dirty laundry

Sloane Crosley's book I Was Told There'd Be Cake, starts with:
"As most New Yorkers have done, I have given serious and generous thought to the state of my apartment should I get killed during the day."
I might live in Boston, but I know the feeling. Living in a studio apartment [owned by Boston College] that I knew I would be leaving in three years meant that I refused to put even a postcard up on my walls until my final year of school. I need another bookcase but, too lazy to get one, books are currently strewn around the floor, the sofa, and the extra chair that sits by my desk. The bed is constantly a pile of blankets, jackets, and laundry. I'm not even going to get into what the kitchen looks like.

Of course, yesterday had to be the day when the Office of Graduate Housing came around to make sure we weren't igniting fires with "prohibited" items like candles and octopus lamps. Of course, I had to have a fully booked schedule which meant no time to run home and clean. Of course, they had to come by when my bike was doing double duty as a drying rack.
When I started hitting the gym and sweating on rollers, I finally realized how much goddamn laundry athletes have to do.

Woolite now lives next to my bathtub and lack of a drying rack means Underarmour and bike shorts get to dry on my shower rod, the back of a chair, or on the track bike. My hands are all dried out and gross with all the hand washing. I've considered buying a whole new wardrobe and hiring a personal laundry assistant. I'm still considering it.
And between trying to find places to hang athletic gear, I was slightly thankful I wasn't racing 'cross this year. I'd probably end up buying about 10 kits to avoid washing the mud, grass, and grossness off of them post-race. Watching friends get splattered - and doing their own laundry - is quite enough for me this fall.

Standing on something that wasn't muddy dirt after the Elite Men's race in Gloucester, Andy had turned to me to [jokingly] ask:
"Hey, does your dorm have laundry?"
"I'm a grad student, Andy. I don't live in a dorm," I replied, feigning indignation.
"Is your RA cool?" Rich Bravo asked.
"Yeah," I said, laughing, "but I have curfew and no boys allowed after 10pm, sorry."
[BUT, I will be partying with the boys well past 10pm tomorrow night for Superb's Grand Opening Party. You should go, you really should.]

being the blimp

Bicycling Magazine's "250 Best Cycling Tips" had this to tell me:
"The ideal amount of body fat for an elite male rider is 6 to 9 percent, for a woman, 11 to 14 percent."
I found it mildly hilarious that I would somehow have to lose close to 10% of my body fat by spring. Putting it up as my gchat status message, a fellow legal-eagle-cyclist-Belgophile IMed me:
"Story of my life, friend."

Manorexia is old news in the cycling world, but when all a guy has to do is eat 2 cheeseburgers a day rather than 5 to lose weight, where does that leave the girls? When 20 to 24% of the average woman's body consists of fat, how do you shed the pounds? By eating tissues? Doing the Master Cleanse...forever?
Sure women are built differently than men - except for maybe my sister who could probably eat nutella and peanut butter all day and still clock in at an envious 96 lbs - but that doesn't mean I'm not prone to self-conscious pangs of guilt and gluttony. When Brett saw a picture of M1 pre-riding-seriously-several-times-a-week-and-losing-more-than-25-lbs, he [half] jokingly called him fat. When I heard that, I wanted to either run on a treadmill until I lost 20 lbs or eat a whole chocolate cake. Instead I sighed and got back on the rollers the next day.

What can you do? Surrounding yourself with guys who seriously love racing will teach you a thing or two about training and the mechanics of a bike, but it'll also have you inspecting your arms and legs to see if the veins are popping out of them yet. It'll have you wearing loose t-shirts to hide love handles and anything less than washboard abs. "Fat" and "skinny" in the cycling world aren't defined by normal people. They're defined by the Olson twins.
Which is enough to have me - usually the only girl in the crew - feeling like the resident blimp. And it's not too far off base; poptarts and cereal for dinner my first year of law school left me with 10 additional pounds that I've been trying to get rid of since. But now officially in my late-twenties, and with dreams of Kissena, there's a reason to drop those 10 pounds [and hopefully more].

So I've been cutting calories, avoiding refined flour, and riding and running whenever I'm not at a desk. It's slightly embarrassing; it's actually the first time in my life that I've been concerned about my weight, and ashamed by it.
Sounds kind of like confessions of a developing anorexic, huh? Don't worry. As we were discussing the need to drop weight, my legal-eagle-Belgophile friend said:
"Manorexia takes dedication that I just don't have."
I agreed. I'm just too damn lazy.

ugg[h] season

It's Ugg season, again.
Remember those boots that became popular in, oh, 2002? Yeah apparently, they're still around, despite their highly unflattering, leg shortening and fattening qualities [unless you're over 5'10" and under 100lbs, of course]. Which inevitably gives rise to snarky jokes with my best friend:
"Is she wearing Uggs?"
"Yeah. Welcome to 2002."

I've never been one to jump on fashion trends that would make me look like the lovechild of a munchkin and a tree trunk. Still, that doesn't mean I'm capable of keeping up with what's hip and trendy [Rapha does that for me...juuuust kidding].
Because it sometimes takes snow to get me riding more.
Sunday afternoon's rain turned into snow as I realized that I couldn't avoid not going to the grocery store if I wanted more than cheese and ketchup for dinner. And battling the big, frosty flakes, I dragged the bike up and down hills that felt like mountains in jeans that were getting drenched with icy water.
I hate how winter makes me feel like Jabba the Hutt on a tricycle.
But despite my intense desire to be a better rider, I'm also a busy girl without a realistic concept of time. Which means that I'll tell myself that 6 hours of sleep is plenty to keep me going, only to end up face first on my yoga mat at 4pm, fast asleep, my head on top of an open casebook, highlighter still clutched in my right hand. Yesterday, though, I woke up 20 minutes later, completely disoriented [no drool, though], looked around at the piles of books in my room, and then got on my rollers.

I really should be reading cases and trying to figure out Section 316 of the Internal Revenue Code, but I'm trying to see how fast I can get my shoulders sweating instead.
It's weird, but when I'm pressed for time, some part of me insists that I spend more of it on my bike. And when it snows in mid-October, that's also enough to make me irrationally freak out and run to my rollers.
Irrational because I should be savoring the remaining warm-ish days. Yesterday was the perfect fall day - just cool enough with the sun shining brightly and innocently, as if the sky hadn't dumped snow all over me Sunday afternoon. Escaping school a bit on the early side, a small part of me whispered temptations to go to Dover, to putz around and find a park, to ride in lazy circles around this small New England city.

Instead, I read cases at a much faster clip than the I-totally-don't-want-to-be-doing-this-oh-who's-on-gchat?-wait-I-should-finish-this-reading pace, condensing the schoolwork into that narrow space between the power nap and dinner. And before stuffing my face, I spun on my track bike for a decent amount of time while distracting myself with "Kitchen Nightmares" [my new addiction].
Okay, I didn't finish all of my work, and went to bed too late to get up too early. Old habits die hard, sometimes, I guess. Still, do I at least get points for not wearing Uggs?

hunting season

My latest post for Embrocation Cycling Journal has been posted!

Enjoy!

a different design

A classmate turned to me yesterday and asked:
"Okay, is the tie terrible?"
He was dressed in a dark gray suit and white collared shirt with dark blue stripes for a job interview. The tie was an olive green paisley kind of affair, and was honestly really, really ugly.
"I mean, I know it's bad," he said, "but is it like interview-losing bad?"

I gave my honest opinion that it was pretty bad, but he probably didn't need to run home for another one, before realizing that he was talking about the state of the tie, not the color or design. He had gotten it wet earlier. Oops. I played it off like that was exactly what I was talking about before retreating behind my laptop. I know, I'm such a bitch.
It's not like I'm one to talk, either. I show up to school these days in a mish-mash of whatever looks like it's going to keep me insulated and warm. And while I knit a red hat a few years ago to match my Patagonia jacket, that's the extent of any color/design/brand name coordination. I'm sure people are giving me points for creativity, or for the boldness involved in wearing heinous outfits, but like split kits that can give rise to Twitter battles, I worry that I'm doing it all wrong.

Granted, I can put a half-decent outfit together if I had to, but the thing is that cycling doesn't seem to track the fashion world very neatly. It defies that old adage that one should always take off two accessories before walking out the door. Instead, I feel like I'm piling them on: Rapha Winter Collar, Outlier cap, my own knit hat, gloves, an extra set of clothes in my bag, layers of Underarmour...a massive silver Ortlieb bag, white helmet, and dark green bike on top of it all. Everything clashes.
Add to this the fact that I'm mixing brands. Not that it would be obvious to the untrained eye, but given the fact that the gentlemen of Rapha only seem to wear Rapha, can their gear be feasibly combined with Underarmour? Is that as tacky as wearing Chanel and pairing it with Coach shoes and a Louis Vuitton bag? Or as weirdly unsettling as seeing an Asian girl dressed up as a cowgirl? Even with all the neutral colors that bike gear comes in, is there some hidden "omg-she's-trying-way-too-hard" when you end up wearing all the gear you own at once because it's just that damn cold?

My classmate left in the middle of class for his job interview, and I wondered if the tie was really going to affect his chances. Not negatively, I hoped, because although he didn't seem too interested in the job in the first place, even I'd feel bad if that happened because of the tie. But taking off my Outlier hat at home so I could pull the Rapha Winter Collar over my head, and feeling a tad self-conscious about it all, I remembered a quote from none other than Coco Chanel:
"In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different."
I can live with that. I can definitely live with that.
[Yay Friday! Yay Rapha! Yay Rapha Scarf Friday!]

how i roll

Back when my mother was still deluding herself into thinking I had some musical promise, she would send me to weekly piano lessons. I don't actually remember being presented with the concept of "choice" in this decision. I was supposed to learn how to play piano. End of story.
I was maybe six or seven at the time. In the living room of my piano teacher, I would alternate between awkwardly trying to navigate the stretch of white and black keys and sitting in a chair, writing out the rhythm of whatever my teacher would play. And while regulated to invalid-child-with-epilepsy status, I absolutely could not sit still.

It was one of those days where I was supposed to write out rhythms when it happened. I was seated on a wooden chair but had tucked my legs underneath me so that I was perched on my shins. My toes stuck out of that narrow space between the seat of the chair and its back. I was fidgeting, and as I shifted in my seat, a heel got caught in the back of the chair. I panicked, pulled and struggled. The chair wobbled as I fought it, then fell back, me stuck to it, and the back of my head smashed against my piano teacher's glass coffee table.
She totally freaked out.
A few stitches later, I was fine. I actually remember wondering why we weren't just continuing the piano lesson.
Two decades later, I've come to terms with sitting for long stretches of time, but that doesn't mean I don't hate it. And a 12 hour school day means that while I'm not on my butt the whole time, by the time I get home, the only thing I want to do is eat something decent and be horizontal for an extended period of time [preferably for more than 6 hours].

But yesterday, I came home, peeled off restricting clothing, and hopped right back onto a bike. With the weather turning positively freezing and the heat turning my apartment into a sauna, unlike the true road warriors who are shunning the indoor trainer at all costs, I'm hiding inside, rolling happily. Ironically, the stacks of books smothering my desk and every flat surface in my apartment, along with the "to do" list that never ends, is pushing me into higher gears [literally]. The mental image of that adorable Phil Wood 12T cog helps, too.
So after a make-up class that ended at 7.15pm last night, nursing a headache from incomprehension of corporate taxation, starving, and exhausted, I rolled for a little bit. And despite the sweating, I realized that it doesn't burn so much on my increased gearing. I actually might be getting used to it.

I stretched properly for once afterwards, and because I like cylindrical things, even rolled out my IT bands with my new favorite toy - a giant foam roller. My legs felt happy, even if I couldn't wait to dive into bed a few hours later.
And in case you were wondering, I slept like a baby.