no race, but i will measure

I am a bit sick, so I didn't go to Hellyer for the points race tonight. That e-card really says it all. I think I was so tired from Saturday and Sunday that I was a hotbed waiting to incubate any virus. Lucky for me, lots of people were sick at my work, so by Monday night I felt crappy. But I am starting to feel better after my 16 hour sleep marathon! My pee looked like lemon-lime Gatorade when I awoke cause I slept for so long without even getting up for a sip of water.

Well, I measured, and my quads are holding strong at 60.25. I think that they will start to shrink pretty soon as I stop doing sprint workouts. I wonder how much they'll shrink....this will be very interesting.

I think I will re-cap some of my season goals. Thinking back to last September, I have made great accomplishments. Below are some of the goals that I achieved, and a couple I did not.

• Ride no-hands. This took me a VERY long time to learn because I have a bad sense of balance. I was very, very happy when I could finally do this and told everyone I knew.
  
• Get up out of the saddle. Yes, that sounds dumb. But 1 year ago I couldn't get out of my saddle at all while riding. Now I know how to do this while going up hills (which can make going up hills a lot easier!) and while sprinting. This took a long time to figure out, but happy I can finally do it.
  
• Drink my water while riding. Last summer I was in a constant state of dehydration, so it is very good I can grab my water bottle, now from both cages.
  
• Walk my bike by only pushing the saddle. I feel totally bad-ass now that I can even go around turns.
  
• Ride the rollers! This also took a very long time. I spent a long time with my roommates holding my handlebars. But now I go for 35 minutes without bumping the door frame.
• Finish a race (without crashing).
  
• Tuck on the downhills. Michiko taught me how to do this. Except I am a pussy and keep my hands near the breaks, not on top of the bar like her.
  
• Try out the track.
  
• Of course, there are a bunch of other things I learned, but these were my actual goals last September.
  

Some of my goals I did not accomplish. These are:

• Ride a century. My first attempt ended in the ER...so I still have yet to ride the full 100.
• Corner not like a grandma. I don't think I corner like a grandma anymore, but it is still something I need to work on a lot more, so I am not checking it off the list yet.
• Take off my coat while riding. I can go no hands, take off arm warmers in a unique fashion with one hand on the handlebars, but I still can't take off something over my head.
• Learn to descend well. I am 10 times better than I was, but still need to work on this a lot more.
  

In addition to the ones above, I have a couple I am going to add:

• Try cross and riding in the dirt!
  
• Learn to ride on the black line on the track, even when i am going really, really fast.
• Learn to do standing starts better-- so I don't skip my wheels and swerve all over the place.
• Do one of the motorpacing sessions.
  
• Drink water during a race. This is important. I still haven't done this. (Well, you don't at track races. It is no biggie for a 40 minute crit... but, that Berkeley Hills road race was a long race with no water.)
  
• Ride the rollers no hands. Maybe that is a bit ambitious, but I want to try.
• Figure out better positioning in the crits
• Go to LA and ride the velodrome there. I think they have women's only days on that track and it'd be fun to road trip there to try it out!
  
• (I'd also like to try out those arrow bar things-- just cause I think it'd be neat to try them.)

Of course, I would like to generally improve and get faster, but I try to make skills my concrete goals because that seems more meaningful to me improving as a bike rider. Corner and descending, though, is certainly my #1!