NAMRITA K. O'DEA

Women's Mountain Bike Weekend at Mulberry Gap Mountain Bike Get-a-way

Sponsored by Topeak, Ergon, and REI.

Dates: Sept 5-6
Location: Mulberry Gap Mountain Bike Get-a-way in Ellijay, GA

For the past several months I've been struggling with pedaling technique. I used to brag about how I had a pretty perfect pedal stroke, but sometime in the past few months something changed. At some point, I started emphasizing one particular motion in the pedal stroke too much, causing certain muscles to fatigue faster, eventually resulting in tightness in my knees, IT bands, and hip flexors.

We spent the long weekend celebrating the 4th of July by hanging out with friends at Mulberry Gap, watching people and fireworks (but mostly people) in downtown Ellijay, and of course climbing almost every hill we could find in the Cohutta Wilderness.

I can't believe it's already been almost two weeks since Lumberjack 100 and my vacation. Recovery has been slow after this last race. My legs have not felt great, my ribs have been really sore, and I have been just generally tired and still sad about Bob. It has been over two weeks since he went missing.

Yes!! Lumberjack 100 was great and third time was a charm. I had two goals for the day: 1) finish and 2) have fun. I did finish and it was pretty fun so I call that a success.

I decided to pace myself very conservatively so I could actually maintain and hopefully get faster on each of the 3x33 mile laps. I went out feeling great but with the plan of holding back for at least 4 hours. My goal was to finish under 9 hours. Seeing that I have not, by a NUE racer's standards, at all been training for a 100 mile race I thought that was a reasonable expectation for myself.

Here I am again..for the third time. It's a long way from home but this year I'm determined to cross the finish line. 2 years ago, I crashed out of the race before the race even started and last year my knee injury took me out after 50 miles.

This year, I simply have two goals: 1) Finish and 2) Have fun. Long races are not my focus this year so it's nice to not have any additional pressure..who knows, I may even do better than I think I will..we shall see.

I woke up this morning to an email that Bob, my beloved past foster dog is currently missing in Knoxville, TN. He escaped from his yard at 3am on Tuesday 6/15/10. He was near Ebenezer & Northshore near Pellissippi Pkwy.

If anyone has any information, please let me know. Thanks, in advance.

Bike Rumor interviewed Jeff Kerkove, Eddie, and me and came up with a pretty good amount of information regarding training for endurance. See the column here

I got in a total of 5 hours of training this week, and 4 of them were today!

I hadn't done a team 24 hour race since 2002 or something like that. While it was most certainly easier than a Solo 24, it was not without it's challenges..mostly logistics, communication, and of course keeping everyone happy and motivated..some people are easier than others!

Overall, we had a great race. Eddie and I raced with three of our friends who do not race much, but they are all fast and fun people. We spend a lot of our weekends riding with them so we thought it would be a fun thing to do and the BURN 24 hour is seriously the best 24 hour race I have ever been to.