in the mountains. I love being up in mammoth and i was happy to be spending some time with some old "funny" friends. On the way up slater said he would shuttle luke and me on rock creek because his foot was still bothering him, so we pulled off the hwy and loaded on our gear... i have never done rock creek and i have heard lots of rocks, swooping trails, creek crossings etc. I was excited but a little worried when i looked over and saw that luke had turned into a storm trooper and i had my usual riding gear on! HA "Oh well" i thought "this should be interesting"..

luke took off as i was getting my stuff together and we were all going to meet at the bottom. I was off on the trail and it was a little weird riding by myself... it was so beautiful and i loved rock creek... anything techy "BRING IT ON"! love it! Its tempting to ride downhill'in, but i'm afraid I would never go back!



On friday we rode with the gang and had a blast on the mammoth trails! The weather was perfect with clouds, thunderstorms and rain! It was awesome to go back and ride those trails and too see how much i have progressed, i have had many "over the bars" on that loose dirt and sharp turns and i was stoked i didn't fall once.... we will have to do another trip before the winter comes.

tiffie and me

the gang

the gang bang

We had such a blast hanging out with everyone, I can't wait till next year when we all get together again! fun stuff : )