I began law school last year immediately trying to figure out how to get back to the mountains. This year I voluntarily went further away.  I decided to take a leave of absence from law school to attend a one year master’s of science program at University of Notre Dame for Global Health. I did this for a few reasons (1) I got in (2) at this point in my law school career I have 3-5 required classes left which means that at least 1.5 years of electives can be paired more to this program (3) there is a Whole Foods near by. Not so much the last one but it was a nice little bonus. There were other factors too, I promise.

I only applied to this program because it’s the only one I wanted and figured if I got in, great I would go and if not I’d stay in law school and apply the next year, or the year after that. It’s funny because even though the past year at law school I only thought a lot about leaving, when I finally did it was hard to leave all the great friends I made, even if it was east river…  I don’t think this program came to a shock for most people that close to me but most people don’t know that I do have a background in environmental science and did time studying tuberculosis in South Africa–I don’t just ride bikes ALL the time. When I got in, my mom called and said, “you know that the winters are probably worst than Vermillion and there are NO mountains” It’s true they don’t have any mountains but I’m definitely excited about the program and this program makes me more excited about law school–yay! More school!

So now I’m in South Bend for the year, I came straight from Leadville, again and landed in orientation instead of classes. And I haven’t cried once! It helped that my flight leaving Leadville  got cancelled and rescheduled for the next day so I just stayed in Boulder and ate all the food.

I rode with the cycling team the other day. It was the first time I had done a road ride that consisted of more than 3 people. I don’t know why I didn’t get into road riding/racing sooner, the draft is incredible! It was so nice just sit back, pedal occasionally and maintain a relatively high average speed. Although the drafting does scare me a bit, I’ve mostly only done it during gravel races when the speeds are averaging a little lower. I kept “yo-yoing” off the back as Sully said. I would tap my breaks, drop off, sprint back on, tap my breaks, drop off, sprint back on…and it continued, a nice little interval circuit.

After Leadville a few of the pros went on to start the Breck Epic the day after the race, I too went straight into a race butttttt two weeks later. I didn’t anticipate being able to do a mountain bike race here this late in the season but came up on one when looking for places to ride. I had my bike shipped out (which would have happened anyways) and was off the couch for 14 miles (really haven’t done anything since Leadville except that group ride). It was a time trial style course with 15 seconds in between. It was pretty fun, but definitely different than Colorado riding and definitely different than a 100-mile race. I even have narrow handlebars and clipped two trees with them (might be time to start riding with contacts so I have some depth-perception) and had many close calls with others. The course had been rained on the day and night before and it was pretty slicky (I came in thinking it would be running fast and hero dirt, but soon realized I’m in the midwest…) which made for some squirmy corners and some pretty sketchy saves. I finished up 3rd, but I’m trying to get faster at shorter races (I have a big engine but mainly for going far and not necessarily that fast) and after about an hour felt like I was just getting warmed up to keep going, only to be finishing. The cycling team here doesn’t do too much with mountain biking so I figured it would be a good way to try and meet some people in the area who do. And try to get some short speed work in.

One of the reasons I switched my website was because as part of the ND program I’ll be in the field for 6-8 weeks next summer, and figured this would be a good way for my parents to keep tabs on me (provided there is internet…) so will start posting about course work here and there as well. But still mostly focused on biking. Up next I’m planning on doing a cyclocross race in Madison in about 3 weeks (I have 2 weddings the next 2 weekends).