Sam and I after my first MTB ride! NEW BIKE DAY!

Hello everyone!
I know it's been a minute since I've given an update. Things are still trucking along, still training, figuring out next moves, amping myself up for the season ahead.

My two favorite Sams came to visit (girl Sam and boy Sam), it was great. Sam Scipio is now a regular MTB badass and took me out on the trails for my first time. It was really fun, and not nearly as terrifying as I thought it would be. It doesn't hurt to have this fantastic ripper to learn on. It's times like this when being a Cannondale ambassador really REALLY pays off. I fully understand that this is not a typical first MTB. Meet Brobee!

I named it after this fuzzy Yo gabba gabba pal!

I jumped into the Tour of the Southern Highlands a few weeks back. It had a less than favorable end, but gave me a really swift kick in the butt about doing better to manage my schedule. Doing a stage race after a week of traveling and working on your feet isn't a great idea. Who knew? (I totally knew). The thing about bike racing is that it constantly reminds me of my humanity. No matter how great I think I am at doing all the things, the truth always comes out in the wash.

I like to think of my legs as two Aunties who will always be honest with me. Auntie Left Leg, and Auntie Right Leg. Usually they are super supportive, and say things like “you go girl”, “you got this”, “keep pushing!” But sometimes they get mad and start saying things like “you must be out yo mind”, “we told you to go to bed earlier”, “I don’t know what you thought this was, but it’s not that”. Usually that’s the point where I want to to tell both Aunties to shut up and keep it moving.

I don’t know about Jensie, but if I ever told my real Aunties to shut up, they would introduce me to the modern marvels of time travel.

So yea, the Aunties and I were fighting all weekend, I won the first few battles, but in the end I lost the war. Since then I've been listening to my Aunties, eating better, sleeping better, keeping a steadier training schedule.

In reality it was super disappointing to start my season that way, but when I think about it. I've never had a great first race of the season. It's like I need to get all the pinned up butterflies and foolery out of my system. Glad that's done. Onward.

I was able to lead a workshop at the National Bike Summit. It was focused on Representation of diversity in content creation. It went REALLY well. I think it actually deserves it's on dedicated blog post, so I'll get on that.

I'm gonna drive over to Anniston for the Sunny King Crit and the road race the day after. I'm seriously looking forward to it. The field should be relatively large, and super challenging. So I'm focused on that for the moment.

The final challenge for Do Better Together starts next Monday! I'm really proud of the first two challenges, and look forward to the final round of awesome we have in store. After that, I'm launching another project following the Issae Rae philosophy of working with peers to build together. It's going to be a good one, and I can't wait to share the details!

In the meantime you can still register for Do Better Together March!

I'm wondering how to best connect with everyone going forward? I'm trying to minimize the whole over communication thing. So for now, how about I kick back up with the Facebook live roller party sessions! Consistency has been a challenge schedule wise, so I'll just try and give as much notice as possible. Let's start with tonight Thursday March 15th at 8pm EST. It'll give me a change to answer questions about DBT, announce the February winners, tell y'all about my trip to the National Bike Summit, laugh about my Auntie legs, and/or whatever else y'all wanna chat it up about. It's been a while!

I'll probably be spent from my workout, so I'll join y'all for the cooldown. Don't judge my hot mess-ness, but totally judge me if I look too fresh. It means I didn't work hard enough! See you then!

Update: Mountain Bikes, First race, NBS, and Moreeee!