A Guy Gave Me His Phone Number! He's 40 years old. Yay?

Winning the Lake Mary Criterium: JC 1st, JK 2nd. Just like the old days.

This weekend, I did the Sanford and Lake Mary races. I got 5th on Saturday, which was kind of disappointing. I won the Lake Mary race on Sunday, though, so that made up for it. I really like that course, and my legs felt good. There were attacks at the beginning, a break went, we stayed off, almost lapped the field, and I won the sprint at the end...all the same ol' race stuff. You know how it goes.

I definitely want to congratulate Michelle Blake for winning the women's category 4 race. You can read her account of the race as soon as she posts it by clicking on the link to the right. She's the "Bottle Rocket."

Anyway, I warmed down a bit after the Sanford race on Saturday. Actually, I wasn't supposed to be warming down as much as I was supposed to be doing a bit of extra training. I did a couple laps around the block, and immediately got distracted by the men's category 3 race that a few of my friends were in. Who wants to train when you can sit leisurely on the curb and watch others suffer?

So there I was sitting on the curb when the nice police man who was corner marshaling for the race, struck up a conversation with me. He was fit, looked to be about 40 years old, and seemed genuinely interested in what the cyclists were doing out there on the course. I explained some tactics to him, answered some of his questions, and told him a bit about the Florida racing scene. He said he watched my race, and had pegged me as the one who would win the field sprint. Well, I didn't win that day, so I guess that goes to show how much he knows about cycling. It was a good conversation, but there's only so much I can talk about cycling before I start to go crazy. So I made an excuse, hopped on my bike, and pedeled away.

A couple hours later (my friends had finished their race, and we were packing up the car to go back to my house), I see a car pull up out of the corner of my eye. I don't really take notice of it until I hear my name called..."Jackie!"

I look up. It's a police car, and in it is the police man. I guess I must have told this guy my name, but I don't remember doing so.

He beckons me over, and hands me a white slip of paper through the window.

"Here you go," he says. "Good job today, blah, blah, blah."

And I say something nice like "blah blah blah" back to him. Meanwhile, I'm taking his card, registering what's going on, and thinking to myself, "Naw... he is NOT doing what I think he's doing, is he?" Next thing I know, I'm holding a business card with two numbers on it. One of them handwritten. Aw man...

I don't know what else to say so I say, "Thanks! Good luck with your blah blah." He drives away, and I look back down at the card in my hand.

I look up again, and my friends (three guys my age) are looking at me inquisitively. "I think he just gave me his number," I say, astonished. And then it hits me. "He just gave me his number," I say again. "And he was OLD...." They had all seen him too. And after a pause, they all start cracking up.

So I guess there's a first time for everything.

And The Racing Begins...

10 out of 10.

That's the score I'd give last weekend if it were judged against all other weekends so far in my life.

It was the weekend of the Swamp Classic, the first race of the season, and I wasn't sure how I'd feel on my bike. Well, after winning the USCF and collegiate time trials, getting second behind my team mate in the collegiate criterum, and going on to win the women's Pro 1, 2 criterium, I think I can confidently say that I'm ready for the 2009 season. My performance was sort of a relief to me. I'm coaching myself this year, so if I fail there's no one one else to take even a fraction of the blame.

But the 1st 1st and 1st places were only half of what happened. Outside of the racing, me and my team mate, Morgan, each gave pretty lengthy television interviews. We talked about Team Type 1, our sponsors, and our message. I also met a little girl who has diabetes, and I got to win a race while her and her parents were there watching. Knowing they were there was really what helped me overcome the pain and give it that extra kick at the end.

And if you were unfortunate enough to see me in the days after the race, you'd know that I had to overcome A LOT of physical pain. On top of the muscular pain, my legs were feeling jello-y. Weird feelings in my legs are always the first indicators from my body that something is going wrong. My legs start to feel weird if I stay up too late, walk a lot, eat something different, sleep to much, or drink a few sips of wine. That's right, my legs (not my fingers or lips) start tingling after only a couple ounces of alcohol. So my legs were feeling weird today, and I knew it was the 'I'm getting sick' weird feeling. And because I wasn't feeling my best, my mind was starting to turn on me as well. During the race, my thoughts went something like this: "what the **** am I ******* doing here. I need to get my ******* **** ***** self *****home to bed *********. My legs feel like ******* ****. Can we slow the ***** **** down." I don't care if you're the sweetest person in the world, if you're miserable in a bike race, you're thinking the exact same thing.

After crossing the finish line, I pedaled home from the race, showered, crashed into bed, and stayed there for 60 hours in a pile of tissues and sweaty sheets. I owe a big THANK YOU to the friends who took care of me and the young girl for giving me the strength to win.

I took the Dade City weekend off because I was still recovering from the illness.

I'm not the champagne bottle-opening expert.

February 16th was my birthday! The big 21! I told my friends they could throw me a party under one condition: everyone must be gone by 11pm so that I could go to bed with minimal negative effects on my training and recovery. Heather arrived at 8:30 with some flowers, chocolates, and a bottle of wine. By 8:35 my legs were tingling. By the time everyone else got there at 9, I was laughing and carrying on and ready to hug a East Gainesville hobo if that's who happened to come stumbling through the door next. We had cake and talked, and everyone was out the door by 11. My senior citizen version of a 21st birthday party was a success! It was awesome!

Love and Cycling Survey

I've got a question I'd like answered. I thought I knew the answer, but now I'm not so sure, so I thought I'd ask you, the cycling world, and see what you came up with.

I wouldn't be thinking about this right now if I hadn't gone to Publix today. You see, I'd forgotten it was Valentine's day, that us, until I walked through the doors and had my eyes bombarded with the pinks and reds of flowers, balloons, and heart-shaped boxes of chocolates. I was fine at first, but some time during that 30-minute shopping trip Valentine's Day got to me. I can still see the line of guys at the register waiting to purchase the roses they picked out. None of those roses were for me. There wouldn't be any boxes of chocolates or candlelight dinners when I got home.

So that was it. Now I was depressed. And I was even MORE depressed by the fact that I was depressed in the first place. Why was I letting a made-up holiday get to me!

Now I'm here at home thinking back to a couple separate conversation's I've had with professional and cat 1 cyclists about life, love, and cycling.

Here's the question we have: Is it better for a serious cyclist to date another serious cyclist or someone completely outside of the sport? And if it's better to date someone outside the sport, how should we go about meeting people outside the sport if we spend all our time on our bikes?

If you haven't had this dilemma well then, I hate to break it to you, you're probably as serious a cyclist as you thought you were.

Pictures from Camp

When you sign with a team you can never know for sure what you're getting in to. Of course you know what your contract says, what they'll be providing for you, and what races you'll be doing, but there's really a lot more to it.

I flew out to California not really knowing what to expect. I knew I was supposed to meet a shuttle at the Santa Barbara airport which would take me to the team's hotel, but I didn't know much beyond that. What would I'd be doing while I was out there? If you asked me that before I left, I would probably have told you I'd be riding all the time. Well, I was wrong. Camp was an eclectic cross between a buisness conference, a diabetes camp, and a cycling camp. If we weren't in meetings, at photo shoots, or on our bikes we were trying to get some sleep!

In the meetings we learned about the history of the team and our title sponsors, Lantus and Apidra. My teammates' glucose monitors beep to tell them if their blood sugar is getting either too high or too low. Phil Southerland would be speaking to us, a glucose monitor would beep, and he would pause and jokingly say, "Stop interrupting and get your blood sugar under control!" It was such a positive atmosphere.

Below is a guy from the camera crew who was filming the filming for a documentary about the team.

I also got to meet my team mates who are all amazing cyclists and amazing people. Two of my team mates, Morgan and Monique, are living with Type 1 diabetes. They are living proof that people with diabetes can do anything a normal person can - even be a professional bike racer! Below is a picture of Sam and me. Sam's the youngest one on the team, but she can rock a sprint like the best of them!

Out on a training ride!

Getting pretty for the camera!

Monique and Me between shoots.

And this is what I had to leave when I came back to Florida. I was sad to go, and even more sad when I realized how much school work I'd have to do after being absent for ten days.

But right now, Redlands is on my mind. It's time to train.

Oh, and be sure to follow our men's team in the upcoming Tour of California!