Author: Kim W

You’ve come a long way, baby

September 5, 2012

It just hit me that I’m coming up on my 2 year anniversary of my first attempt at mountain biking. That visit to an Intro clinic and short, short ride on a beginner trail was really more of a putting my toe in the water, versus jumping right in. If someone was to ask me how long I’ve been mountain biking, I generally consider spring of 2011 to be the beginning, the point I actually started going out and riding trails…and dragging my family along for the ride so to speak. But it was at the Fall Colors Festival in September of 2010 when I first did a timid ride with dirt under my wheels. Even then I knew I was hooked.

Mountain biking is an all in kinda sport. Meaning your focus has to be all in, on the here and now. The rest of world gets tuned out. Not just by being in nature, away from the hustle and bustle of life. But by the very real need to keep a single minded focus on that single track ahead while at the same time giving into an almost mindless bike/body connection, constantly shifting weight and balance. That feeling of flowing with the bike, with the trail, coupled at times with an adrenaline rush due to speed or difficulty of the trail or drop offs or jumps is wonderful. Almost addicting, Brings me back time and again.

We’ve added mountain biking to our vacations.Re-introduced my brother to the sport.

 Now with two summers of riding under my belt, it’s great to realize how much progress we’ve made on our skills. As our skills grew, our interest in the sport also increased – as did our stable of bikes. Riding trails we know over again, allows us to benchmark our progress. It’s a great feeling to to clean a trail you couldn’t before. To make it all the way up a climb that you’ve had to get off and push in the past. To ride over a log as if it wasn’t there. Beaver tree, what beaver tree (a particular place on an otherwise easy trail that has vexed me in the past). These improvements all help our confidence grow. With confidence comes ability, a virtuous cycle that allows us to tackle new trails, try new things. Downhill riding in Colorado this past summer, Kiddo and my first “Super-D” race. And in a full circle, we plan on doing our first cross country races at this year’s Fall Colors Festival.

The one where I write about not writing

July 19, 2012

Holy crap, I have really only written one new post in nearly a year. Goodness, how time flies.

Settled into an odd circle:  feeling the need to apologize for not doing something before I could re-start doing it. Finding that thought ridiculous, but still paralyzing. Deepening the inertia.

So consider this that apology. The acknowledgement that for reasons I don’t even understand (or care to face), I stopped writing on this blog for a long, long time. And have been struggling with how to re-start.

Lucky for you, patient readers, I have hundreds thousands of pictures and dozens of post topics stored away. As I travel and explore my world, I still pause to take pictures,  thinking, “this will be good for the blog.” My family is used to my random stops, my posing bikes or beer mugs or even them, to get a shot for my blog. Time to get back to the actually finishing and publishing posts aspect. Time to clear out all the unfinished posts. Either write em and post em or delete em.

Now to decide what first. Chronological, most recent or oldest first? By themes? By whatever strikes my fancy?

Oh shit….here we go again with the finding ways to cause writers block. Push through, Kim, push through.

What’s missing from this picture.

January 24, 2012

Simple answer me. A decently stocked weight section in my semi-finished basement. Plates and benches sitting cold and lonely.

But wait there’s more……a whole other section of the basement. A treadmill, a trainer for indoor riding on my bike, room for yoga. A variety of kettlebells (and DVD workouts for them), a set of bowflex dumbells. Chalean Extreme DVDs. 
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Bottom line, I have no excuse. No one to blame but myself. A strange inertia had set in about a year ago around conditioning (and eating properly if we’re honest). The really sad thing is, I like lifting heavy weights – esp. squats and deadlifts (hate, hate hate bicep/tricep curls). This month’s Whole30 has gotten me back on track in food. I feel great. IBS symptoms gone. Tons of energy. getting lots of home de-cluttering done, cooking a ton. But yet, no work outs.
And so I realized I need a structure. Something to force me forward. So I finally took the plunge. Spent the money to sign up for the February on-boarding “Elements” class at a Badger Crossfit, a Crossfit gym close to my office. They are going to work with me around my travel schedule. This is good. January was kick the food choices back in gear. February will be get going on Crossfit, on working out. Having a gym structure is good for me. Knowing I can do a couple classes a week in a structured environment, plus bring a WOD or two home a week.
This is good.
And if I get really motivated I can do some bosu squats…..kidding. 

Whole30 Week 1- whole lotta cooking going on

January 9, 2012

January is my first Whole30 v. 5.0. I really needed this stricter eating plan following two weeks of holiday eating and a complete derailment from anything resembling a paleo or primal diet (and the associated raging IBS, bloating, and other fun symptoms…not to mention 12 pounds of scale weight gain in two weeks. Yikes).The biggest part of this for me is not thinking of it as a diet…at least not in the weight loss sense. Part of the Whole30 program is not taking any measurements during the 30 days, no scales, no tape measures, no bodyfat monitors. Sure I took all those as a staring baseline, but the necessary equipment has been stored away until February 1. For me, this is a huge leap of faith (and making me a tad crazy).
Because so many friends, family and co-workers, think the idea of not eating grains, sugars, dairy or legumes so radical, I’m making an effort to photograph and document what I eat using my iPhone. What’s funny is no one is questioning the eating plan from a health stand point…it’s all about satiety. I mean who can possibly not eat bread or muffins or…. 
It was only a 4 day work week. I spent two of those days out of the office on biz travel, but saw a definite theme to lunch at my desk…simple protein and veggies. Tuesday was leftover steak, sweet potatoes and brussel sprouts – a duplicate of Monday’s dinner, and Friday did a quick run to the grocery for a roasted chicken breast and some fresh raw veggies.

Tuesday night I made Braised Chicken Breasts with 40 cloves Garlic, a Rachael Ray recipe, leftovers were my dinner on Thursday. To make the recipe 100% Whole 30 compliant, I used ghee instead of butter and de-glazed the pan with chicken stock rather than Marsala. Still very, very yummy, However, I do believe the Marsala adds a richness to this dish, and will use Marsala in future. My kiddo was excited to see me starting to cook the “chicken with the crunchy skin”. If you make it, brown them well, and make sure the stock/braising liquid stays below the crispy skin.

Wednesday and Thursday I was at the mercy of restaurants, hotel food, meeting catering and stashes of food I either brought or obtained while on a business trip. This reliance on what I have available is where I’ve had problems with compliance in paleo/primal eating (and when I was doing traditional calorie counting). Okay, maybe less reliance on what was available so much as a built in excuse to stray from the plan. This trip, this month, I am teaching myself that lack of compliance is neither necessary nor an option. One thing I did fail at was taking pictures…but I was 100% compliance. I am discovering that by first asking about gluten-free options, and also telling the server I am dairy intolerant gets me to a good starting point with menu options. I can edit from there. Thursday’s lunch was a Primal Pac I’d stashed in my backpack, Wednesday a working meeting lunch where I just calmly and quietly removed all the bread and cheese from the catered sandwich lunch. And I did raid the concierge lounge for some late night munchies…enjoyed after a walk around downtown Chicago.

Saturday morning…leftover steak, turned into a steak, spinach breadless “benedict”. Ever since discovering how easy it is to make fresh hollandaise, I cannot believe I used powdered mixes for so long. Honestly, fresh isn’t much more work, and so much tastier. Used ghee as the butter source, and buy the free-range, omega3 type eggs. 
Planned a stir-fry for Saturday night. I had prepped so many veggies, that this meal was repeated Saturday and Sunday nights with slightly different spices. First night was scallops and shrimp, done spicy with ginger and garlic. Second night, also spicy, but stronger curry type seasonings (hot curry powder, gram marsala, and vindaloo mixes) and added a touch of coconut milk. This time proteins were shrimp and chicken. Each family member got to make their own veggie selections, and I cooked each individually. Huge hit with Kiddo who has requested this is weekly…at minimum.
In the interest of honesty…….Food-wise I was 100% compliant to Whole30. There was one planned, and pre-decided deviation, my office’s monthly beer tasting club was Friday. Purely educational (really, I work in this biz). Limited the amount I drank past the what was needed to taste the beer, leaving most in the small tasting cups. Focused much more on aroma, color, mouthfeel. But, yes, I realize it is non-compliant. 


All and well a good first week.

Learning right from the start…the right way

January 1, 2012

 I’ve written on this blog how a couple of women’s only clinics are what got me started mountain biking. The first one at the Fall Colors Festival in the Kettle Moraine. This was a casual affair, almost better described as demo, which introduced me to some great trails, and got me over my fear of leaving the pavement and trying out some dirt. The next at the Ray’s Mountain Bike Park was a more formal clinic following the International Mountain Bike Instruction Certification guidelines for teaching. Beginning to learn proper body position made immediate improvements in my riding.
Wanting the same for my family, was thrilled when I saw the 2011 Midwest Women’s Mountain Bike Clinic was also offering a Kid’s clinic (ages 8-12) and a Men’s Novice to Advanced clinic. Started several years ago as a clinic for a small group of women, The Midwest Women’s Mountain Bike Clinic is a weekend long event attracting over 150 people annually in June to Brown County State Park in Indiana. Sub-9 Productions does a great job of organizing the clinics using only IMBI Certified instructors and guidelines. Naturally, I jumped at the chance to sign up my kiddo and my hubby (after all I was attending no matter what!). 
After checking in and receiving their name tags for their bikes, the kid’s clinic begin with introductions and questions from the coaches about what they wanted to learn. Coaches spent some time checking over bikes, adjusting seats, and getting the kids at ease, before they rode off to do skills drills on the pavement.
Soon the kid’s were split into two groups based on abilities. Kiddo was placed in the more advanced group where Angie Weston and Todd Boucher began working on things like high speed cornering, front and rear wheel lifting. After some practice time, the group took off on a ride on the LimeKiln trail, where they were introduced to the concept of sessioning areas of the trail.
That afternoon when I picked Kiddo up from the clinic, he suggested a quick ride on LimeKiln to show me what he’d learned. I was surprised when he tore down the trail. In order to put that in perspective, I’d written an essay prior to the clinic that talked about how I’d hoped the clinic would help him overcome a fear of riding downhills. Dramatic improvement is an understatement. And done with good form to boot. In May, he barely rode his bike, after the clinic he was hooked. 

As an added benefit, because he learned to ride correctly at the time I was also just learning mountain biking, as a family we have been able to push each other. Kiddo doesn’t let me take the bail line around obstacles. Instead there’s a lot of “Mom, you can do that, you’ve been over bigger logs (or drop offs, or jumps or whatever)”. We now feel confident on all the local trails from intro to more advanced. Our weekends typically include getting in weekend rides at our in city trails (Hoyt, Oak Hill or Crystal Ridge), or at the more extensive Muir/Carlin trails in Kettle Moraine of southeastern WI.

Mountain biking has become part of our family travels.  I was able to work in a couple of days of Brown County riding around a business trip in September, and over Thanksgiving, we tackled trails in the Nashville area. To keep active over the Wisconsin winter, the entire family are season members at Rays Indoor Mountain Bike Park (where kiddo is also taking up BMX and jumping). Next summer we’ll try our hand at riding Keystone in Summit County, Colorado, our first trip to a downhill/lift shuttled bike park.

I credit the Midwest Women’s clinic with not only helping our family find a great family activity, but also with helping our skills and abilities progress at levels we would have never been able to attain on our own. This will be an annual family activity for us….and one we look forward to immensely.