Courtenay Brown

Well, the last few days of hanging out down in the Bay Area were exactly what I needed! I got home to Tahoe this afternoon feeling refreshed and excited, albeit slightly sweaty and sticky from spending the day at the Winters bike race down near Davis, CA. I raced, sort of… I had a number on my jersey and I pedaled for a bit so if that counts as racing, I did it! I went back and forth about twelve times during the week, this seems to be a pattern with me and my decisions of whether or not to do a bike race. I raced pretty hard last weekend at 5430, then I didn’t really do a good job of making recovery my top priority this week, so I figured maybe it would be best to just skip the bike race, but then on Wednesday I left my floor pump at The Freewheel before driving all the way to Sonoma, then Travis called me and said he could bring it to Winters so I wouldn’t have to drive all the way back to the city, so then I decided I should go race on my way home to Tahoe so I could get my pump, plus I wanted to see all my racer friends, then on Friday I accidentally did this 2.5 hour pre race ride that was like straight uphill in 100 degree heat (NOT my idea btw but I was not the tour guide) and even had to lay down on the ground and just rest in the middle of the ride, yikes!, but it was a pretty route, so then after that I decided to still go to Winters, chat with all my friends, get my pump, but “be flexible” about what I actually did in the race!

So, it was super fun - I did a lap, caught up with a bunch of old friends, then pulled out, and went and talked to a bunch more people. I love it when it takes me 3 hours to leave a venue after being that busy being sociable! And I am really happy I didn’t force myself to actually race - I feel like my body is in a bit of a hole, and there is no point in digging myself any deeper.

Afterwards, I hightailed it home to see Kitty and do some cleaning. First order of business was to bring all my bikes upstairs from the storage closet! They belong here with me… my cross bike, my first TT bike, and my track bike have all been stacked in the dusty darkness downstairs since last October and now it’s time to remind them all how much I love them. Tomorrow I am having a bike-polishing and bar-taping party, they are going to look so awesome, and finally I will have fi’zi:k tape (my favourite!) on all 5 of my bikes. Then after bringing up the bikes I put a bunch of things I don’t need (read: not mine) down in the closet where the bikes were. Then I played with Kitty some more and did all his favourite things: picked him up and danced with him and kissed his face and bounced him like a baby while he kind of rolled his eyes. Just wanted to make sure he missed me while I was gone !

OMG now I am beat, and thankfully it’s finally cool enough that I think I can sleep!