This Just In
A silly blog post that happened today:
Road Racing Diva Caves to Temptation
I love the way they approach clothing for "women who kick ass." They avoid falling into the cliches of pink and cutesy and "hee hee I'm a girl and I race", it is just serious style, athletic prowess and hip color palettes.
Anyway, I had my best race weekend ever at Infineon a few days ago. At the end of one race, I had thirteen riders (12 men, 1 woman) behind me and 25 in front. At AFM races I usually only beat about four or five crotch rocket jockeys. I'm not entirely sure how this happened, either.
At a track day last week, James helped me work on a change to my body positioning that helped me brake harder and turn the bike more quickly, and he also got me thinking more critically about my choice of lines. Something was just different this time though. I guess my expectations were low, but I'd shaken off some more fear I was clinging to involving AFM race starts. AFM race starts are so insane. Sixty racers all piling into the first few turns, weaving and shaking and bumping and hoping to not all fall down like a house of cards. I hate this part of the sport. But it's not going to go away, and I think I started to figure that if I'm going to do this, I have to do it like I mean it. So I did, and found myself ahead of quite a few people, and I held my position.
I had one battle with a sweet, bespectacled wedding photographer during Formula IV. He ended up ahead of me after we passed each other a few times, but at one point we were side by side going into turn seven, looking over at each other wondering who was going to back down in the game of chicken, and I won. I was on the inside of the turn, but hey, it definitely took some "balls of steel" as he put it.
I'm encouraged by these results. My laptimer said I did a couple of high 1:53s, beating my year's goal of 1:55 by over a full second. On a 75 horsepower SV this is actually a pretty decent laptime. I will continue to do push-ups, squats and abs in the gym, along with riding my bicycle every chance I get. These things will help me go faster.
Road Racing Diva Caves to Temptation
I love the way they approach clothing for "women who kick ass." They avoid falling into the cliches of pink and cutesy and "hee hee I'm a girl and I race", it is just serious style, athletic prowess and hip color palettes.
Anyway, I had my best race weekend ever at Infineon a few days ago. At the end of one race, I had thirteen riders (12 men, 1 woman) behind me and 25 in front. At AFM races I usually only beat about four or five crotch rocket jockeys. I'm not entirely sure how this happened, either.
At a track day last week, James helped me work on a change to my body positioning that helped me brake harder and turn the bike more quickly, and he also got me thinking more critically about my choice of lines. Something was just different this time though. I guess my expectations were low, but I'd shaken off some more fear I was clinging to involving AFM race starts. AFM race starts are so insane. Sixty racers all piling into the first few turns, weaving and shaking and bumping and hoping to not all fall down like a house of cards. I hate this part of the sport. But it's not going to go away, and I think I started to figure that if I'm going to do this, I have to do it like I mean it. So I did, and found myself ahead of quite a few people, and I held my position.
I had one battle with a sweet, bespectacled wedding photographer during Formula IV. He ended up ahead of me after we passed each other a few times, but at one point we were side by side going into turn seven, looking over at each other wondering who was going to back down in the game of chicken, and I won. I was on the inside of the turn, but hey, it definitely took some "balls of steel" as he put it.
I'm encouraged by these results. My laptimer said I did a couple of high 1:53s, beating my year's goal of 1:55 by over a full second. On a 75 horsepower SV this is actually a pretty decent laptime. I will continue to do push-ups, squats and abs in the gym, along with riding my bicycle every chance I get. These things will help me go faster.