Carter

When I found out we were riding at Carter today, I quickly put on my new METAL jersey... and was ready to roll. An hour and a half later, we arrived at Carter.  It couldn't get any better...the weather was awesome, even a little breeze. My sister and I had tons of energy and were ready to hit the trails.  Oh...wait first I have a tree to climb.  Besides mountain biking and  longboarding, I love climbing trees.  I know I'm a dork, but who cares!! 

 Our ride was awesome today.  Man...with my sister getting a little older now (she's almost 7), our family rides flow very nicely!!  No breaks anymore, Kiki just pedals away with no complaining.  She even rode Snake Ridge today for the first time.  Normally, she's scared to try the more difficult trails, but not today!!  You know... she says she wants to start doing Triathlons, but I think she will always be a true mountain biker at heart.  Check out the cool pics from our ride today. 



Are you wondering??  Yes, I finally made it up on the first try.  





This was right before I crashed.  I have cleared this trail about a million times before, but not today.   I think the sand got me at the end of the trail and I crashed really hard. I didn't get hurt, but I had the shakes.  Has that ever happened to you??  I think the crash just caught me off guard, who knows?   The one thing that did make me mad was...I snagged my jersey.  Oh well, I'm sure it's going to be one of many snags, can't stay new forever, right??.    

 After my little crash, and my sister getting a cut on her leg from a tree branch, we decided to shorten our 2nd lap.     AWESOME DAY...AWESOME RIDE!!

Update: Endurance Racing Speech

If you are wondering how I did on my speech...keep reading.  My Teacher was out sick today, so she had the students read their speeches to her over the speaker phone.  I'm super happy to say that she picked me as the 1st place winner.  Now, the next step will be competing with the other 4th grade winners tomorrow.  Not sure how that will go, but I will give it my all and hope for the best.  Man...I've had an amazing  4th grade year, first with the science project and now with the speech.  I'm certainly not bragging...I just think it's awesome people are actually interested in hearing about bike stuff!!  I hope I have inspired at least one person to give mountain biking a try, hopefully a kid! You know what?... I think I'm the only one at my entire school that rides off road??  Pretty sad huh??

Happy Easter

Celebrating Easter at Wall Springs Park...awesome day!!  







Break Time

I know what you are thinking, why isn't she working on her speech???  Well, the speech is coming along really good.  I have prepared it, now I just have to work on my presentation.  So...I thought it would be good to get out of the house for a ride.  We decided to do a little road riding at Starkey Park.  Not my favorite place, but at least I was able to clear my mind. OK...so I guess I should stop writing in my blog and get busy on the speech again, so bye for now.     

Beach and Speech

Beach today, speech tomorrow.  I don't know how much riding I will get in this weekend.  I not only have to prepare a speech, I have to pretty much memorize it by Monday .  I was only given a 4 day notice, but what can you do??  This year for the Tropicana Speech I will be doing it on Endurance Racing.  I'm hoping to grab the audience's attention with some important lessons I've learned when racing. Hope I can pull this one off with such short notice. I'm not sure you know this about me or not, but everything has to be perfect, ALWAYS!      So...most likely after I write my speech, I will have my sister video tape it about 5,000 times, then I will probably stress myself out until it's 100% perfect.  And then and only then will I be satisfied.  Yeah, it's going to be a long weekend!!  Hope the Easter Bunny brings me lots of candy, I'm going to need the brain food.       

Metal Kit

Look what was on my bed when I got home from school today.  Can't get any better than that!! 

....just one thing though.  You won't be seeing me wear the bib shorts anytime soon.  More like, let's say about 5 years or when I grow a butt, which ever comes first.   

Thanks T6...LOVE IT!!

Millions Of Mosquitoes At Morris

It was Saturday afternoon...and my family and I were trying to decide where we should ride.  Weekends just don't seem right unless we get at least one family ride in.  So, we thought about riding around Honeymoon Island, Dunedin Causeway, and maybe even hit the Pinellas Trail for a little while..  But we quickly changed our minds after seeing the wind outside.  I really can't stand road riding to begin with, but you throw some wind in the mix, it's torture. Because it was late in the day, we settled on Morris Bridge.

OK, so we are at Morris Bridge now.  After gearing up, we start getting attacked by mosquitoes.  No big deal, Dad brought the bug spray.  We coat ourselves heavily with the spray, then hit the trails.

The ride was going great until we decided to ride the Indian trail.  That trail was...um..let me describe it to you.  Picture a trail that was probably flooded out a couple weeks ago from all the rains. Well, the water finally dried up a little, but now it was just absolutely disgusting.  The smell... oh the smell.  It smelt like rotten eggs and the trail was infested with mosquitoes.  Of course, I think we finished the trail in record time because the mosquitoes were chasing us.  They didn't seem to be bothered by the bug spray.  So, we finished the trail and what do you know?  There was a sign saying Trail Closed, whoops, maybe someone took the sign down at the other end,  or maybe we didn't notice it, who knows?!

After that, the trails were fine with the exception of those nasty mosquitoes!  No cool pictures to show you because my Mom didn't want to get off her bike.  If you stopped just for a second  the mosquitoes would eat you up.  Anyway, we still had fun!!  Good ride and glad we went!

Check This Out

Hello.. no new bike stories to share this week.  I spent all day Saturday in the pool, while my Dad was putting together my Mom's new bike.  She just got a new Santa Cruz frame from aj's. And after putting the bike  together,  my Mom didn't like it too much.  The frame is awesome, but her old Fox fork is too small for the bike. She says she feels like a dork on it, so don't laugh at her if you see her out on the trails.  Hopefully, we can get her a new fork soon. I would hate to think that my Mom feels dorky, not that!  But...those Fox forks aren't cheap so I'm sure it will be awhile before she feels cool again!! Hee hee!!

So anyway, what I wanted to tell you is, I think you should check out this new online magazine (if you haven't already).  It's really cool!  And not just because there is a tiny article about me in it (under the youth racers section).  But...because I think it's a fun magazine and I love the articles. (especially the hairy leg one)  So, here's a link to the magazine:  http://www.spokenchainmagazine.com/      Bye for now...

More Alafia Pictures

Thanks for the awesome pictures Cathie!!!   If you weren't at the race, now you may be able to understand why I was dying after lap 3.  It wasn't just mud...it was a river!!

Me after lap 3

I was flipping through my Dad's magazine and came across this.  It reminded me of the comment Sebastian left on my last race report.  I'm going to give it a try next time I'm out for a ride.  I know I need to work on the whole mental thing.  I also know that I made the mistake of going as fast as I could on laps 1 and 2.  I was just so excited I was actually keeping up with the lead group.  So, 2 things to work on...  #1 work on my mental toughness and #2 pace myself according to which type of race I'm doing.       

  

6 Hours At Alafia

It didn't start off good. My Dad and I decided to do a little warming up before the race...the warm up lasted, I don't know, about a minute. I was looking back at my Dad, the same time I was going over a root and ended up crashing. I fell on my face and bruised my leg. You know it's a bad bruise when it immediately turns a greenish purple color. So...it was time to cry. I don't know if I was just tired or what.

Feeling better and ready to race.

And we were off.......

I felt very strong on laps 1 and 2 until...............

Lap 3 caught up with me. I started crying in the middle of it. My Dad was trying to talk to me, but he was making things worse. I was completely 100% MISERABLE!! The longer laps ( 9 miles)... and the mud and roots on River Loop were killing me too. I finally made it though lap 3... and I was sooooo DONE!!! My entire body ached and there was no way I was going to continue with the race!!!

My Dad decided to go out on his 4th lap, while I rested. Time to cry a little more. Then... I don't know how my Mom did it, but she actually got me excited about going out for a 4th lap. I definitely needed some Mom time!! She got me to eat and drink. She gave me the super pep talk and then, I was ready to roll. Just had to wait on my Dad to return.

I think my Dad learned his lesson on leaving me behind. 1st thing was, he crashed on his 4th lap (the one without me). He swears an armadillo ran out in front of him, yeah right!! Then, on the next lap he went to put some air in his tire and ended letting all of the air out. So, we walked the bikes back to the start (which was about 3 miles) to put air in. He told me to go ahead and go but, I didn't want to leave him. I think that lap ended up taking us about an hour and fifteen minutes.

Here we are, finishing up our 4th lap.

I missed my goal by 1 lap, but I'm still happy with how I did. I know I would have regretted not going out for that 4th lap. And because I did, I ended up placing 3rd. I think there was a total of 7 solo beginner women.

I love the podium, it was a picnic table.