God knows how I haven't killed myself yet...

The first time that I did (no, TRIED to do) a full bike ride of the whole 56 miles I did it on an out and back up California Highway 1 towards San Francisco. It was the bike for the Big Kahuna itself. When I arrived at the lighthouse at Pigeon Point I turned around and in the first mile back towards Santa Cruz I hit a crater of a pothole and slashed a 2 inch slit in my tube, which started bleeding green ooze inside my tire. I didn't have a spare tube. I didn't have a cell phone. I only had one dollar in my pocket. I clip-clopped about half a mile to a gas station and begged to use the phone. No one I knew with a big car could come get me. Finally I had to beg Lorraine, who I hardly even knew, to come get me. Only she couldn't come until she finished her shift in 2 hours. I was waiting in that gas station for 3 hours talking to a homeless Hawaiian about land prices in Nevada.

After that Lorraine said she would give me a clinic on how to change a tire. We changed it, and when I was loading my bike on the car rack the stem of the inner tube ripped clear off. "Now you'll get more practice", said Lorraine.

One time I climbed a mountain. Miles and miles, up and up and up. The hill was clearly out of my fitness range and I had to turn around when I got off my bike to catch my breath and couldn't get moving up the hill again. I turned down hill, and started FLYING. I didn't know how to corner, had relatively little experience descending, and my breaks hadn't been replaced since the 1970's (really). Additionally I'd just read somewhere that if you brake too much on a hill your rims can heat up and your inner tube can pop, so I didn't want to break at all. I really thought I was going to die as I flew down the yellow line in the middle of the road. Instinctively I stood up and made myself as big as possible to turn my body into a sail. I never clibed that hill again. Ever.

There was the 23k through the Santa Cruz mountains that I really just wasn't in the mood to push through, so I barrelled down all the hills as fast as gravity would carry me. I can be so cocky sometimes. The result was shin splints that kept me from running nearly the entire summer leading up to the Big Kahuna. Also, when I finished that race and went to bike home my bike had a FLAT tire and I had to walk all the way home, which luckily was only about 3 miles.

When I first got to Barcelona I knew I needed a bike club to get to know the routs around the city. The problem was, I couldn't find one that met on Sundays: my only free morning. I figured that if they were out there, they had to leave from one of the two ends of the city which led to freeways, so one Sunday I woke up at 5:30 so I could be out the door at 6:45. Then, I went to one of the major roads out of the city and just started biking up and down, up and down, looking for other bikers. After half an hour I spotted some and approached them. I asked them where a street was that I knew one of the bike clubs had their "headquarters" on, and they said they didn't know where it was. "Well," I said, "is it okay if I go with you guys then?" They agreed. "So, where are we going?" I asked. It turns out that I'd found the dirtiest old men in ass-tight shorts, but at least I had a bike club and they were delighted to have me because having a chick meant more bonuses for the team.

I lied, I have won one race. I won a bike race, where the winners were the first to the top of the last climb. There were probably about a dozen other women in the whole thing. Everyone stopped half way through to have a free lunch where they gave unlimited wine and whiskey to the cyclists (I abstained) and giant, fatty "butifarra" sausages filled with organ meat (I abstained). I went up that hill trying to keep by myself, but my teammates kept getting in front of me trying to help me draft. They were drunk, as they always are after we stop for a snack in the middle of a ride. They kept cutting me off and I wound up having to brake, accelerate, brake, accelerate. I yelled, "Just let me go at my own rhythm!" They paid me no mind. Finally we got to the top of the hill and I thought they would leave me alone. Since my hair is short, my teammates had to scream to the volunteers, "SHE'S A GIRL!" as I came over the top. Miguel Angel said, "Next time, when you're getting to the top, be sure to stick out your tits". The president of the club also won a trophy for being the oldest person to finish. He said, "My trophy's bigger than yours". I said, "Yeah, but you got yours just for signing up."

Once upon a time I did 5 consecutive hours of spinning for cystic fibrosis. It was indoors and I'm a sweater. The news cameras were there, and the cameraman was next to me the whole time. Of all the moments to be on public access TV, that was not the moment that I wanted them to choose.

There was the Carrer de la Dona (the "Women's Race") which was the day after a joint birthday party of not one, but three of my best friends. Silvia got too drunk to drive me home at midnight, so I kept drinking to stay awake until she sobered up. The next morning I was a few hundred meters from breaking 24 minutes in a 5k for the first time in my life when I started to sprint. Only the arch that I thought was the finish wasn't the finish. So I continued to sprint. 50 meters from the finish line I had to take a detour and spent the next 3 minutes puking my guts out in front of the hundreds of spectators at the finishing chute.

Once Joolie and I decided last minute to run a 10k as bandits. We knew roughly where the start was, but not exactly. We both woke up late. We arrived at the start 8 minutes late and just started running. There's nothing better than the feeling of passing people for a whole, entire race.

One time, running a race that went down the Rambla we cought a couple of whores trying to cross the course to go home after a long night of work. They saw us, smiled and started yelling and clapping. Then they got into the pack and started running with us and making their way to the other side of the street. Then all the runners cheered for the whores!

I make 50-year-olds think they're having a heart attack. Hey, you remember how my heart rate is always really high? Like my max HR is something above 220? So when I wear a heartrate monitor a lot of times I'm training between 175 and 185 bpm. I swear, I have not died once yet. So anyway, I was on the bike trainer this one time somewhere around 180 bpm and the floor monitor comes up to me and he's like, "Are you wearing a heartrate monitor?" Me: "Uh, yeah". Dude: "And about where are you"? I told him, and he gives this "See, I told you so" look to the guy on a recumbant bike behind me. Turns out that the guy had called him over because his bike was picking up my signal and he thought that he was suffering some kind of heart palpatations. Then I got on the treadmill where I got above 190 and the two old people on either side of me started getting worried in kind of the same way and then looking at me funny. So now I'm the girl that makes your treadmill tell you to stop moving NOW, who sweats all over the place, and on rare occasions pukes all over the floor.