Tahoe Camp 2011
This year’s Altitude Camp in Tahoe has been amazing. Really I am blessed with such an amazing group of girls. Not only are they strong and dedicated to the bike and having fun but they are enthusiastic about cooking good food with me and building good team relationships.
We kicked of the trip with an awesome race in Annadel State Park. Making the trek up to Tahoe a well deserved rest. The first week was balanced with 11 hours of riding MTBs, 4 hours of yoga varying from recovery, core work, or flow depending on what we needed after our rides and plenty of good ‘chill time’.
All 5 Girls in a line
Now chill time should be defined as it included everything from the girls bikini sledding, to tons of vegetable chopping, a season of Gilmore Girls, the “regimen”, beach and the Tahoe plung, fireworks, bike cleaning, blue hair dye, and bead making. I am sure there was more, but I think you get the point that this is no group of lazies. 
The second week started with a hot race in Reno at the Peavine Challenge. This week flew by fast with 8 hours on the bike and 3 hours of yoga so far. Tomorrow we will have a much deserved rest day, which will include lots of tire changing, beach and swimming, massages, yoga, and preparing for the last half of the trip. With great anticipation for Downieville and Nationals still ahead.
Annadel Race
Sofia Hamilton racing (photo credit: Pamela Palma)
Annadel XC
photo credit: Pamela Palma
Since the junior category age cut-off at Annadel was 17 and I’m already 18, I decided to register for Pro, since I was going to have to do the long course anyway. After putting an “I ride for Vanessa Hauswald” sticker on my bike, I managed to get a great starting position, in the very fist row, but as I waited for the start several middle-aged men wearing flowery jerseys with unshaved legs decided it was okay to cut in front of me and in front of the line we were supposed to be behind, so by the time the race got going I was a couple rows back. The giant mass start through the streets of Santa Rosa was crazy, and someone went down right near where I was, but I managed to avoid getting caught in the chaos. As we sprinted along the pavement another girl with a pro license plate caught up to me. I was somewhat surprised she was keeping up considering she was wearing a cotton t-shirt, beat-up sneakers that didn’t clip into her pedals and Harry Potter type glasses that actually had tape wrapped around the middle part. I pushed
myself to get away from her and managed to drop her for a while, but soon she reappeared right on my wheel on one of the climbs, so I went really hard to drop her again and she disappeared behind me. Then I caught up to Abbie on a road section and she told me there was another pro woman right ahead of us, so we team time trialed it up to her, but not in time to pass her before the single-track. I tried repeatedly to pass her, but she kept aggressively boxing me out and going to whichever side I said I would be passing on. Guys starting piling up behind us, and after one of them yelled at her, she finally let me squeeze past. Then Julia caught up to me, and behind her was the Harry Potter glasses girl.
Who knew?
I fed off of Julia’s bubbly energy to go hard again and drop the girl and managed to loose sight of her. Julia then passed me, but I caught up to her at the top of the climb, and got to follow her down the super sweet descent, which was so much fun. Sadly, Julia soon flatted, so I was on my own again for a while. Then, the Harry Potter glasses girl reappeared again, so I went all out to try to drop her once and for all. It seemed like I finally had, because I didn’t see her for the entire final climb or descent, but then when I got to the final section of fire-road right before the finish she suddenly came flying past me and I tried as hard as I could to pass her again, but she’d already gotten a gap. I was still stoked just to have gotten to race this amazing course on sweet trails with my awesome teammates. Can’t wait to see what the rest of camp has in store!
Great job to everyone else!
Just Another Tuesday Ride?
Tuesday marked the official start to summer for the Whole Athlete girls team, with Sofia and myself already graduated from high school and the other girls off of 
school for the season, and what better way to celebrate than a team ride?
We headed out of the Java Hut in Fairfax early, at 9am, to try and beat the heat, and over to Deer Park where we headed up the mountain. We were led by Angel, a new addition to our wonderful arsenal of ride leaders. She took us up to Five Corners, up Shaver, and to some smooth, fun singletrack that let us explore Cascade Canyon in the cool shade. We then saddled up for Heartbreak Hill, a steep grade that without a doubt lived up to its name. At the top, we were more than happy to see trails that did not point up. We dropped into Tamarancho and finished the rest of the loop.
At this point, we stopped to take some photos to chronicle the awesome ride. I had a moment to stop and notice how blue the sky was and feel the sun warming my arms. It really hit me how lucky we are to be able to literally roll out our doors and onto trails. Not only that, but rides like this remind me that, even after more than three years of mountain biking, there is still so much more to explore and new trails to enjoy. Marin County has done a great job protecting its beautiful land for recreational use, and we often forget how lucky we are, but today, it certainly did not go unappreciated.
Norcal Race #2- fort Ord
The conditions at Fort Ord were ideal for the NorCal High School Mountain Bike Race on Sunday March 27th. Sunny and warm just after a set of huge storms, left the course perfectly smooth and compact. With very little climbing and barely any technical terrain the pace was sure to be set for a high speed challenge. A few little steep rises and plenty of corners lined with poison oak, fast an accurate were necessary components to victory.
The Pretty Fast Girls: Sofia Hamilton, Kate Courney, Mackinzie Stanley, and Victoria Yoham lined up smiling next to the clearly marked Shayna Prowless and Maren Cosen for what was sure to be an exciting race. At 10am the Varsity ladies took off for 4 laps of 5 miles of single-track.
A determined Sofia Hamilton took the holeshot on the singletrack at the top of the first little hill with the top 7 right on her wheel. With a little bit of rotation in the first lap the top 6 settled into an order that would last the extent of the race: Sofia, Kate, Shayna, Mackenzie, Rayne, and Victoria. By the 3rd lap Sofia had broken free from the rest of the field and was charging her smile off the front. By the 4th lap Kate had caught up to her and together they opened a significant gap on the reigning series leader, Shayna. The two couldn’t have been happier, sprinting to the line together finishing 1st (Sofia) and 2nd (Kate) with a big enough gap to 3rd to put Sofia in the Leaders jersey. An amazing victory for the pretty fast girls with Mackenzie finishing strong in 4th and Victoria in 6th. In the JV Girls Race, Josie Nordrum took another victory as the undefeated sophomore.
NorCal Prologue-race report
NorCal Prologue Race
Post Race smiles
At the start of the second lap, Shayna and another girl attacked and pulled away off the front. From then on I rode my own race, just trying to keep Kate and Victoria in sight. Overall, I was pretty happy with my result and the race in general. It was a great course, really smooth and fast, without any real hills or rough technical sections and I had a lot of fun with it. All the mud holes and puddles in the trail were a bummer and my feet were permanently soaked after the first minute, but I still had a blast.
Winter Camp
After weeks of emails and planning, the Whole Athlete kickoff camp finally began. On a sunny Saturday morning in late January, the Pretty Fast Girls met with the rest of the Whole Athlete riders at the Whole Athlete Performance Studio in San Anselmo. This was my first organized team event since joining the team in November, and I couldn’t wait to get started.
I met many fellow team members and was impressed by how accomplished yet genial they were. After an hour of photo-taking, we did what pretty fast girls do best: ride bikes. Relatively new to road bikes, I was a bit nervous as we headed out for Nicasio reservoir. Luckily, my teammates were there to support me, and we rode a gorgeous loop in perfect pace-lined form. After a three and a half hour ride, we ravenously welcomed a delicious plate of burritos generously provided by Good Earth. This was followed by an active recovery doing yoga led by Dario. We then listened to a few sponsor presentations before heading to Taco Jane’s for dinner. Yum!
The next day, I was excited to do it all again. We met a little later, allowing us the chance to catch up on our sleep after such a busy day. We immediately took off on our mountain bikes, conquering Eldridge Grade and flying down Coastal Trail. Again, the weather was spectacular- perfectly warm with a clear view of the stunning Pacific Coast. We returned a little bit behind schedule, but just in time for lunch and yoga. We also enjoyed some informative presentations from our sponsors. Overall, it was a great weekend and an ideal introduction in the Pretty Fast Girls.
Dirt Roll
Last weekend, the Whole Athlete crew headed out to the annual Dirt Roll, a fundraiser for the NorCal High School Mountain Bike Racing League. The ride started out at the golf course in San Geronimo, so some of us, including myself, decided to ride the dirt out there. Just riding out there with the boys was a pretty good workout, and luckily there was some down time before the real ride started. The boys headed off with national champ Todd Wells, and us girls got to ride with Lea Davidson, who is not only a pro, but also runs a super cool program called Little Bellas that gets little girls out on mountain bikes (http://littlebellas.com/). The ride went out on the road and over White’s Hill to Porcupine Trail, which we headed up to get to B-17 extension and down into Tamarancho. We rode a lap and a half of Tamarancho and then dropped down into Fairfax, and headed back to the golf course for some food, free stuff, and a bit of the Super Bowl. It was a super fun event, and hopefully we’ll get to hang out with our Specialized buddies again soon!
World Cup to World Championship
After being separated from my mountain bike for a week and a half while it was being shipped to New York, I couldn’t have been happier to be reunited with it at the Windham World Cup. After grabbing my bike from the Specialized tent I walked over into the actual venue, and whose voice did I hear from above as I stepped in? Ke$ha, of course! Blaring out of the speakers playing music throughout the venue. I took it as a good omen.
The course was very different from anything I had raced before, full of little sections in between the trees with lots of rocks and roots. It did have a good amount of climbing though, which I was glad about. It turned out that there were only four girls in my race: me, a Chinese girl, a Chilean girl, and Alicia Rose Pastore, who won me a nationals. We were starting right behind the boys, so after their giant crowd took off, we lined up. The start was so much faster than any race I’d done before. As soon as the announcer said “Go” everyone was sprinting as hard as they could go. The Chinese girl disappeared after a couple seconds, leaving Alicia, the Chilean girl, and me. We rode along together in that order for a little while, and eventually got pretty spread out. The course was pretty twisty so you couldn’t really see how far ahead anyone was in front of you, but towards the end of the first lap, when the course opened up around the finish line, I saw the Chilean girl ahead of me. I decided to go for it, and I passed her and got a little bit of a gap on her. I stayed ahead for most of the second lap, but on the last downhill she caught back up to me and then passed me. She stayed in front throughout the last lap, a bit ahead of me, so we all finished by ourselves.
Although normally getting last place would not be so exciting, I was still happy, because I’d raced really hard and the other girls were super fast, and it was my first international race ever, a good warm up for World Champs!
The World Cham
pionship was definitely unlike any race I’d even seen before. The course was by far the most insane thing I had ever ridden, full of rock staircases, and dusty root-y descents. To top it off, on the day of my race it was super hot and humid (ninety-something degrees and 90% humidity I believe).
At the start, they called up every single girl, announcing our country, number, and name in both French and English, which was super cool to hear. I was called up pretty close to the back in our pack of 32 junior girls, and the start was super fast, and I ended up stuck back there. The course started with a couple seconds of paved road and then made a sharp left turn onto some single-track, where a bunch of girls in front of me piled up. When I got to the first climb I managed to pass a couple girls, then run past a couple more on a technical section. Every minute or so, girls would pile up and most of the girls that I had passed managed to squeeze past me. Pretty soon my legs started to feel absolutely terrible and refused to go faster, then I crashed a bunch of times. I felt awful, but I was determined to keep going for as long as I could. After the second lap the officials pulled me off the course (because I was slower than 80% of the leaders time by that point, and they don’t want the leader to have to lap anyone). On the bright side, getting pulled still counts as finishing, so I ended up placing 26th. The combination of the course and the heat just destroyed a lot of the girls, the girl who was winning for the first couple of laps ended up passed out on the side of the course and DNF’ed, while one of the other American girls got heatstroke.
Although it was 
definitely not one of my better races, the entire trip to Worlds was an amazing experience. It was cool to see just how amazing all those European girls are. Just lining up in a group of girls where everyone is wearing their country’s jersey, and knowing that every good mountain biker in the whole world was there was so cool. Plus I got to meet all the American Pros, Todd Well’s mechanic worked on my bike, Willow Koerber thanked me for cheering for her, and Sam Schultz threw me his sunglasses in the middle of his race!!! It was awesome to get to see what mountain biking at the world level is like, and I can’t wait to go back and do it all over again – Champery 2011 here I come!
And here’s a video Andrew Aballo edited of the whole experience!
Girl’s Clinic
Pretty Fast Girls Clinic
hosted by the Whole Athlete “Pretty Fast Girls”
& their coach Abbie Durkee designer of My Alibi Clothing
These Girls are Pretty Fast & they want to help You!
Come join us for a fun packed skills clinic
November 14th, 2010, 9am-1pm
Meet at Paradigm Cycles
(702 San Anselmo Ave, San Anselmo)
Includes:
Mechanical Confidence Session
Bike Fit check
Skills Exercises
Tamerancho Ride (& day pass)
Snacks & Drinks
Bike Maintenance Routine
Friendly Fun
All ages welcome (Girls Only)
$40/person
or call 415-669-9688
A Long Ride Up: the story of my surgeries and recovery
Periacetabular Osteotomy (PAO) …I’m sure most of you have never heard of it and I can guarantee that you don’t ever want to experience it. The real definition has something to do with ‘ a hip preserving procedure’ and ‘acetabular dysplasia’, but it really boils down to this: a surgeon slices the hip open, carves out the hip socket, repositions it, screws the bone back in and then sews it all back up. The recovery time is six months, but it takes a year until you are fully recovered. Yes, if you are all wondering at this point, I did have PAO, twice, two years in a row, and both times I came back and raced the last two races of the high school mountain bike season…And I have to tell you, it wasn’t easy.
My first surgery was at the end of October 2008, but I had learned about my predicament and my need for PAO a month or so earlier. I didn’t know what to expect going into the surgery and didn’t really believe people about how hard it was going to be so it came as a real slap in the face when the surgery recovery was really hard, in fact it was the hardest and most painful thing I have ever experienced. And it wasn’t fast either. For the first month, I was focused entirely on the pain and on accomplishing little things for myself, such as sitting down and getting up from a chair on my own and forcing myself to drink a shake or a eat a few raspberries. The nights were the hardest; waking up every two hours because of the pain and sleeping on my back with props so I didn’t aggravate my hip. There were times that I wasn’t sure I was ever going to get through it; it was hard to see my progress and even harder to see an end. Somehow I made it to six weeks, though, and started walking again. After Christmas break, I went back to school a few classes at a time and struggled to do the homework assigned and catch up with what I had missed.
At 3 months, I began to bike to school and in April I started mountain biking and training with the Drake MTB team. I still remember that first encounter with the team. It was probably sometime in January because it was raining and I was still using crutches at school. I went to the weight room to hand in my ‘application forms’ and encountered about 15-20 kids and an older guy on spinners, after I had navigated through a network of sweaty teenagers working out on the machines. I felt completely out of place on my crutches with a bulky backpack on, but bravely approached the older guy who I assumed was the coach and proceeded to explain what I was there for with the accompaniment of many ‘ums’. I soon came to know him as coach Paul. The season progressed and I ended up racing the last two races of the year and placing 6th and 3rd respectively. It was a whole new experience, mountain biking, and although I wasn’t too sure of it when I first started, I grew to love it. It was so rewarding for me to be able to find a new sport that I enjoyed and could participate in even as I was recovering from surgery.
I enjoyed biking mountain biking for the rest of the school year and through summer, even joining the newly formed girls Whole Athlete team. However there was a lot of work involved as well. I wanted to run cross-country in the fall and to do that I needed to be able to run and to be able to run I had to relearn it from the ground up. It took months for me to finally catch up to my normal ability level, but by November the running finally clicked and I knew all the training was worth it to be able to compete so competitively. And so it happened that I was in peak fitness level by the time my next surgery came around at the end of November 2009, a month later than the one a year previously. It was hard to keep the upcoming surgery from my mind in the weeks beforehand, but keeping up a busy schedule of schoolwork, cross-country and biking helped. I have never wanted something so badly before as I wanted this surgery not to take place. I had worked my way up for a year from the very bottom to get to this point and in no way whatsoever did I have any inclination to put myself through the whole thing again.
I did go through with it and the surgery went much the same as before, except more smoothly and not quite so harshly since I knew what to expect. And always throughout the recovery I had my goal in mind: racing on my mountain bike at state. Somewhere along the way however, I got it into my head that I wanted to participate in the race before state as well, even though it was merely five months after my surgery. Having a goal that I was really passionate about reaching helped me get through the rough decisions I had to make every day. Because when it came down to it, it wasn’t my decision to race the last two races of the year that mattered, it was the small decisions to train and work hard each day that made the difference in the end.
At six weeks after the surgery I started walking, at three months I started biking to school and soon after I started to ride my road bike, gradually building up my endurance and speed. Since my doctor was adamant about no mountain biking until six months post surgery, I got to spend a lot of time on my sweet new road bike. I paid my doctor a visit the Friday before the second to last race of the season and he gave me that OK to race even though it was only five months post surgery, not six.
So that Sunday I raced in the JV girls category and placed 6th, even though, besides the pre-ride and an hour ride the weekend before, I hadn’t ridden my mountain bike for the past five months. Pumped by my success, I went into State feeling good, but worried about the massive hills, of which I still had trouble with. Nevertheless, I raced, thoroughly enjoyed the course and snagged another 6th place. To top off the day, Drake ended up winning a 2nd state champs in a row, something never done before and I was elated having been a part of such a historic event.
Relaxing after the race, I looked back on how much effort it took to get me to where I was and realized it was so, so worth it just to be here and experience the comradeship of my teammates and the feeling of success because all my efforts had been worth while.
