Thank you all for all your support and for your generous donations to LLS in support of our ride. Our team raised over $74,000, and the 200 hundred TNT national riders for this event together raised $480,000!! It's amazing to see that as an individual one can truly make a difference. On top of that, I ranked in the top 10 top national fundraisers! I got a cool hat as a token of gratitude.

Our team rocked the century ride. We got to Moab on Thursday to have time to acclimate before the race. Friday morning we did a short ride (25 miles) and then went for a fabulous 3 mile hike to Delicate Arch. It was really gorgeous and gave us a glimpse at the beauty of Arches. Saturday we awoke really early for our 6:15 departure for the race. It was poring and unfortunately we all got soaked on the 1 mile ride to the race's starting point. In addition to being wet, we were also really cold because it was in the 50's and we were not really properly attired. I think as Angelenos we (or certainly I) just assumed it would warm up quickly and stop raining quickly. While it did stop raining, it remained cold for the next 4 hours. In any case, we persevered through the challenging conditions.

The course was in two loops-- the first 60 miles (out and back) went from Moab up to Dead Horse Point (2500 ft elevation gain, approx?), so the first 30 miles were all uphill and we knew we would be rewarded with 30 downhill after. The second segment was 40 miles (out and back) along the Colorado River. This section was totally different than the first-- it was flat but with a strong headwind, and along the muddy river. It looked to me as I would imagine Africa. I expected to see a hippopotamus, but it didn't happen. In fact, we barely saw any birds as well. At the last SAG stop, we paired up with another group from our LA team, and rode the last 20 miles back together in a double paceline with 16 people. It was amazing-- we had great energy, the double pace-line really protected us from the wind, and I felt great to the finish line.

The ride took us 6 hours and 39 minutes riding time, with 4000 ft elevation gain.

Here are my photos:

http://gallery.me.com/ang16#100085

Last Saturday we had our "taper" ride, a 40 miler from Culver City to Mandeville Canyon. It was fun to have a relaxing ride, where our priority was to get back in time for Dana's (another assistant coach's) BBQ. So, we got part-way up Mandeville and had to turn around to keep to our schedule. After the BBQ we took our pedals and everything else off our bikes and dropped them off at Performance Bikes to have them shipped to Moab.

I did yoga the day on Sunday and a hike on Monday, and nothing since then, so my legs feel nice and relaxed. I've been struggling with my calves cramping up pretty badly on rides, so I'm hoping that I've set myself up well to stay loose.

We leave early this morning to leave time for acclimatizing and hiking. I"m super psyched to spend the weekend with my fabulous teammates!

Here's our riding group, dubbed "without a doubt"-- Michelle, Ashley, Steve and Jeff.

Go Team!!

On Saturday, we had our final big ride before the century. It was all part of Steve's master plan for our group. Steve is somehow convinced that we like climbing (despite anything we may say to the contrary), so he masterminded a progression of hills over the various weeks. We regularly train on Mandeville (5 miles gradual--hard!) and then on Saturdays we did various hills in Malibu: Encinal (5 miles steep), Mulholland backwards (7 miles), and then finally Latigo (9 miles with a number of very steep segments). So this week was the last installment of the hill plan. We started as usual at Malibu Canyon Road near Pepperdine and headed up Latigo and then down Mulholland back to the PCH, and then up the PCH. It was a hard ride-- 78 miles with 5110 ft of elevation gain, with about 2100 elevation gain in that first 10 miles. It was gorgeous at the top, especially the view away from the ocean toward mountains and dessert and the long downhill was very enjoyable. Before joining TNT I would absolutely never have envisioned myself doing anything like this!

Here are a couple shots:

With Ashely and Steve

And with Irwin and Ashley:

Looking forward to our taper (only 40 miles next Saturday) and then the century!

We had an awesome ride yesterday and a super fun couple days. My teammates and I went up to Ventura for the Cool Breeze ride. We woke at 5am for a good breakfast, and took off at 7:15am. Coach Steve, feeling the metric century (in this case 59 miles for some reason) would not be enough for us, made up our own route which incorporated a chunk of the full century ride (all the climbing) and then cut out some of the century miles by routing us through downtown Santa Barbara.

We rode 78 miles, 4200 ft of elevation gain in 5 hours and 20 mins. It was a gorgeous ride and we had a great time. Here are some shots:

Before...

At mile 36 we were rewarded for all our climbing, not only by the beauty of the surroundings, but also by this fabulous mail box.

Ashley and I enjoying the last SAG stop, where we met the lovely Judas, who insisted that "if you do it, you do it right!", apropos the delicious SAG food. She and her husband devised the first Cool Breeze route, 17 years ago. That year there were 150 riders and she and a friend baked cookies for all of them! This year there were 1700 riders, and, while she didn't bake us all cookies, the food was still delicious and their good spirit endures.

After!

I need to learn to get to sleep earlier before our big saturday rides! This week I went to sleep around 1am before getting up at 5am to get ready for our ride. We met at 6:45am in Malibu near Pepperdine University and took off around 7:30. It was cloudy and chilly (see leg-warmers below). Around mile 13 we headed up Encinal Canyon, which is a long climb (hard for me to believe it's only 5 miles as coach Steve asserts), but I have to say that our weekly Mandeville climbs really prepared me. I took a reasonable, calm pace, and got into a good mental and physical zone for the climb. It was fun and when we got to the top, the clouds cleared and it was beautiful. Then the real fun began with the long downhill through the canyons! Encinal is way more worth it than Mandeville, if you ask me. Anyway, we eventually ended back on the PCH and did a 70 mile ride! The rolling hills for the last 20 miles were tough.