Saturday 2.16.08 was the Little East Conference meet hosted by USM. This would be Hattie's last home meet. After last weeks stellar performance by Hattie I really wanted to make it down to this meet. I decided I would leave early in the morning from the house, ride to Gorham for a few hours, watch Hattie's main events, and then go out for a few more hours. The plan worked out well. 

I made it in time for Hattie's prelim 55 hurdles. Again Hattie set a new personal best and won by a huge amount! However, another girl from Umass Dartmouth ran a slightly faster time in the other heat. This would make for a great race in the finals. Turns out Hattie can run even faster than she thought when she has some competition. In the finals Hattie lead from start to finish. Between every hurdle she gained more and more space on the girl from Umass Dartmouth. Hattie ran an 8.54, a full .1 faster than her previous race!!! To cut a full .1 off your time in such a short sprint is amazing! But the really good news is that the provisionally qualifying time for nationals is 8.55, so as of now Hattie is in. But thats not the end of it, Hattie has three more big meets to help shave some more time off. This up coming week is New England's followed by a huge meet in NYC the following week, and then ECAC are held at Harvard. I will be down at the ECAC's. I am so proud of her. She has put in so much hard work since the beginning of the summer and it is paying off.

On my side of things, the past week was a big one hour wise. This week will be another big week; more hours then last. But then that will be pretty much the end of my base, 12+ weeks should be good. I did get in a good bike, ski, bike yesterday at Pineland. The snow is alright, nothing great, but considering the ice we got last week it is looking good. However, today's monster rain storm is doing a lot of damage to the snow out there.  On my ride yesterday my pedal started to freeze. I believe I can lube the bearings, but not sure. I will have to do some research on the speedplay's.

I started using the Speedplay Frog's last year and I have grown to love them. It didn't take long at all to get used to them, maybe a day or two. They are very light and work great in the mud. I can't seem to get much more than a year out of any pedals. I guess I hit a lot of rocks etc and do a fair amount of damage to them. Hopefully I can fix these because i can't afford new pedals. Hell I can't even afford my USAC license as of now. This isn't good.

I did apply for some jobs last week. Jobs I am over qualified for, but jobs none the less. I really only want to work 24-30 hrs which is making it hard. I have an excellent base and I know this year can be a good year so long as I don't have to give everything up and work 40+hrs a week.  This week is vacation week for schools in Maine, so I know I won't be getting called in this week. Maybe I can find a job in the mean time.