{"id":3585,"date":"2015-04-27T07:23:21","date_gmt":"2015-04-27T14:23:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/?p=3585"},"modified":"2015-04-27T07:23:21","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T14:23:21","slug":"are-you-ready","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/are-you-ready\/","title":{"rendered":"“Are you Ready?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Contributed by Kristin Seibert, member of the Silver Sage-trained Bike Like A Girl RAAM 2015 team.<\/a><\/p>\n

The last time I was asked this question on a regular basis was two years ago when my belly was swollen with a growing baby girl, and my husband and I were preparing for our lives to be completely turned upside down as we became parents. Were we ready?\u00a0 Can you ever be \u201cready\u201d for a baby?<\/p>\n

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Two years later, I again hear this question on an almost daily basis.\u00a0 \u201cAre you ready?\u201d\u00a0 Is our team of eight women (Bike Like a Girl) ready for 3,020 miles and 170,000 feet of relentless climbing?\u00a0 Are we ready for seven days of very little sleep?\u00a0 Are we ready to take instructions, make decisions, and work quickly with a crew of 16 others who are also running on very little sleep? Are we ready for constant forward motion, whether in a van or an RV or on a bike?\u00a0 Are we ready for countless hard efforts on the bike with little time to recover in between?\u00a0 Can we ever be \u201cready\u201d for Race Across America?<\/p>\n

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A few weeks ago, while half of our team was training out west in Reno, Nevada with our coach, Julie Young of O2 Fitness, the other four of us took the opportunity to head just slightly west of Annapolis for a training ride in West Virginia with Ben Reynolds of Bike Doctor Arnold, our local bike shop sponsor.\u00a0 Ben was on Team Friends Foundation, a eight-man team who finished Race Across America in 2014.\u00a0 Ben does nothing 50%.\u00a0 More accurately, Ben does nothing 100%.\u00a0 Ben does everything at 110%.\u00a0 So none of us were terribly surprised when he offered to lead us on an \u201cepic Skyline ride\u201d with \u201cjust a little bit of gravel\u201d.\u00a0 More precisely, the ride was 80 miles with 10,000 feet of vertical climbing and 20 miles of gravel.\u00a0 It was one of those rides that I hate while I\u2019m doing it, but will still talk about it years later as one of my best days on my bike.<\/p>\n

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I had a great ride.\u00a0 After months of slogging through endless trainer sessions, I felt like I finally had the chance to prove to myself, my team, my coach, and even to my husband (who has already sacrificed a lot on this journey!) that Julie is training us well.\u00a0 After hours of SFR\u2019s (slow frequency repetitions) and neuromuscular adaptation in front of the TV, I finally put my slow cadence work to the test in the beautiful outdoors.\u00a0 There is no \u201cout-of-the-saddle\u201d on a gravel climb, so I ground those pedals over at a cadence of 40 rpm (sometimes even less!), all the while hearing Julie\u2019s voice in my head, \u201cfocus on efficient pedal stroke\u201d and\u00a0 \u201cthis is your weight workout on the bike.\u201d\u00a0 I worked on reducing dead spots in my pedal stroke, scraping across the bottom with my hamstrings, and applying consistent pressure to the pedals as I slowly inched up those persistent rocky climbs.<\/p>\n

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Equally rewarding was watching my teammates appear around the bend at the top of those climbs.\u00a0 One by one, we conquered four mountains.\u00a0 No one left behind.\u00a0 No one not \u201cready\u201d for what was given us.\u00a0 The day brought us more than we asked or bargained for.\u00a0 And Race Across America will be no kinder, no gentler, no more forgiving than that.<\/p>\n

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So are we \u201cready\u201d?\u00a0 Truly, we will only know the answer to that question when we cross the finish line in Annapolis and can look back at the results of all our training.\u00a0 What I do know is that Julie\u2019s training has built in us a strength and confidence that allows us to overcome whatever is handed to us:\u00a0 threshold intervals into an unforgiving headwind, steep grades when the legs are already beaten down, endless miles in the darkest of nights.\u00a0 This is what we will face.\u00a0 This is what we are training for.\u00a0 And this is when we hear our coach\u2019s calm reminder, \u201cendurance is a game of efficiency.\u00a0 Make every pedal stroke count.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thank you, Julie, for your well thought out training.\u00a0 We can\u2019t wait to make you proud every pedal stroke of the way!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Contributed by Kristin Seibert, member of the Silver Sage-trained Bike Like A Girl RAAM 2015 team. The last time I was asked this question on a regular basis was two years ago when my belly was swollen with a growing baby girl, and my husband and I were preparing for our lives to be completely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":3586,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletes-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3585"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3587,"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3585\/revisions\/3587"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/silversagecenter.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}