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ella had a bit of a frozen triathlon today. first we biked over to her skating class, e riding her trail-a-bike. then she skated and played hockey for an hour, having a blast hitting a puck, and gaining a ton of confidence on the ice. after that, we biked back home. after lunch i headed out for a run. when i got back, ella said she wanted to do a run too…and wanted to use my nano w/ the nike+ attachment (like a high tech pedometer). here is ella’s run. 10 minute miles! go ella!!!!

Fiona has been on an egg eating streak not seen since Cool Hand Luke. Between Tuesday breakfast and Wednesday dinner, she ate a dozen eggs: three for the first breakfast, then two each at every meal until the last one after dinner on Wednesday. For many of these meal, the eggs were just a part of what she ate. We fully expect her to grow about 3″ this week.

Malte WON! first place in the C race. He led the field from the 2nd lap on (out of 5 (6?) laps total). He’s the Minnesota Cyclocross Rider of the Year for 15-18 year-old Juniors, and now state champion for the C race. Excellent season for him!

I was 8 out of 65 in the C race (biggest field of the season for the Cs), my 2nd best finish of the season, but percentage-wise about the same as my 5/43 finish at the Anoka race last week. This one was a tough course, with a long staircase runup and lots of hairpin turns. There were a lot of hairpin turns in races this year. My barriers need more work, as usual, but my fitness was better than last year; i tended to pass people on either uphill climbs or the trickier trail sections.

It was 30° and breezy for the race, really cold all day. I wore my usual (for this season) longsleeve wool shirt, wool jersey, lightweight longjohns and the Gopher shorts + wool socks and warm gloves. After the race, all that plus wool tights and a warm coat. I hit the start ok, probably top 15 or so heading up the hill, but ran out of steam a little by the first barriers. It was the cold, it really took me about 2 laps to warm up properly (despite a preview lap and some general riding around), then made good progress passing a couple of people per lap after that.

I had a really fun season of racing this year. I did 6 races (last year 3), and it was my first year with the Gopher Wheelmen team. I’m not much of a joiner in general, but i’m happy to be part of this team. I got some great pointers in CX technique with some of the members before the season started, and it was fun to be cheered on and to cheer for other team members at races. Unfortunately, Autumn and the girls couldn’t be at this one because Ella started ice skating lessons (and did great! photos of that later), but some friends got a few pictures we’ll hopefully be posting soon.

My new racing bike worked great, even after 1,000 miles of riding before the season started (call it the break-in period). The setup i have on it worked great; the saddle is very comfortable (perfect adjustment with the new seatpost), the new pedal setup is working great, no problems with anything. Well, maybe some new tires for next year, but i need something to tweak after all, right?

Many thanks to Autumn, Ella and Fiona for all the cheering and race/training support. Autumn made a couple of fantastic videos of two races, and took some great photos too, go check ‘em out if you haven’t seen them (videos require the free Quicktime software).

We had a fairly busy weekend with lots of outside time, appropriate for one of last warm & beautiful weekends of the year. Saturday morning was the Anoka Cyclocross race, where i posted my best CX finish ever, 5th place!. Unfortunately, the chain broke on Malte’s bike on the first lap, so he had to run through the rest of the lap before the pit crew fixed it. He still managed to finish 14/43 for the race. In the afternoon, the girls helped wash the mud off of the bikes (old mud, the race was dry). Autumn continued on her long slow distance (LSD) training (a training technique, not a comment on her running!) with an 11 mile run. She had planned a shorter one, it was a beautiful day why not a few extra miles?

On Sunday, Malte went to the Northfield cyclocross race with our friends Benita and Raymond while we planned a family bike ride. We rode about 30 miles from home out a good ways on the Gateway trail and stopped for a picnic.

Ella rode the whole time on here trail-a-bike, and had a great time. She had cold ankles for a while, but rode the last half with a pair of Autumn’s capri pants on (Autumn had 2 layers on). The ride started with 40°, but ended up close to 60° - remarkable after some very cold days recently.

We went by Mike & Benita’s place on the way home and Malte and Raymond saw us coming down the street. We stopped to see the progress on their house addition and hear some race stories before heading home. Malte got 2nd place in the Northfield race!

We mostly walked the remaining 1 block home then, until Ella decided to get daring and do some Burley Surfing

Then Fiona, our triker extraordinaire, wanted to do a quick lap around the block.

After we all got cleaned up and Malte and I got haircuts, Autumn and I went to her triathlon team’s annual dinner, and had a good time chatting with her fellow triathlete teammates.