Adventures in Onionism

I switched from riding my extremely heavy Nishiki as a commuter to riding my Lemond for both commuting and long weekend rides. As such, it's seen some wear and tear. The front derailleur couldn't get me onto the highest ring for a while, and then the rear derailleur cable snapped. So I buy a new cable and housing. Only I don't really know how to get the cable out of the brake/shift lever, because I've never had to fix anything to do with an STI before. (Either definition of the acronym, thank you very much.) So I start disassembling the housing, but MRB calls me mid-process and says I just need to shift into the lowest (highest?) gear, and then the end becomes visible, and presto. So I pull out the old cable, thread the new, put everything back together, but then the shifter isn't pulling the cable likes it's supposed to. In an attempt to fix it, I crank down on a bolt, which shears off. So there goes an entire STI, because they're basically not serviceable...

Damn. The Bear 100 filled up. I could have sworn I had the alert set on ultrasignup.com so that I should have been warned when the race got 90% full, but I never received any notice. I did manage to get on the waitlist, at least. So we'll see. Now the only question is when I sign up for IMTUF, a hard 100 in Idaho the week after Plain. My original goal was three Hardrock qualifiers in three weeks (Plain, IMTUF, Bear), but then I started to think that just Plain, a week off, and Bear would suffice. But Bear selling out messed that up. I also put in for the Waldo 100K lottery for August, and signed up for the Tushar 100 Miler July 31.

Well, not all, but all the softshells that are both somewhat warm and somewhat comfortable are. Marmot DriClime Windshirt, Patagonia Guide, some New Balance thing I got from a race. I'm realizing that's not the greatest for cycling. I rock some pretty powerful bike lights now: Urban Light & Motion 550 on the front, CygoLite Hotshot 2 on the back, and a UL&M Vis 180 on the back of my helmet, but I think I should probably wear a nice reflecty jacket. I've got lighter-colored, if not reflective, rain gear and windshirts for warmer weather, but is there a not-stupid-looking-for-casual-wear-but-bright-and-reflecty light softshell that people like? I also obviously need to take the spoke reflectors off the old heavy commuter that I gave up on and put them on the Lemond I now ride all the time. Also, I need to adjust the derailleur so I can actually get into high gear.

Well, it appears as if [UPDATE: is official,] I escaped the AEA meetings without a tenure-track position yet again. I did win this Kindle in a raffle for filling out a survey from the meetings, though. So now when I'm wasting time with electronic doodads I can be even more directly reminded of my underemployment. In other news, I'm coming down with a cold, I need a root canal, and I'm running a 50K tomorrow. Also, The Babadook is a great scary movie.

I ran Inside Trail's Ordnance 100K race yesterday. I finished in 12:57 by my watch, which is a 100K PR by over 40 minutes. Granted, the race only had 7,000' of elevation gain, which is fewer than all my other 100Ks, and this is only the fourth time I've run that distance, but I'm pretty happy with it. I prefer races that are steeper, so I have the excuse to walk the uphills, and I love bombing the downhills, but I managed the run pretty much all the flat and rolling sections of this race. The course was quite pretty, especially for the first two hours after the pre-dawn start. We ascended a ridge with views of Monterey Bay below, which was socked in with fog. The course was mostly exposed, so it was a little bit hot later in the day, although not intolerable. I had some GI issues, six of them to be exact, which probably cost me 20 minutes, but hey, sometimes that's what being a vegan ultramarathoner means. Chipotle, I still love you. A trail I've been inter...