New Website, O'side Weekend, Pics

I can't believe I'm not racing Oceanside this year. It's a good thing for sure, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't just a bit jealous of everyone in taper mode in anticipation of Saturday. I'm excited, though, to be on the other end of things this year -- working at the expo on Friday (Bonk Breaker booth, come say hi if you're around), and cheering for everyone on Saturday, including three of my athletes! Woop woop!

In other news, my NEW website is pretty much up & running. We haven't "officially" announced its launch yet, but it's there for all to see. Check it out at www.coachtawnee.com. Let me know your thoughts! Like I said, there are still a few tweaks to be made (i.e. enhancing the gallery page), but the "meat" of the site is there.

I have to say, Sarah has been incredible at designing the Coach Tawnee site by combining everything I do and everything I wanted in a site in a way that makes sense. I especially encourage all of you to sign up to be a member to the site (totally free, no gimmicks), so that way you'll receive notifications of my new newsletter--which will cover a bunch of cool topics in health, fitness, sport, nutrition and more--as well as other exclusive stuff that will be coming in the future.

Other than that, all I can say is life is busy. I love it. Never a dull moment. Been on the bike a lot (planning another epic MTB race), and I'm even back to running a bit!

Rather than more words, I'll leave you with some pics that sum up a little of what's goin on in my world...

Making sure to take time for sunset R&R every now and then...

Good eats (stoked on organic, grass-fed beef these days)...

Doin work...

Some fun work...

Lots of hills on the bike that lead to things like this...

New place...

MTB Race

It's about time for an update on life and training, part 1 haha. There have been a lot of highs and some lows lately. First and foremost, I raced! On my mountain bike! It was awesome!

The race was a 9+mile all uphill time trial with a few thousand+ feet of climbing. Hello pain cave. I'd post the garmin course profile, but it's not that exciting--just one big ass uphill. Apparently not too many people were chompin at the bit to do this. Only nine girls (including myself and my mom) showed up, most were pro, and probably 60-something dudes. I was out of my element to say the least but I didn't give a crap, this was about fun and trying something new. Thankfully I saw some friendly faces there!

Racing MTB is so different, for example, taking in nutrition is tough because, personally, I don't like taking either hand off the handlebars at any time when riding at such an extreme intensity in sketchy terrain. So I carried a camelback, which apparently isn't "cool" but it worked for me. In there I was using Skratch Labs drink mix, which was perfect-o and easy on my tummy with all that jostling around. (Try this stuff if you haven't!)

My goal was to go sub-1:30 based off a slower time I did in a practice ride. End result was a 1:29. Cuttin it close! A lot slower than the pro ladies, but it was right on target to my goal. I'll go faster next time.

As a side note, a few people asked me why I'd pay $60 something to do this race on a trail that I can ride on for free any other day of the week. Well here ya go: Besides just having the urge to jump into a race, I like supporting the smaller races and usually these ones are where you get treated very well. For example, with entry we got a $20 gift certificate to a bike shop (can always use that!), and in the post-race awards/raffle event, I won a $100 gift certificate as well... in fact, I'd say almost half the people who showed up to awards won something.

I won something else too... a very unique award... only one person out of the whole race got this particular award and the trophy was embarrassingly huge, bigger than any other that was given out...

The Sportsmanship Award

I'm still not exactly sure why I got this award--guess I'm a "good sport" even when grimacing in pain? Regardless, it's a nice gesture and cool that a race would want to do something like this.

~~~

OK, that's it for now! Time to go hop on the elliptical. Yes, my friends, no running. It looks like I'm potentially dealing with a torn meniscus. What a blow to the season, at least the first half... but we're optimistic because there's a lot I still can do.