Motivation...

It has been hard to come by lately! I must be spoiled, I got so used to the warm/hot weather and now that it has been cold and/or rainy lately it's been tough to get the hours in. Most of my weekday workouts have been on the Silver Comet rail trail (can you say B-O-R-I-N-G)..but yesterday I couldn't take it. I convinced Eddie that we should go up to the mountains to ride 3-gaps on the road. Luckily, he was cool with the idea. We started from his coach's house and about 20 minutes later, we ran into Tina. We decided to turn around and join her for the rest of her ride/intervals. Tina is great, so nice, but the first thought I had was "oh shit the pace of this ride just went up". She and Eddie were nice to me (even though my view was of their butts the whole time), until we all started our intervals. She was doing 20 minutes, Eddie was doing 12, and I was doing 10. Tina started behind me, at the bottom of Woody's Gap, and it was just a few minutes before she FLEW by me and I didn't see her (or Eddie) again until the top. Man alive, I have some work to do to keep up with people like this. Anyway, the ride turned cold..fast. And, I forgot all my calories at the house. I was stuck with 300 calories for a 3+ hour ride..d'oh. Still, it was good training, and it beat the Silver Vomet!

Today, our mountain bike got rained out so Eddie and I hit the road again. After two hours of riding in the rain, I sooo wanted to bail, but Eddie was just peachy. Grr. I wasn't going to bail while he kept riding..I felt too guilty..so I plugged along. I'm glad I did, we got in 3 hours again, but I wish I could have stopped all the negative thoughts that plagued me for almost all those 3 hours!! I just want summer to be here..I promise I won't complain about the heat when it arrives.

On a very bright note, I will be getting a new frame..again. I know I just got one, but because of my awkward body measurements (I'm 5'8" with a short torso and really long legs--34 in. inseam) I'm having a hard time with a lot of the geometries on the 29ers..including the purple unit. It's almost a perfect fit, but not quite..but being in the bike fitting biz now, I want my bike to fit me like a glove. What I really need is a steep seat tube angle so I can actually push my saddle back a bit. Even on my 16" frame now, I'm riding with my saddle pushed all the way forward and I'm running a 120mm stem. I came upon the Vassago Cycles site via some MTBR.com posts and had been checking out their frames. They have something called their WetCat geometry..and after seeing the geometry and learning about their design philosophy, I see that they get it. I now have an Ernie Orange Jabberwocky on it's way to me. I won't have it for Cohutta 100, but I should have it in time for the Dirty Spokes 12 hour!