Christopher Cruise Bogedin

Retirement

2011-07-31T00:47:00.000-07:00

To anyone who still bothers to read this, you may have noticed that there haven't been any posts in a while. To put things simply, the reason for this is because I have decided to quit competitive cycling.

I've dedicated the majority of my time these last few years focusing on cycling and I had a great time doing so. I don't regret any of it, I met some amazing people and got to experience so many different things. Somewhere along the line though I started to lose my motivation. I no longer felt the thrill of going to race for my own enjoyment and for testing myself, but rather I felt like I was doing it out of routine.

Another problem, that certainly did not help, occurred during my exam week and I was hit by a car on campus. My road bike was cracked and I had a hard impact on my knee and was stuck in bed rest for one month. These events combined with a few other important things made me really feel the need to separate myself from competitive cycling for a while.

I still feel bad towards the guys over at RGF, especially Polo and Bob. They were always patient with me and were willing to help me to try and make things work. I really appreciate everything that they've done for me and they have a great program over there. I was fortunate to have been a part of it.

This summer has been pretty interesting so far. It feels odd to live without riding for hours every day. My perspective has slowly been changing on things and I feel happier, so I believe I made a good decision. I got a job at KLM Bike and Fitness in Rochester and I still ride my bike when I commute there. It's not that far, but it's nice to go for relaxing/easy rides. It is also pretty nifty seeing the cycling world from the mechanic's point of view. I'm learning a lot of tricks that I wish I knew when I was racing, but maybe I'll get to use my new knowledge later on in life. I don't know if I'll ever get back into competitive cycling, but I'm for sure at least taking the next complete year off. So what will I be doing in the meantime?

I will actually be in Japan for the next year participating in a study abroad. I have set up a new blog site that is dedicated towards this trip. So if you are still interested in the events that are happening in my life feel free to go check it out.

cruisebogedin.wordpress.com

From this point on, I will only be doing updates over there. I will still leave up this blog to preserve the memories of the last few years. Thanks to everyone who read this blog and were able to tolerate me throughout the years.

In Memory Of Carla Swart

2011-01-20T22:00:00.000-08:00

Wednesday morning I received news that my former collegiate teammate, Carla Swart, was killed in a car accident. Death is a weird thing for me and even though we were not that close, her passing has had a strong affect on me.

I've heard stories in the past of cyclists dying in accidents and while they are tragic, the feelings associated with them do not compare to when it happens to someone who has played an important role in your life.

I met Carla in the fall of 2008 in my first semester at Lees-McRae College. This was the semester where her collegiate cycling domination began. I was scared when I first met her because when we would be climbing in the mountains at a fast pace I would be struggling while she looked perfectly fine. As I grew to know her better I observed her strong will, complete dedication, strength, and personality. I respected her more than any other female athlete I knew. Many people would goof off and put their training aside. Carla certainly was a goofball at times, but she always had the perfect balance between that and training. Not only was she constantly improving, but she seemed to truly be enjoying herself throughout the process. She was able to live life to the fullest.

In the fall of 2008 I was there to see Carla claim multiple titles at collegiate track nationals. Her family even hosted us in Georgia to train at the Dick Lane velodrome in preparation for that. I saw her dominate mountain bike nationals, winning xc and short track to take the omnium title as well. I then saw her finish out her season by winning at cyclococross nationals and helping us win team omnium. With all of these races and every other one in between, she was an inspiration to me. I saw the hard work that she put in and was very happy for her to see everything pay off.

She really was a genuine person. I would always bug her with questions and ask her advice and she never turned me down. I learned a lot from her and I am extremely thankful for everything she has done for me.

Even after I left LMC, I was still excited to hear about her results and watch her at races. Large races like Speedweek and Nationals are great because they are like a reunion. Whenever we were at the same race I would always do a few course laps with her to catch up. It saddens me that I will no longer be able to have this tradition with her.

Carla, thank you again for everything you have done. Even after your passing you continue to teach me. You touched many people and led a beautiful life. You will be missed by many.

Goodbye fall semester 2010

2011-01-08T00:16:00.000-08:00

I have been home in Michigan for some time now. For the most part I have been doing pretty much nothing and I've been loving every moment of it. I had a pretty rough last few weeks of school and really needed this break. A lot has happened and I guess I should play some catch up.

On the last weekend before exam week, my tax professor assigned a lovely full tax return project with an information packet for us to somehow analyze and complete during this stressful time. In addition to that I had my final HR research paper to write as well as 7 final exams to finish before we flew out to Oregon for cyclocross nationals. Didn't get that much sleep that week. One night I stayed up cramming until 6am when I had an exam at 8am.. One good thing I learned is that when you are sleep deprived it is a lot easier to fall asleep quicker.

I was able to catch up on some sleep on the flight and drive to Bend, which was nice. It was so great to finally relax a little but, but unfortunately I was not able to sleep in the next morning since the course had limited open riding time and the team decided to do the early morning session. I got to play around and drift in the ice/snow/mud which was actually really fun. It was my first time riding in messy conditions all season, so it was good to get in some practice.

Since I was busy with school stuff the prior weekend I couldn't make our starting spots determining race and I ended up being our 4th call up because of that. I already suck at starts, and this didn't help much especially after having a front row last year. Oh well, I passed as many people as I could during the race and was my school's top finisher at 23rd. Crappy compared to last year, but I was pretty happy considering my training of maybe a ride a week for the last 2 months and my starting spot. I was just glad to be done with exams, done with work, and done with the stress of knowing I wouldn't be able to compete at my best. I spent the rest of my trip in Bend sleeping. I passed out in my hotel bed after my race and slept through the rest of the day, including the elite race unfortunately. I lead an exciting life, I know.

The next day was awesome, you just can't beat 20 hour travel days followed by quick unpacking and repacking of a dorm room to get ready to go home. My roommate and I stayed up late making sure we had everything set and ready to go in the morning. After a smooth load up, we were ready to head up to MI. 3 miles into our journey my car makes a funny noise and then instantly dies. Long story short, I got towed back into town, found out my engine was blown, tried to find another way home, decided to rent a u-haul with a trailer, tried to put the truck on the trailer, my truck was too big and didn't fit, become heartbroken, took a 17 ft u-haul up to MI because it was my only option of a rental truck. My wallet is toast.

Usually I am really excited when I get home and I will unpack everything right away. This time I did not. I fell asleep, it was magical.

Good bye fall semester of 2010

Good to be back in MI

2010-11-22T22:21:00.000-08:00

Well this crazy semester is finally almost over. Hopefully I will never have to balance 21 credit hours, 2 jobs, and racing 3 national events in one semester ever again. It has had quite a toll on me, both mentally and physically, and so it is time for a quick little break before things are wrapped up.

A few weeks ago I raced the Storm the Greens race in Louisville. School Halloween dance was the night before and so that was a late night. Luckily Louisville was only 2 hours away and the race was in the afternoon. Hit my brakes going into the first turn and was dead last, awesome.. Spent the whole race jumping up from group to group until I was chasing only the last 3 lead riders. Got within 30 seconds of the leaders and 15 seconds of 3rd place. 2 of my teammates took the top 2 spots and I took 4th. Almost swept the podium, which would've been really cool. The curse of constant 4th places continues..

The next 3 weeks consisted of maybe 4 or 5 rides, none longer than an hour. I was crammed with school stuff and it was starting to drive me insane. Then the clock changes and it gets dark at 3pm now, even better. If you value your sanity, I recommend not taking 7 courses in a semester..

Decided to leave school a little early so I could make it back longer for thanksgiving which has so far been a good move. A lot of stress has gone away and it's just been awesome to be back.

Went straight to Ann Arbor to watch the Harry Potter release with some of my best friends. What could be even better than that you ask? how about a Harry Potter themed party the next day! Decided to go back to Rochester Saturday afternoon to check out the Bloomer CX course and make sure I still knew how to ride a cross bike. I had only done one cross ride since Storm the Greens so I was a bit nervous. Luckily for me, there were a lot of people out ridding the course so I got some good practice in.

My house is a 30 second bike ride to Bloomer park so it was nice not having to get up and drive in the morning. I rode there to get my number and then rode back home and changed in my warm house :) Chilled out for a bit and caught up with a lot of old friends. It's been so long since I've done a Tailwind race and it was such a great feeling to see the old usual crowd. The temperature was a bit colder than what I'm used to in KY, but It was perfectly comfortable for

racing. I'm always a bad starter and this was no exception. Sprinting to a slightly muddy turn tends to freak me out so I was a little cautious at first.

Photo credit to Tenmilemedia

Anyhoooo, worked my way up to a group for 4th place and kind of chilled there for most of the race watching them attack each other. I would get gapped a few times, but I just kept my own steady pace since I knew I would blow up if I did all of the accelerations with my current fitness. After the halfway point went by I decided to do an attack of my own and went in persuit of the 3 people up the road. Apparently Vince crashed and flatted and I got close to Burke, but blew up when I got within 5 seconds. Managed to recover though and hold off the chase group for 3rd. Thank you muscle memory!

A little history with this race/venue..

Bloomer Park was actually my first mtn bike race (beginner men 15-18 in 2006) and my first cyclocross race (Cat-4 in 2007). I actually haven't done a cyclocross race in MI since 2007, so this was a very special day for me. This was also my first cyclocross race in MI on an actual cyclocross bike.. Again, it was so great to be around the old crowd and I'm glad I didn't embarrass myself. Mark P is a great guy and has been super strong this year. Tom is always an insanely strong rider and for me to be able to finish up there with those 2 means so much. I always dreamed of making it to the podium one day in elites in MI when I started racing and I'm glad to have finally accomplished this goal. It's just not the same when you race out of state, it is such a special feeling to come back to where it all began and see how far I've come.

Photo credit: Tenmilemedia

Anyway, I plan on hanging out in MI for the rest of this week, then it's back to school for the last week of classes. Then some OVCX action in Indy, then final exams, then fly out to OR for nationals. Then FREEEEEEEEDOM oh it will be sweet....

A crazy October

2010-10-28T17:11:00.001-07:00

Well hello there! So I guess it's been a month since my last post, but I've pretty much been all over the country and haven't had much free time so here's a quick little recap.

After track nationals I ended up getting sick for 2 weeks and didn't really ride at all. I figured I'd use my time to rest and catch up on my classes. I was bummed to miss out on mtb regionals, but I don't think 16 hours of driving and racing would have helped me feel any better..

I left school for the first part of my fall break to go home to MI for a few days to see some good friends. It was my best friend's birthday in Ann Arbor so I was there for a few days and then I went to East Lansing for a few days where I rode to the capital with some non-cycling people.

Always fun to just go for a casual ride with friends. Reminds me of why I love the sport.

Anyway, my time in MI had to end and I had to head back to school to fly out to CA for mtb nationals the next morning. Since I hadn't really ridden much in the last 2 weeks, I was hoping that I would be really fresh and somewhat strong for the races. Didn't quite turn out like that...

The cross country course is pretty much a straight climb which gets more and more technical towards the top and then there is a really fun/fast/scary downhill. It was an odd race for me because I was climbing way slower than I usually do and I was descending really good and passing people on the downhill. Halfway through the race I was in ok position in the low 20's, but then I blew up and was barely able to push my small gears up the climb without cramping. The last lap was torture, but he downhill was still a fun time. My entire body ached with pain though, my legs from the climbing, and my forearms from having to throw my bike all over the place on the downhill.

I tried to get as much rest as possible for the short track the next day since that's what I usually do better in anyway. I started 4th row on the side and made sure to give it my everything at the starting climb to get into the single track as early as possible. It went pretty good the first 2 laps and I found myself sitting in 16th place pretty comfortably. Too bad on the next lap one of my contacts fell out and there went all of my depth perception. Despite still trying to ride the single track fast, I instantly lost a huge gap to my group and could only do work on the climbs. My vision is pretty much horrible and I was banging into everything and still going slow so my race was pretty much over.. Not how I wanted to end things, but there's still cross season at least.

I spent the rest of my trip hanging out with my old teammate, Alder. We went on a nice long ride down to Lake Tahoe to get some food and enjoy the sights. It's not every day you get to see such awesome scenery. I also watched the gravity events and cheered on our four cross team as they almost swept the podium in both the men's and women's races.
Thanks to their awesome performances, we scored enough points to take 5th overall in Division 1 team omnium.

After a pretty crazy week of getting back to school and catching up on stuff it was time to get ready for cyclocross season. I still feel like a wreck with trying to get all of my equipment together and borrowing wheels at the races, but somehow I managed to pull it off.

This weekend was the USGP in Louisville. It was a brand new course and there was a crazy amount of competition compared to last year, it was unreal. I don't think I've ever been in a faster field. Day 1 featured a nice crash in the starting turn. I luckily managed to sneak around it in the top right part of the picture :) my teammate wasn't so lucky and he bruised his knee pretty bad..
The rest of the race pretty much looked like this, especially for us back row starters. A cloud of dust, which was oh so awesome to breathe, and endless crashes and tangle's of people in the sandpits. I was hoping for around mid-pack finishes and that's about where I ended up so I'm pleased with it. The starts were so hectic so there wasn't too much to do about it but use it as good training. I'm looking forward to doing some of the upcoming OVCX races.

I still feel like there is a lot of improvement to make before December and that's a good thing. I'm trying to make sure I get some time to ride and maybe I'll even break out a 10 hour week. That would be awesome! Another thing that would be awesome is if we actually got some cross conditions. No more dustbowls!!!

Track Nationals round 3

2010-09-30T17:35:00.001-07:00

At the beginning of the semester I decided that I did not want to go to track nationals. Even though I love track racing, I do not like going to a big event that I do not specifically train for. Last year was a major disappointment for me dropping from 1 spot out of the podium in the kilo to outside of the top 20. Going straight from mtn bike and cross to a big track race is pretty tough and even though I did not want to go through the same disappointment again, I decided to suck it up and go anyway to try and help get my team at least a few extra points.

This is the time of year where rollers become a necessity. It is also the only time of the year where I actually ride rollers. It is much easier to do on track bikes and this year I was able to ride with only one leg! (a big accomplishment for me)

Most of the track races at nationals are time trials with little warm up time on the track. You must constantly be spinning on the rollers to stay warm and ready to go. The first day was the 4k and Kilo. My results were mediocre at best in these races with only a 1:12 in the kilo. Though without the proper training I didn't expect anything better so I was ok with it. It was a good opening effort to get myself ready for the rest of the races.

Friday morning was the men's team persuit and we actually had a decent shot in this race. We had a strong team featuring Kip (2009 MWCCC road champ), Will (Ironman), Filip (strong TT), and myself. Despite not really practicing the event we managed to get a pretty decent time which ended up holding up for 3rd overall so we got a cool medal.

Me, Will, Kip, FilipThese things get bigger every year, I swear...

After the team persuit, it was time to get to business in the points race. Kip and Fil were in the first qualifier and got in to the final pretty easily. I managed to win an early sprint by breaking away in my heat and was able to relax for the rest of the qualifier so we ended up with 3 in the finals for later that night. The points race final is always a brutal race, especially after doing a full set of individual and team races leading up to it. I knew it was going to get really fast and getting points was going to be really hard so I attacked right from the beginning. The field instantly brought me back and there were some counters. We kept going to bring them back and as soon as it slowed down I went again. Matt Brandt, a fellow MWCCC rider bridged up to me and we were able to hold off the field until the first sprint to get a few early points. The rest of the race was a blur of being maxed out in my 96inch gear sprinting just to stay on the wheel in front of me. I felt pretty good now and then and tried a few other moves but nothing seemed to work out. Ended up 15th overall, which is my best finish in the points race at nationals so I was pretty happy about it.

All in all it was a pretty good trip. I enjoyed myself and was able to be somewhat competitive so that was nice. Good thing I raced at the track all summer, I'm sure that helped. Well, now it's back to the mtn bikes!

Cyclocross has begun!

2010-09-21T07:49:00.000-07:00

The new team BRM Kits came in on Friday, perfect timing for the opening OVCX weekend! I really like the new design, the long sleeve skinsuit looks even better but I couldn't race it in 90 degree weather unfortunately..

Mad Alchemy Embrocation is one of our sponsors. They have such a variety of embrocation, it is amazing!

So anyway, onto the races. Saturday was not a points race for the OVCX so it was a nice warm up race. They did starts by registration date and I was one of the last to register so it was last row in the 25 man field.. The course was really dry and dusty and super fast. My start really needs some work because I was not aggressive at all and was on the back of a long train and could see the leaders snaking around turns ahead. I tried to pass wherever the course opened up and then I noticed a problem with my chain. It popped off my rear derailer pulley and was grinding but I was still able to pedal. I tried to put it back on, but it just came off again so I just rode the rest of the race like that. I was really nervous about breaking my chain so I was taking it a little easy on the power and managed to move up to 6th. Not what I was hoping for, but still in the money and a good opener for Sunday.

Sunday was the first race of the OVCX and so there were a few more people, over 30 in the Elites. Again, it was a last row start for me but I was a bit more aggressive this time around. It still took me a while to move up, and only a few people were up the road from the main leaders group so the chase was on. I grouped up with my teammate Rob Kendall (who got 2nd on sat) and I would drive the power sections while he would lead the technical sections. We got a really good rhythm going and were gaining on the people up the road. We caught and passed 3rd and were gaining on 2nd. We got within 10 seconds away on the last lap... Rob gapped me in the last technical section and took 3rd while I rolled in behind at 4th. It was a tough chase and I was feeling better as the race went on. I'm feeling pretty strong right now and am happy to be finishing within 30 seconds of the leader but I know I still have a lot to improve on to be stronger. These races helped wake my body up and now it's hungry for the podium. I'm filled with motivation right now, it's going to be a great cross season!
Still waiting on some new parts for the focus so I used ol' white lighting this weekend. She's tired now.

Sadly I will have to take a little break before I can race cross again. This upcoming weekend is Collegiate Track Nationals in Indy, then it's Mtb Regionals in St. Louis, then finally UCI Cross Cincinnati!!! Then Mtb Nats in Tahoe, then completely free for cross and USGP UCI Louisville!

This next month is gonna be crazy...

Cyclocross begins this weekend!

2010-09-16T08:06:00.000-07:00

Gonna be representing some new colors this weekend with my new cyclocross team, Bob's Red Mill p.b. Focus

We'll be rocking focus bikes, but I'll be using ol' white lightning until my new parts come in.

Gettin some sweet embro from Mad Alchemy. I can't wait to try their stuff

Bob's Red Mill has some amazing products, they have a lot of booths at the big races with samples and that's how I found out about them last year. By far the best oatmeal I've ever had and they have so much more stuff including a lot of gluten free stuff so check it out.

I'll be racing on Flit wheels again this year. They're strong and lightweight so perfect for cross and they look cool too.

I'm still getting everything together to race this weekend, but everything seems to be working out. I started to do some CX practice this week and I'm feeling pretty good. We'll see how it goes this weekend in OH at King's Cross!

Motivation

2010-09-15T17:57:00.000-07:00

I'm really enjoying my approach to the season this year. I eat what I want, get my hw done, go to classes, go to work, and if I have any extra time I might even go for a ride. All of the recovery time allows me to go all out on the weekends so that's nice.

It was our home race this weekend. XC was 25 miles of super greasy mud with 4 major climbs every lap and I had the worst chain suck of my life so I got to run a lot of hills. Pretty frustrated about it all, but I ended up catching back up to sprint for 3rd at the end. 2 minutes down at the end, but probably spent at least 5 minutes off of my bike trying to get it to start shifting again so what could have been...

Short track was nice and brutal like usual. I enjoy our course because it has a pretty long climb and this weekend it was super muddy so it was raw in saddle power. Slowly worked my way up the whole race to catch up to first with one lap to go only to blow up on the last hill.. Oh well, it was a fun battle. Looking forward to the next race for sure!

I'm really starting to feel better every week. Both mentally and physically. All of the base I have built up the last year is paying off and the fun of mtn bike racing is making me excited to race again. I'm really enjoying it again, I'm glad my passion is starting to come back around.

Speaking of passion, I've decided to enter the cyclocross season a bit early and so I will be racing King's Cross this weekend in Cincinnati. Hopefully my mounts won't be too horrible.. At least I got a lot of practice running during our home XC race (it was miserable). Dropping 10 lbs from the mtb to the cross bike will be nice too... oh boy...

The old competitive drive is starting to come back

2010-09-08T15:27:00.000-07:00

I always like to start off a race with a good yawn, it always seems to make me feel better.

Last Friday was my 21st birthday. I celebrated by spending most of my day in a van driving up to Wisconsin for some collegiate mtn bike races. We were greeted at Kip's house with cake, so it was awesome!

Saturday was a 20 mile cross country race with a decent amount of climbing. The course was a on a small ski mtn and so it was a nice long climb with some cool descents. I started off strong and had a decent gap with a 29er crew guy and we were slowly putting in time on the field with some LWC teammates close behind. I was having shifting issues on the descents and ended up dropping my chain a few times and had to get off and fix it which made me lose contact with the leader. 4 people passed me while I was fixing it and I jumped back in a hot pursuit. I slowly reeled in each person until only the first place guy was left. He was sitting only 15 seconds in front of me by the end of the last lap but I couldn't close it in the last few technical spots. Oh well, I was glad that my technical skills were improving during the race and my climbing was feeling really good. After the XC I decided to do the downhill race for fun. I didn't come close to placing, but I used my XC bike and didn't have to unclip so I felt that it was a success.

Sunday was the short track. I usually look forward to short track since it suits my riding style more than cross country does. I was a bit upset when I found out that they changed the course from the previous year. They pretty much eliminated the climb and put in two dangerous turns on loose gravel. I started in pretty good position and was in a lead group of 5 people. The "climb" was too short to separate us but one of the loose gravel turns was really getting to me. I couldn't seem to get it right and I was going a little too slow to be safe and got gapped a couple of seconds every lap in the downhill which I had to waste energy to bridge back up on the flats/uphill. Near the end of the race I tried to put in an attack to get some ground on the climb but no luck. Everyone was right on me and passed by me in the downhill. I got gapped again before the final lap in the tricky spot and rolled in behind for 4th.

I am really excited about this mtn bike season. Originally I planned to just take it easy and race for fun and see how it went. Since I haven't put any pressure on myself, I have been able to enjoy the races and still be competitive. The lack of stress has been nice for bringing back my competitive drive. I now am looking forward to the next race to see if I will be able to do any better. We've been having practice short track races on Tuesdays and those have been painfully fun. This weekend is our home race so it will be nice to not have to be in a van all day. I haven't ridden our home XC course since the race last year and I don't intend to until the actual race. It's more fun that way.

p.s. noticing a lot more 29ers out there now. I think top 5 both days were 29ers and 3 of top 5 both days were LWC. Good stuff!

ETSU round 2

2010-08-31T08:05:00.001-07:00

So last week I almost broke the double digits in riding time. I also started to do intensity again and I'm really feeling it right now. We did a practice short track race on Tuesday after doing hill sprints and that was pretty tough.

Friday we drove town to Johnson City, TN for a weekend of racing at ETSU. This was pretty exciting since ETSU was the first race I did when I was on Lees-McRae. It was a SECCC race but we decided to do this race since it was better competition and a lot closer than Michigan Tech. With a handful of national champions and national podium riders in the field, it was some pretty tough racing. I didn't want to put any expectations on myself since I'm just coming back from a long break but that didn't stop me from getting frustrated in the short track..

It was a very narrow track and they funneled us right at the start with our 40 rider field down to single file to a double jump. Everyone crashed into each other at the start and all of a sudden the front row guys were gone while the rest of us were tangled and trying to escape and then stuck behind everyone else single file. Needless to say, this was extremely lame and even more crashes occurred in front of me including my team captain, Kip, breaking his collarbone on the double jump. Right as I was finally about to escape the chaos and pass a bunch of people the leaders were already behind us since it was a short lap and that was it.

Later that day I decided that I wanted to give 4 cross a try. I did the B race and the field was stacked with all of our pro bmx riders who hadn't gotten their upgrades yet. Somehow I qualified in the TT but once the first round came I chickened out in a lot of the big jumps. I didn't really want to risk crashing, but I still had a fun time. Definitely fun, but not my kind of racing. Maybe it might be better if I didn't use my 29er xc bike..

Pigged out at Super China Buffet to fuel up for the next day

Sunday was 25 miles of super sick trails. It had it all, giant roots, off camber, tight turns, fast descents, steep climbs, long climbs, switchbacks, and even a tiny bit of wide open grass areas. I knew I would be ok for the first half and then my back was probably going to hate me for the second half of the race. My prediction was correct. I entered the first single track in about 15th position. The starts of these races are chaotic with 40 people trying to get to the same place first... I just kinda took the first part easy and followed the people in front of me since there was no room to pass. I put in a good effort in the first wide open climb and managed to move up a few spots and then started following some more skilled riders to find the better lines. I hadn't ridden trails in a long time so each lap my technical skills were greatly improving. My legs started to feel better as the race went on, but my triceps and back were starting to really hate me. I managed to bridge up to my old teammate Scott and hung with him for a while near the end but then messed up a downhill drop off section and lost a bit of time. I wasn't able to close back the gap in the last lap and by then my upper body was about to give out. I managed to hold on for 7th which I'm really happy about. It was a stacked field and my first real mtb ride in a while. Hopefully I can keep building from where I am now.

Kip's crash was a real bummer. He's one of our top riders and was a big part of our track team. I had originally decided not to do track nationals this year so I could focus on cross. This might change now since I might need to fill in his spot for the team persuit events. We will see, I guess another track nationals could be fun. It's in Indy this year, so it's close which is nice.

As usual, my class and work schedule is insane and leaves me no extra time for training or even sleep for that matter. Looks like my training is pretty much just going to be the races on the weekends. Good thing I got a lot of base this summer..

A new chapter

2010-08-18T20:50:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I moved down to school for training for my new job at school as a resident assistant. It may be odd to some people but I was actually looking forward to going back to school and getting back into a productive routine. This is a very important year for me. It is the first time I have ever stayed at a school for longer than 2 semesters and I have my courses planned out for me to graduate on time in the spring. This current semester will be a little rough with 18 credit hours including 3 separate accounting courses. Managing this with 2 jobs and a full cycling schedule might get a little hectic, but I'm sure I'll get even better with time management skills.

Speaking of cycling, I've had a nice long break to relax from the stress of constantly racing and I believe I'm starting to recover from my mental burn out. I talked to Polo from RGF and he was super cool with it all and even offered for me to stay aboard for next year on the U-23 team. This will allow me to still compete with a great team without the pressure for the big races and extreme traveling which I don't know if I'm ready for or not. I can't thank him enough for sticking with me through this rough patch. The last few weeks I've just kind of been doing whatever I feel like for training. I only ride when I feel like it and I'm trying not to force it. I've been running a bit and I've been feeling really good. I'm planning on starting to train consistently again next week with an actual program so I can still peak in time for cross nationals. I'm going to have an emphasis on recovery this time but that should be ok since I'll probably not have much riding time anyway with the amount of homework I'll probably be getting.

Collegiate mtb season starts in a week and a half. Last year I didn't touch a mtb until the very first race where I borrowed one. This year should go a little better since I actually have one to train on now, but too bad there aren't many trails around here. Or dirt roads for that matter. I just got my new cyclocross bike in a couple of days ago. It's a focus mares expert. They definitely put a lot of work into their design, it truly is built for cross and I can't wait to start racing on it. For the cyclocross season I've been picked up by a cyclocross specific team out of Louisville called Bob's Red Mill pb Focus Bikes. It's a perfect fit for me since I'll be doing a lot of races in Louisville this fall and my main rivals from last year on cross are on the team as well. We'll be hoping to sweep the overall podium in the OVCX series so that would be pretty cool if that happens. Hopefully I'll be stronger than I was last year. This rest might do me good.

Anyway, I intend to post more often from now on, but we'll see if that actually happens. Also, I'd appreciate it if the weather would cool down a bit, I don't enjoy riding when it's over 100. I need some CX weather..

Back to basics

2010-07-29T10:20:00.001-07:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about where I am going with my life. Before it used to be so simple. I wanted to make it to the pros, simple as that. Dreams are interesting though. Maybe I was a little naive or ignorant, but in reality dreams often change. I am reminded of a few years ago when I graduated high school. I was dead set on pursuing nursing as my career. That only lasted a year before I decided I wanted to change focus and schools. Since then I have constantly been discovering more and more about not only myself, what makes me happy, what motivates me, how the world works, society, and so much more about just life in general. It seems like there are never ending lessons to life. No matter how on top of things I feel, something always seems to find its way out of proportion. It's a balancing act I suppose, and maybe I've been too one sided.

The last few years I've put every ounce of energy I've had into being competitive in cycling. I've sacrificed many weekends as a high schooler and young college student to stay true to the strict lifestyle that is demanded to be competitive in the sport at the level I wanted to be at. I even left my family and friends to move to a school that would allow me to race as much as I wanted across the country. For a while, everything was going according to plan. I moved up through the rankings pretty quickly and soon enough I was able to be competitive at a pretty decent level. My sacrifices seemed to be paying off and I was so excited. My future looked bright and everything seemed to be going according to plan. I even was able to get a spot on a professional development team this year with RGF, which has been an amazing opportunity. Sometime though in the last few months, everything seemed to be going downhill.

Last fall was amazing. I was able to pick up my mtb and cross bike right away after road season and was blessed with many victories. I couldn't believe how good I was feeling. I remember feeling like the pace in races were easy and I would be able to attack and stay away and feel great. I felt like my potential for improvement was exponential and I was super excited to see how I would be the next summer after training my butt off in the winter. Perhaps that's where I went wrong though. I only took a week off of training after cross nationals before I started up base. I was too excited to start training again and I wanted to get a huge base and come in as strong as possible. My first few races looked really good. I didn't have any high end, but my endurance and climbing felt amazing. I was even time trialing pretty good for being on a normal road bike. I don't know exactly when it happened, but eventually my excitement of training and racing started to fade and I felt more like I was forced to do everything.

During the collegiate season we would leave ridiculously early in the morning for races that were the same day. Sometimes there would be two races in the same day with a TTT and often it was cold and wet. Eventually this starts to wear on you, especially if there is little free time or rest. Every race was a battle, skipping a weekend to rest would mean giving up on a spot for the nationals team. It gave me a lot of insight about what it must be like to be a pro cyclist. I would not be able to truly chose the races that I would get to do and there is a lot of pressure to get results. I was really excited about the main season starting in the summer to get some good results and work hard for my new team. We went to a couple of races where I just had horrible luck with getting injured, getting caught in or behind crashes every race, and breaking equipment. It started making me think negative thoughts about cycling and I eventually started to dread any race that wasn't geographically challenging. I was feeling great physically, but I am a horrible racer when it comes to strategy and I really was getting irritated that even though I was way stronger than the previous year that my results were going downhill.

Basically I want to stop going down this downward cycle. I want to simplify my life and go back to the basics and remind myself of why I fell in love with cycling in the first place. I just want to ride and enjoy it for a while. This might be my last year focusing on road though, I don't want this to happen to me again. I want to thank Polo and everyone on RGF for a great year. The team is phenominal and the program is so amazing. You guys were awesome, I just wish I could've done more for the team this year. Sorry to let you guys down.

I don't know if the lifestyle of the high end racer is for me anymore, but we'll see. Maybe I'll come around with time. In any case, I am looking forward to mtb and cross season. I just want to have fun with it and see what happens from there.

An odd time

2010-07-12T19:05:00.000-07:00

The past month has been pretty weird for me. I hate to say it, but I have been lacking any motivation to race for a while lately and it's just been going downward. This is especially frustrating because I am in great physical condition. My climbing time tests have never been higher, but for some reason I just am not as excited about everything as I used to be. The thought of traveling to big races every weekend used to fill my very core with adrenaline and excitement. I longed for the opportunity to test myself against the fast people with a strong desire to prove that I could be just as fast if not faster than the best. Lately, I have lost this desire and have felt like I've been racing for all of the wrong reasons. The worst part is that I am frustrated with myself for feeling this way.

I do not know exactly why it turned out this way. I do not want to make excuses, but I do know that I do not want to end up despising racing so I am taking a little break. I am still going to ride, but I am going to try and go back to basics. I want to rediscover my love for cycling and bring it back to be stronger than ever. I'm not sure how long this will take, but we will see.

I realize that this is horrible timing with this being at the peak of the summer season. I am really sorry to everyone, especially my sponsors, for letting you down. I feel horrible about my mental state, but I just do not want it to get any worse. By the time this is over I hope to come out a stronger person with my passion stronger than ever.

Lots of driving

2010-06-10T07:19:00.000-07:00

It's funny how I seem to have less free time now than when I was in school with 18 credit hours and 18 hour work weeks. I blame the constant traveling. In the last few weeks I've raced in MI, IL, KY, and OH. I've been having to stay at random people's houses periodically in between travels so I've been pretty out of any sort of routine. Anyway, here is a quick attempt of a catch up.

My first race back in MI was a Thursday Waterford Worlds with Alan. We were outnumbered by a 15+ Wolverine squad, but we were constantly on the attack. We each got in numerous breaks and then Alan was up the road after a prime with 5 minutes to go and managed to get the win, niiiiice!

Then there were 2 big money crits in IL, Tour de Champaign and the Urbana Grand Prix. The first day was a fast course and we were going pretty good until there was a nasty pile up in a corner with people bunching into each other. I managed to bunny hop a rider and the curb to save myself but popped out my shoulder in the process. I finished the race, but my nerves went downhill and I kept losing my position in the turns trying to be safe. The next day was a cool course with a bunch of turns and a U-turn before the finish. It was kind of like a cyclocross race and I was loving the course and feeling great until there was a crash right in front of me in the U-turn. I had to go wide to avoid it and almost turn around again before accelerating. Looking back, I should've taken a free lap, but I was confident in my ability to get back on. Though as soon as I made contact again, another crash happened right in front of me in the U-turn and after getting gapped again before getting a chance to recover I just couldn't close it again.. one day I will learn to use free laps... Anyway, we still had 3 guys who didn't get gapped off and they managed to seal the deal to get Rolf the win so it was all good!

Myself, Alan, Jeremy, Rolf, Cory, and Ryan.

I also raced Frankenmuth. It was an ok sized field, but the racing was rather boring since I was solo. I would put in some attacks and people would chase me, but then they would just sit up and let random people roll off the front easy and that's how the 2 lead breaks happened. So MI racing hasn't really changed at all, oh well.. I was pretty upset with the way the race was going so I was constantly attacking in the last lap. I went out with 10k to go with a San Jose rider and we had a pretty small gap for the last few money spots. We were going pretty hard, but I was on the verge of cramping so I couldn't drive it like I would have liked to. Was carrying 3 bottles, but still ran out of water before the last lap, bummer. We ended up getting caught with about 1k to go and I had nothing left for the sprint, also a bummer.

This past weekend I headed down to KY for the Tour of the Red River Gorge stage race. It featured an ITT and a 50 mile RR and a 92 mile RR with 9k of climbing. The TT went ok for me, there's still a lot for me to improve on in that discipline. The first RR was pretty sweet, our team was on the offensive with a full squad and so we were constantly attacking and countering the entire day to see what we could do. Our main goal was to finish Rolf up as high as possible in the overall and he managed to get in the break that stuck and finish 2nd on the day. I was tailing the Texas Roadhouse leadout train from the field and managed to get 11th. Sunday was probably one of the coolest road races I've ever done. The course featured multiple massive climbs (which I loved) which were followed by massive descents (which I detested) I managed to make it up in the top 2 groups in most of the climbs depending on my starting position, but then I would end up getting dropped in almost all of the descents (not my thing, especially when it's raining). We set up Rolf to launch an attack on the last major climb which totally shattered the field. A group of 10 rolled away and then there was nothing left of the pack. I was only a little bit behind the leaders, but they started grouping and hitting the following rollers hard and I couldn't close the gap. Grouped up with some people who caught me in the descent, but none of them seemed interested in chasing and I didn't want to drag them all around so I rolled in at 13th. It was a good weekend for the team though, Rolf ended up 3rd overall in the omnium and earned the title of the KY State Road Champion.

Drove back to MI
Drove to Cleveland to get my new frame and build it up
Didn't quite finish building the bike before attempting to do a local race
Drove back to MI
Finally some rest time

Mt. Pleasant this weekend, possibly a Nas-Track on friday. Finally, some drives under 3 hours :)

School's done, Nationals, back home to MI

2010-05-19T09:20:00.000-07:00

The last 2 weeks of school were about as hectic and as crazy as it gets. I had to coordinate taking my 6 finals early, work, and somehow find time to train and pack up everything in my room. Somehow I survived and we were off to Kip's house in WI for nationals.

It was pretty cold up in WI, which by itself isn't all that bad, but when you combine 40 degree temps and rain for road race, it's not all that great. Especially when the start is a really long descent. Long story short: I was in the back of the field from being nervous on the descent and was trying to move up, but the pack covered the whole road and then there was a retarded crash mid pack on a steep hill which caused everyone to get off of their bikes in front of us and everyone was already trying to get around them so there was nowhere to go.. By the time I was able to get back on my bike and pass people again, most of the field was long gone and despite my efforts I couldn't catch back on. I chased for the whole rest of the race and kept catching random groups and ended up 49th out of about 150. Not bad considering I lost contact with the field in the first lap... I am a bit upset about it though because I was feeling great and I know I could've have had a great race if I stayed in the pack..

Anyway, the Crit the next day was still cold, but no rain. It was a super fast course and there were a lot of attempts to break away, but the field wasn't having it. There was an amazing all or nothing attempt with Greg Christian (MSU), Rob Bush (Marian), and Eric Thompson (LMC) with 8 laps to go until about 3 laps to go. I was holding my breath since I know all of them to be extremely strong riders. But it ended up coming down to a field sprint where Alder was able to take 6th with our teams top placing for the whole trip.

Our TTT team also took 6th the next day as well which was pretty awesome. I'm looking forward to next year where the TT equipment is banned, should level it out pretty good.

The Banquet was very nice and way fancier than all the others (track, mtn, cross). They had a little trivia quiz where the top 3 tables qualified for the tricycle race to win some Bontrager stuff. Thanks to a handfull of I-phones we qualified and our stellar team of skilled riders won the tricycle race so everyone at our table won some free Bontrager RXL shoes!!!

I asked for the mtn version so I could use them for cross since I just bought some new shimano road shoes.

Nationals ended kind of abruptly and we had the long drive back to KY following the TTT on Sunday morning. Got back late that night, went to bed, got up and then packed up everything and I had to drive all the way back up to MI... Not all that fun, but I was super excited to get back home.

One reason I was excited to be back was to be reunited with my mtn bike which I hadn't riden since Mtb nationals last October at Lake Tahoe. I took it out to Stony to shred some trails and was suprised to find most of my technical skills still somewhat intact (thanks cyclocross!). Saturday I ventured out again to Stony where the endurance 6/12hr event was going on. I was thinking about racing it, but the entry fee was a little too pricy and I decided to ride 6 hours without paying. I tagged along with the Simonster for a couple of hours and then rode with a couple of other random people including Weinert who has ridiculous skills in the twisty stuff. It was a fun day, but I was cooked by the end of it. There sure was a lot of climbing out on that course.I put in some other really long rides this past week and I rode to Pine Knob mtn twice. It's a pretty good area with some hills, but it is really busy with cars. Oh how I missed city riding with gas stations at every block. You could go an hour in KY without seeing anything..

So I'm finally starting to get settled back home. Everyone's still got school or work, so no one can really ride during the day so I've pretty much been doing a lot of solo stuff, but that's good I guess. With all of the long rides I've been doing lately it feels like it's been forever since I've raced. Looking forward to racing Waterford this Thursday to see how fast the MI people are right now and then Alan and I are off to IL where I get to do my first race with most of my new team. I'm pretty excited about that! Pretty upset about missing West Branch, but sacrifices must be made I guess

Finally, my first non race weekend in over 10 weeks

2010-05-01T08:09:00.000-07:00

Regionals was last weekend and that was pretty cool. We all worked our butts off to make sure that Kipp won the overall title and we were successful. The RR was kind of boring because of team politics, but the crit was pretty sick. A couple of technical turns with a decent sized hill and some pouring rain made for a pretty fun race. Running 85 psi has become standard in collegiate crits.

Anyway, this weekend was free from collegiate racing while Road nationals starts next Friday. There was a nearby race in TN that I was thinking about going to just to have fun but it was a high chance of thunderstorms and rain and I decided to just take the weekend off from racing. I've been racing for about 10 weeks straight so it's probably good to get this little break.

Yesterday was a beautiful 85 degree day with a lot of sun and it was supposed to pour pretty hardcore all weekend so we got a couple of people together to go do the dam ride. I was pretty excited because I hadn't been able to do that ride since before race season started when it was about sub-freezing conditions. Anyway, here are some pictures.

one of the little climbs after you cross the dam.

Allie just started racing road this year and is already kicking butt.

Speaking of Butts, I think Sarah likes to look at mine.

New team kit is pretty awesome looking

This view is also pretty awesome looking

Bryan will be racing on Wolverine's this year, don't expect him to be in the 3's for very long. This guy is getting really fast pretty quickly.

Hopefully he doesn't take anymore risky descents though..

3 months is too long

2010-04-19T15:41:00.000-07:00

I was really looking forward to this last weekend for some time. I hadn't been in MI since early January so I was super pumped to get to see my family and friends.

We drove up Friday and stayed with Allie's family in Grand Rapids. Then the next morning we drove to East Lansing for the road race. It was pretty cold out and there were winds above 20mph and there was a dirt section so it turned out to be a pretty tough race. A decent sized group of people rolled off near the beginning and we were content with our people in there so we pretty much just sat around for a few laps. Halfway through the race a chase group formed and I waited a while to let it get a gap before I tried to bridge. I made sure to go alone and not bring anyone and managed to bridge up to Cory (RGF teammate racing for Xavier) who was in between groups. We worked really hard for a while to close the gap down but every time we got close the group would pick it up and leave us to suffer in the wind. We didn't close the gap, but we caught and passed a few people who got dropped and held off the field so I felt good about the fitness. Riding with just 2 people chasing a group of 5 keeping the same gap for 25 miles isn't all that fun, but it was a good test of strength.The next day was a crit in Ann Arbor and my family and some good friends came to watch.

I damaged my AR frame while training this week, luckily I still had the team bike from last year so I got to ride that decked out with our new SRAM Force Parts. The stuff is awesome, shifting is so comfortable in the drops.

The crit was a wide open fast course with a gradual climb and a downhill headwind section. It was a lot of attacks and chasing them down. I was up front most of the race and on a prime lap a couple of people picked it up to gap the field and I broke away to win the prime. We regrouped and worked together to try and make it work. We stayed away for a good while, but we had too many people and some slow people were ruining the flow. We got caught by the field and instantly it was another surge of attacks and another prime lap came up. I managed to split away from the field again and get another prime and this time it was a smaller group with just the stronger people.
We worked together really well and were about to lap the field with a few laps to go but we eased up so it wouldn't ruin our finish.

Half of the group attacked early on the last lap and so it was a really intense lap trying to close the gap down and still sprint. I was pretty worn out and ended up 3rd, though I did get more points than the winner with all of my primes so I was pretty happy about it.

It was a fun weekend for sure. I was so happy to be able to put a good performance on in front of my family and friends. I'm starting to feel really good again on the bike and the finishing speed should start coming around soon.

Regionals are at Purdue this upcoming weekend and only 2 more weeks of school and then exams. Summer is so close...

OSU RR story in pictures

2010-04-14T16:54:00.000-07:00

Field was only around 40 riders and some big winds so I was hoping to make an early move.

Ended up going in the first 10 seconds of the race with a Marian and Northwestern dude.

Sweet, we got a lot of distance while the pack was messing around.

Danny and another Marian guy bridged up to us. Sweet, more recovery time!

It seems like other people wanted to join us. In the meantime we dropped the NW dude

Now it's a party... 4 Marian and 4 LWC drilling it... Some pretty big talent (ISCorp, Kenda, Foundation, Global Bike, Hincapie, CCSH/RGF, Priority Health)

Party didn't last too long. Attacks and counterattacks fired until we caught Bush off the back and started drilling it. Too bad Marian didn't do an ounce of work for the last 3.5 laps.McBride took a last lap flyer with a few miles to go and we kept it at a steady gap until the end when Alder and I blew up closing down the gap for Kip to fight it out in the sprint. He managed to take second which is awesome considering the marian guys were really fresh and we managed the teams goal of defending his conference lead.

Ended up averaging around 26 mph, not too bad for a 53 mile breakaway

Stole these pictures from Lebo's dad

Time for a comeback

2010-04-12T15:24:00.001-07:00

This weekend was the first collegiate race of the year where we didn't have to leave at 3AM on Saturday. We actually drove up the day before the first race and were able to get a nice little spin in after the drive which was awesome. We stayed at Brooke's house since she lived pretty close to both races.

People on my team seem to find it humorous that I am concerned about my super awesome Felt's well being, so they like to pull pranks. I was really glad I had this bike this weekend since it was perfect for the flat open road race with the aero frame making all of the windy sections a breeze.

The RR was a little over 50 miles long and I started rolling a big gear at the start to notice I had a gap with a Marian and a NorthWestern rider. We dug pretty hard while the peleton was unorganized and made sure to get as big of a gap as possible while we could. It was just the 3 of us for a good while and then 2 more bridged up. We dropped the NorthWestern guy, then 4 more bridged up to make the break 4 Marian and 4 Lindsey Wilson riders. We had some serious horsepower in the break and kept it steady until around 20 miles to go when attacks started going to break it up. It was a lot of chase and counter for a while in the heavy crosswind section and we ended up dropping Marian's Rob Bush with the sacrifice of Estevez not helping him back on. Kip, Alder, and I drove it for the rest of the race to solidify Kip's lead in the conference standings over Bush while the rest of the Marian team sat on us. I did probably the best lead out of my life 1 lap too early since we were confused about if that was the last lap or not. I barely was able to get back on for the last lap after that. It really sucked because the fresh Marian guys started to have a go at it and Zack McBride had a pretty decent gap going into the last stretch. Alder and I dug deep to bring him back as close as possible to set Kip up. We ended up 2nd, 5th, and 6th on the day. Not the win we were hoping for, but we definitely had some good teamwork going on.

The crit the next day was pretty sick.. Compared to the rainy crits on crappy courses we've had for like the last month, it was amazing to finally have a real criterium. The course had a wide finishing straight and good turns and pavement. The first half of the race was constant chasing. People would go off the front and even with good representation it would be brought back and then other people would have a go at it. Near the end of the race there was a move of David Williams (Marian) and Danny Estevez (LWC) that was dangling for quite some time. The pack started to slow again and a couple more LWC and Marian riders were attempting to bridge the gap. Kip believed this to be the winning break and he wanted to get up there asap so we drilled it and were able to bring everyone together up to the lead group to make 5 marian and 5 LWC. David attacked with a few laps to go and Kip went with. Both of our teams seemed content with their rider and we instantly sat up. We only had a few laps left and the field was getting pretty close to us so Zack McBride and I started to set a steady tempo to make sure that our group would not get caught. Kip ended up 2nd again and we ended up taking the top 2 spots in the field sprint to take 7 of the top 12.

I'm really glad with how I felt this weekend, I think the few days of rest helped me a lot. Maybe it had something to do with the food since we ate pretty good this weekend. Penn Station on the way up to OH and Brooke's mom made some awesome stuff. We closed it out with some Bob Evans on the way home and so my stomach was very happy this weekend.

Some rest

2010-04-07T08:06:00.000-07:00

Felt really crappy last week. Raced another wet crit on the weekend. Did too much work up front to bring back the breaks in the beginning and got gapped on the decent and didn't have anything to get back on. Still felt crappy, so I took the past few days off the bike.

No point in burning out during collegiate season.

The weather has been super nice lately, I'm excited to finally ride again today.

I'm also excited that this will be the first weekend that I won't be racing in rain in what seems like forever.

Binge eating monday's

2010-03-29T15:04:00.000-07:00

It's basically my favorite day of the week. Especially after a long weekend of racing with a TTT, RR, and crit with a drive that started at 3:30 AM on Saturday.

TTT's are weird. I know I can TT fairly decent individually, but I was off this weekend with the team time trial. Maybe it had something to do with me being the only one on my team without a TT bike, aerobars, and a disk. I felt like I wasn't getting any recovery in between my pulls and blew up halfway through the 14 mile course. No good, but the team continued on and managed to get 2nd behind Marian.

The road race was an out and back to a pretty cool circuit loop with some ok climbing. Some early breaks went and we sat up for the first half of the race. It was pretty boring until we started chasing, then it was attack after attack with people trying to get away, but nothing ever succeeding. I got in multiple breaks with the top riders from each team represented, but none of them stuck until right before the last circuit loop started when the early breakaway came back into sight. The way it got away was kind of stupid with all of the big teams up front just letting it roll away slowly with their riders represented. A few minutes later a Lindenwood rider attacked to try and bridge the gap and I went with. We got a good gap from the field and worked our way to within 30 seconds of the lead group before I dropped him in a hill and then it was just me time trialing solo for the last 15 miles of the race getting oh so close. A couple of people from the early break popped from the lead group and I caught my teammate Bryan (who was in his first A race and was in a move that went in the first 5 miles of the race) at the end of the last circuit and we rode back towards the finish together, holding off the field. Kip showed great form by always being in every move and he managed to win the day.

The crit the next day was a pretty sick course with some good twists, a good climb, then a monster headwind finishing straight. The field blew apart in the first few laps and even before halfway through the race, over half of the field had been pulled. Spidermonkey (Ben Damhoff) went from the gun and even with all 3 powerhouse teams chasing, we couldn't close the gap. That guy's on killer form right now. The race was filled with constant attacks with people trying to get up to him and we ended up losing a lot of people. Kip was doing a lot of work and involved in a lot of moves, but a big move countered one of his efforts and was starting to get a good gap on the field. He called for help up front and I looked around and most of my team was gone. So I went to front and drilled a lap with everything I had to close the gap as much as possible and Kip was able to counter with a few people to get up to the group which ended up staying away and being the only group that wasn't lapped by the monster that is Spidermonkey. A little while later in the race, I went with a Marian rider to try and bridge to the chase group. We got within 15 seconds at one point before he blew and then I was stuck doing full lap pulls again. Meanwhile, the rest of the field was lapped by Spidermonkey and he ferociously brought them up to us. I was pretty tired from my efforts and wasn't quite able to latch back on. I don't know how that guy sustained that pace by himself for that entire race, but wow! Luckily the race was just about over at that point and I rolled in where I was (I think top 15) since everyone else had already been pulled.

Another fun weekend in the books. More lessons learned, no more 2 man breaks since my companions always seem to blow up right as we're halfway between the field and the lead groups. Next time I'm going for lucky number 3.

Some bad luck, some good luck, and spring break

2010-03-22T17:14:00.000-07:00

Crazy last few weeks, so here's the quick update with some pictures!

My new bike came in right before the Depauw collegiate races, awesomeness!!!

We had to leave at like 2 AM for the depauw road race to save money on hotels and then the race ended up being 40 degrees with rain the entire time... Talk about miserable. The course was screaming fast and no one could brake or see. On one of the off camber descents a rider crashed into a pothole and took out a big wave of riders. I got caught behind it and with the conditions I did my best to avoid any major damage and was able to ride off of the road safely, but by the time I got back on the course I had lost all momentum going into the following hill. I tried chasing back up to the field and even picked off a few riders in between, but attacks started going from the field and that was it for me.

I went back to the van and tried to get warm and fueled up for the team time trial which was later that day. It was still raining and freezing cold by the time we started the TTT so we warmed up by sitting next to the heaters in the vans. It was a quick 10k and even though we had never practiced it before we ended up winning by 6 seconds over Marion! So first win of the season!

After we got back from IN, Alder and I started packing for our trip to Florida!

We stopped in Atlanta on the way so I could meet up with Eddie O'Dea from 559 Performance so I could perfect my fit on the new Felt. Ever since I got on the wobble naught fit I've been hooked.
Atlana was a nice halfway point for our 12 hour journey and we finally made it to florida!

In Florida we stayed with Ben Renkema. He's a former Wolverine member and now Alder's teammate on GlobalBike, small world. We got some good hours in during the week and even took some time to relax at the beach and sit on surf boards in the ocean.

On the weekend there was a big purse stage race and Ben made us pancakes to fuel us up. The first day was a 66 mile loop with the biggest climb in florida every 11 miles. It was 80 degrees and sunny out which was totally awesome and I was feeling great during the race until I snapped my chain at mile 35, bummer..

Ben, being awesome, was able to fix my chain so I could race on Sunday. It was 90 miles that day, but the course was way tamer with very few climbs. I decided that since I was less tired than everyone else from only doing half of the race the day before I would try and be aggressive to do an early move. I managed to get away solo from the field for over 10 miles hoping that some people would attempt to bridge up, but the pack wasn't letting anything else go. The team of the race leader is a really strong team and they put all of their guys up front to set tempo. I dropped back to the field to try and save some energy until they started getting tired from controlling the race. At about mile 60 their team started to get tired and I kept attacking as often as I could, desperately trying to get away. As soon as our group would get caught, I would attack again. After being in like 15 different breaks, I finally gave up and decided to chill for a while. And then somehow a small group of 3 with a little gap gets to roll away while the field sits up. I went to bridge to them and got 3/4 of the way there, but nearly crashed out going into a super sandy turn. I lost all momentum and dropped back to the field hoping they would chase, but they sat up again once they got me...

Some of the people not on the 2 major teams finally got organized and we were chasing really hard until a motorbike suddenly stops in front of us and the field crashes into itself. So I guess we missed a turn going to the finish. People and bikes were all over the ground and now the back of the peleton was the front and we had to work our way back up there while the small break is now getting a ridiculous lead right before the finish. (this actually happened earlier in the race too....) A couple of people went for solo attacks with all of the confusion and I attempted one of my own right before the finish, but I was being marked hardcore after all of my previous efforts and no one was chasing down anyone else who went. It came down to a sprint with a few stragglers and I lost my position going into the last turn after getting hit by some elbows pretty hard. Definitely need to work on practicing that sort of stuff.

All in all, they were some fun races with some great roads. The fields were over 100 both days since they mixed with the cat-3's and having a rolling closure with police cars is always sweet. The two wrong turns with the big crashes were kind of stupid and totally changed the outcome of the race, but it was whatever. They also drastically cut the prize money without telling us and a lot of people were really angry about that. They advertised it to be a huge paying race and the fields were large and they cut the money?? Combined with not leading us in the right direction.. The promoter didn't assume any responsibility and was a total jerk about it all. Definitely do not plan on racing in florida ever again if this is what it's going to be like. All in all though, at least I got some great training in, got to test myself, and got to hang out with Ben and Alder with some great weather.

It was a sad day today leaving Florida to come back to school, but oh well. Half of the semester is over with and the weather is starting to get nice here too.

LWC home road races

2010-03-09T17:49:00.000-08:00

Woke up early Saturday morning for a lovely 8AM TT. It was a short 10k, but it still took it's toll. I conserved some energy for the 75 mile road race later, but still managed to get 7th on my road bike. I'll take that as a good sign.

Quick McDonalds stop and then it was time for the 75 mile road race with a total of 12 grueling climbs. 2 small breaks got away early in the race and we had 3 people up the road so I was just following everything that went. At the end of the first lap on the largest climb the field was shattered and a couple of people were up front soloing it. I bridged up to them and we eventually formed a group of 4, the other 3 guys I knew to be some of the strongest in the conference. I didn't want to chase too hard to catch the group ahead, but we maintained a steady pace for the next two laps.

It was actually pretty epic how it played out. All but two riders of the lead breakaway got popped by the end of the last lap and my group was within 30 seconds of the leaders with 3k to go. Unfortunately, the last lap played a huge tax on me with the constant attacks from Kenda Pro's Rob Bush (Marion). We actually dropped half of our group in the last lap and it was only 3 of us left. Bush, Chris Uberti, myself and we caught Joey (Purdue) with 5k to go. It was constant attacks again within the 5k to go and I ended up using a little too much before the final climb and my legs locked up and started cramping hardcore again. It was a bit upsetting watching my group that I had worked so hard to stay in ride away in the last kilometer, but I still had 7th place secured and Kip ended up winning. So it was still a good day for the team. The road race was brutal, only half of the field even finished the race...

Starting lap 3 and catching more popped riders from the lead group on Little Cake Hill

Sunday was a much easier day with just a 1 hour crit. The course was a nice rectangle with some good winds and a nice little hill. The pace was fast from the gun and attacks were going non-stop. A group managed to get away with 1 person from all of the major teams so Kip and I worked on controlling the field to make sure nothing else got away. The 6 people ended up lapping the field pretty quick with the pace slowing down as much as it did and then it was a battle to keep it all together again. Each of the riders who lapped the field was trying to get away again to secure victory, but we weren't going to let that happen.

I believe this to be one of my most selfless races. Alder was our rider that lapped the field and he wanted me to keep it together for a sprint at the end. I went to the front and did what needed to be done. I once set tempo for 2 laps straight, including a prime lap, won the prime, continued to set pace, and then chased an attack that followed. I absolutely turned myself inside out to make sure that the field stayed together until 1 lap to go, completely exhausted, I pulled off the front and faded to the back to roll in.

Alder finished 3rd, losing his position in the last turn, but it was still a good result for the team. While it would be nice to get the win, learning to sacrifice ourselves for who has the best chance of winning is much more important than focusing on getting an ok result for one's self. I feel a lot better knowing that I did everything I could to help my team and I know one day it will be their turn to return the favor.

(ps Sorry Joey for chasing down your last attack of glory)

Exciting things happening in Columbia, KY

2010-03-04T16:53:00.001-08:00

Not only is this little town getting excited for the races we are hosting this weekend, but the new Judicial center has finally opened up and already it is being put to use...

http://www.lex18.com/news/jail-guard-tries-to-shoot-his-way-out-of-cell

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124304277

Anyway, I've been on a recovery week this week and I'm gonna need every ounce of energy I can save for this weekend. Saturday morning is a 10k TT followed by a 75 mile RR on our super hilly course. Sunday should be a lot easier with just a crit. I'm also super excited to test out the new zipps!

Thoughts on the first race

2010-02-28T19:27:00.000-08:00

Polo, the owner of the RGF Cycling team hooked me up with some parts from last year for me to train and race on until all of the new stuff gets in, this was the end result. Pretty sweet (though a tad too big for me, luckily I ordered a size smaller for my new bike)

The bike is very beautiful, but unfortunately I didn't have enough time to get it completely dialed before the first race. Switching from all of my base hours being on a cross bike has been a little tough and I only got 5 hours in on the new bike before this race weekend, but I'm feeling a lot better on it now. Hopefully I'll get some good rides in this week and be fully ready for next weekend.

The road race was 64 miles and it started off being pretty cold outside. I wore a lot of layers and regretted it halfway through the race. There were like 60-70 people and everyone had something to prove. The pace was fast and attacks were non-stop. I worked my butt off in the first lap bridging from break to break solo until I finally get up to a good position only to see the whole pack charging and bringing everything back again by the end of the first lap. By that point I was overheating like crazy and went to the back to recover for a bit. I managed to strip a few layers and then went back up to the front to see what was going on. 2 small breaks got away, both of which had teammates in them, so the situation was good. Marion and Lindenwood are the other 2 power-house teams in the A field and they gave up some good chases. I put in an attack with everything I had on the closing 5 miles of the race and created a good gap with 4 people on my wheel and we got a good gap. Unfortunately no one would pull through after me and I overdid it too much and ended up locking up my legs to the point where I had to just stand up and drop back to the field and get dropped from them since I still couldn't move my legs. Luckily I was going downhill for a little bit and didn't loose too much time. My legs came back around in time and I bridged back into the field, but decided to take it easy for a while until the end and took 3rd in the field sprint. I had certain mental expectations of myself with my attacks, but my body is still in base mode, so they were slightly unrealistic. Hopefully this weekend will awaken those dormant road racing energy systems.

The crit was a whole other story. I made sure not to dress as much and was feeling pretty good to have the first race out of the system. We ended up racing on a loop in an open property lot which was nice with smooth corners. Despite this, there were still the crazy people who were almost crashing the whole race. Luckily there weren't too many of those up at the front and I tried to stay up there as much as I could this race. Lindsey Wilson pretty much dominated the whole race. Were were all up front and were instigating moves and we were in every single attack that went. The team actually took 2nd and 3rd and a total of 5 in the top 10. I saw people running each other off the course and throwing water bottles at each other and got freaked out and lost my position right before 3 to go so I decided to just roll in and not get involved in that mess since we already had our lead out train set up well. I felt strong in the race, was in a lot of moves, and the speed was close to 27mph average. Not bad for February and a lot of people's first race of the year.

I'm proud of the team and I'm happy with my fitness right now. Sure, it would be nice to be dominating right now, but what's the point of being on top form in February. I'm all about training and racing with hard case 25mm tires while everyone else is rocking their carbon wheels. Now that the first race weekend is done with, it's time to start building the intensity. Everything is build around collegiate nationals and to not be burned out before U23 nationals. I don't like going into races not feeling my best, but I feel like I am on track for my season's goals. We'll see how it all plays out

Being a good student

2010-02-24T14:44:00.000-08:00

I often wonder what it would be like to give up everything to pursue cycling and see how far I can go. Often great sacrifice is required to pull off something amazing so sometimes I question why I am in school right now. I almost dropped out before this semester started, but after talking to my dad about being so close to finishing my B.A. degree and not putting it all to waste, I decided to continue with my education.

Whether or not I make it to the level I want to in cycling, I am going to need a backup plan. Having a college degree will certainly make me better off when I actually need to make some money, but at the same time I feel bad about not being able to put my all into something. I've recently become passionate about my studies. I no longer complain about all of the boring stuff that I have to read. I'm actually interested in everything I'm learning. Business is a broad field and I think that's why I like it. There are so many possibilities, and thinking of how I will develop my career is also exciting.

But going back to the full dedication part. To be a top notch cyclist, hours of training on top of unlimited rest is essential. It's hard to consistently obtain either of those when I'm constantly running from class to class and to work. Trying to squeeze in meals at the correct times has been difficult as well. From the other side, being successful in the business world requires a lot of dedication as well. Internships are essential and are a big commitment. I want to make sure that I am not handicapped when I am looking for a good paying job and I also want to make sure that I am in as much of a competitive form as I can possibly be for racing.

Lately classes and work have consumed me. I just had a block of exams and it severely cut into my training time, and forget about rest when you're up studying all night and have class early in the morning. I've still managed to put in some decent hours, but not as much as I'd like. Perhaps this balance is a good thing since it will prevent me from getting burned out too early on in the season. Anyway, I've been thinking a lot about this lately and it will be really important when I decide what I want to do and were I want to stay this summer.

I have a free place to stay in MI, but work opportunities are few. The velodrome is also a nice place to train, but I need to expand myself. I've considered going for an internship in OH or even staying in KY and getting a job with the school over the summer. Maybe even a mix of everything, we'll see.

Today I did my first 30 minute TT of the year. I got one of the team Felt bikes from last year to train and race on until my new stuff comes in, so I've just started riding that. It's a beast of a bike and sexy like no other.. It's actually Vince Roberge's old frame, so that's kind of funny. I'll post pics when I can find a way to upload them, my phone's being weird right now.

So the first race is this weekend. Can't wait to see where I'm at.

Bundled up

2010-02-12T19:18:00.000-08:00

Nothing like doing 60 miles on road bikes when it's 30 degrees out. At least we had a tailwind on the way back. Of course the sun didn't come out until we get back to Columbia..

I finally bought my own scale!

2010-02-11T16:52:00.001-08:00

So after not being able to weigh myself for the last few weeks, I finally caved and bought a scale. Alder and I were in WallMart staring at the variety of scales for at least a half hour. I decided to go with a basic, cheap, digital scale that reads accurately within 0.2 lbs.

It was a good thing that I got this scale when I did. Racing season is 2 weeks away, and I need to get back into my racing weight. I won't go into detail about how much weight I gained in just 2 weeks time from the first week of school.

It's always hard to manage a good diet while busy with school, especially when trying to spread out proper meals before training and in between classes and work. I'm starting to get the hang of my busy schedule lately and so hopefully I'll manage myself better. Interval training begins this week too, so the extra intensity should help burn those extra calories. Now if only the weather would cooperate, it's supposed to be a lot warmer here right now and all of this snow and rain every day hasn't been all that fun.

Despite my weight gains and having not done real intensity yet, I feel very prepared for this season. This has been my largest tempo base yet and the goal was to stay fresh for longer this season. I'm climbing well and feeling strong. Can't wait to get my new road bike and start racing!

Changed up the design a bit

2010-02-03T13:17:00.000-08:00

So I was pretty tired today from the new weight lifting stuff we have to do here with the team at school and I didn't feel like riding, so I took some time to tune up my blog to make it updated for the current year.

I was also looking at some data from 2009 and I ended up with about 60 races, and around 13,000 miles ridden. 10 wins and over 20 top 5's, the year definitely went better than I expected. Now it's time to start focusing on the goals for 2010. The Cleveland Clinic has a nice new training interface where they will be able to analyze everything I am doing and guide me in the right direction for my target races, so I can't wait to finish getting that set up.

There's actually been some snow down here in KY for the last few days. A lot of people have been hiding inside, and I'm even a little bit guilty. I usually ride outside still, but my friend has lent me the old TDF dvd's and I haven't seen any of them fully other than 2009 so it's nice to save time and ride the trainer while watching them...

oooops, late for class.

The Dam Ride!

2010-01-27T17:50:00.000-08:00

So last semester I think there may have only been 1 weekend where I was at school and not racing so I really never got to explore the area on any long rides. So I have been taking advantage of my currently free weekends to go for some super long rides to get some good miles in.

The Wolf Creek Dam is a little over an hour south of the school and once you cross over it there is a very mountainous area and it is super fun to train in. Hopefully if I get to do some more of these long rides with big hills I might actually become a decent climber.

I've managed to get 45 hours in with the last 2 weeks, which has been really stressful with staying on top of all of my school work. It was fun while it lasted, but I might need to start doing some actual efforts soon. Race season is 4 weeks away...

Watching Tour Down Under also did a pretty good job about getting me pumped up to say the least..

Also, I've found that my eating habits are even crazier when I do these long hours. I feel like I'm always hungry and even when my stomach is full I feel like I'm starving. Not really a good feeling, but I've reduced it a little by snacking every chance I get..

Getting into the swing of things at school

2010-01-21T16:50:00.000-08:00

So I've been really busy this last week with going back to school and all. My roommate transferred so I ended up switching rooms to a room with all cyclists so no more stinky soccer players, yay! It looks like this is gonna be a very busy semester for me. 18 credit hours (6 major classes with no electives), 18 hours of work in the lab per week, and cycling on top of that. Luckily the riding has been very warm here compared to MI and I am able to get in some big miles in on the weekends before racing starts. Should have some more interesting stuff on here soon, still busy getting a routine set.

Winter break is coming to an end

2010-01-13T19:21:00.000-08:00

Although it's nice to be back home for a while, I could not help but get pretty bored in the last few weeks when most of my friends went back to their colleges. Also, I like to ride during the day when it's warm, so most of the cycling people here have jobs or go to school, so no one to ride with.

It's been pretty boring, but I've mainly been just training and watching a lot of tv. It's only nice for a while. Next year I need to make sure I do something more, like go to Puerto Rico. Or have an extended cross season and go to Europe for a while, that would be nice!

Sooooo one cool thing was getting to go to the Cleveland clinic with my new teammate Alan to get some base testing done. Our team physiologist, Frank, knows a lot of stuff. So it was cool to get some insight from him about what to focus on for the next few weeks.

Anyway, I'm going back to school this weekend so hopefully I will have some more interesting things to write about once I actually have things going on in my life.

I'm looking forward to the 15 degree temperature increase :)

Crazy last few weeks

2009-12-25T15:05:00.000-08:00

If anyone actually cares to read this, sorry for the lack of updates for the last few weeks. I've been crazy busy finishing up exams, then going to OR for nationals, and having to take care of a bunch of things since I've been home. Here is a quick recap.

Cross Nationals was crazy. The crowds were the largest that they've ever been and it was a great atmosphere. We were lucky that it wasn't that cold out, but the course was still very icy. There were a lot of tight turns, some very slippery technical sections, and no long power sections. Not really my strength, but I made sure to give it my all.

The first day was the U-23 race. I had a last row start, but managed to move up quickly and found myself in a top 20 position by the halfway point. I started to get more confident in the technical sections and ended up crashing into a post on an off camber section, knocking off my rear tire. This was after the pits, so I decided not to run a full lap and save my energy for the next day.

The Collegiate race was early in the morning and was very icy. I was sitting in a top 5 position on the first lap, but kept having problems. I was using a rental clincher wheel from the shimano neutral support, and I didn't get to try it out on the course until the start of our race. My main goal in the race was to just stay upright and hope that other people would goof up. Unfortunately, it was still dangerous to ride the course at slow speeds and so I kept crashing, dropping my chain, and losing spots.

I destroyed one leg warmer with this crash with 2 laps to go and lost my top 10 spot... oh well. I ended up 13th, which is still pretty satisfying. I really wanted to get a top 10, but I'm happy with how this season went. I'll be sure to train my weaknesses more next year so I can come back stronger.

We had 3 guys from our team in the top 15, which is really good considering many of our guys suffered from mechanicals and the dangerous conditions. Ashly got 2nd in the collegiate women's race right after winning the U-23 title in the elite women's race. These placings allowed us to finish 3rd overall as a team! Pretty exciting!

Overall, Bend was a pretty amazing place. Traveling to the west coast for mtn and cross nationals really makes me wish that I could live out there for a part of my life. I would love to find employment out there once I graduate... It was a sad time when we had to leave, especially since I won't be seeing my school friends for a month, but it was time to go home to Michigan.

I took a nice week long break with no riding after nationals to let myself properly recover. It was nice to not have to worry about training every day and just to relax and hang out with good friends that I hadn't seen in a while.

I just started base training and so that's exciting. Time to start working off all of the cookies that I've ate in the last week.

KY State Championships

2009-12-08T16:49:00.000-08:00

Sunday was the Kentucky CX championships in Louisville. It was held at the same venue as the USGP, and it was going to be the last race ever held there since it is being changed into a dog park.. Good news though, there is a new venue just for cyclocross racing for next year, so that's exciting!

I tried to make sure to do everything right before this race. McDonalds 3.5 hours before the race and getting there with plenty of time to spare played out perfectly. I got on my bike fairly early to scope out the course. It was really cold out and there were a couple of really slippery muddy turns on the course, so I wanted to figure out the good lines in advance. This race was exciting for me because I finally got enough OVCX points to get a call up, yay! Too bad I forgot to clean my pedals before the start and had difficulty clipping in at the start with all of the mud, but this may have ended up playing to my advantage. I was coming in to the first 2nd turn maybe in 15th position or so and saw it all lined up for one particular line. No one was taking the outside line, so I gunned it, passing by all of the dead stopped people to cut off 5 people in 1 turn... not bad, I'm finally getting aggressive!

the mud that accumulated in my pedals..

The next two slippery turns featured some stupid crashes that I managed to get around without being taken down. After I escape this dangerous area, I see that a lead group of 3 has gotten a pretty good gap and they're the top 3 riders in the field. So I went pretty hard to make sure I bridged up to them by the end of that lap and we were all sitting together. 2 of the riders had silly crashes and that gave me and one of the Red Mill riders enough time to open up a pretty big gap. The rest of the race was him gaping me when I had muddy clipping in issues and me catching back up to him. This happened a few times and then for the last 30 min of the race, it was pretty much a 10-15 sec gap that I just couldn't close and so I came in at 2nd.

mad dismounting skills

I'm very happy about my result. I feel like this year has been a breakthrough for me in cyclocross and I can't wait to see how nationals goes. It may possibly be in the single digits with inches of snow, so we'll see. I haven't really been training or racing in those conditions, so I'm hoping for mud!

I tried playing the "I live in KY for school" card to get a state championship award, but no luck there. Oh well, maybe one year I'll be back in MI for the state championships. Though the 2nd place money in the OVCX races payed almost more than the entire purse of the elite field at the MI state championships. That's a little incentive breaker..

Anyway, one more day of exams to go and then I'm flying out to Bend, OR. I need to get some warmer gloves...

Thanksgiving break and the Ohio State championships

2009-12-01T12:47:00.000-08:00

Got out of school last Wednesday, so Alder and I made the drive back up to MI to visit some family. He was staying in Waterford, so it was nice that we were able to be close enough to get some rides in with the cold MI weather. High 30's ain't so bad when the sun's out at least.

I got to eat leftover Thanksgiving dinner for the next few days, aka a lot of stuffing and multiple different kinds of pie.. It was also cool hanging out with good friends, but that lead to a lack of sleep.

Saturday night came by way too fast and I was getting excited for cross. So excited that I decided to get my hair ready for nationals. The euro mullet is stylin'

Brent also hooked me up with some Flit Wheels to use for nationals

Finally, I'm starting to look like a serious cross racer. Too bad I had a crappy race on Sunday. Maybe it was a combination of the less than 6 hours of sleep that night followed by 4.5 hours of driving, mixed with running way too high of a tire pressure.

The field was pretty big, 30-40 people from multiple states, pretty big for a non uci race. I found myself in the main chase group right away, but I kept loosing ground in all of the turns and having to bridge back up in the straights. It was frustrating to waste so much energy just keeping up with my group that wasn't even that fast. I wanted to go a lot faster, but I was just getting thrown all over the course. I didn't get to test out the new wheels before the race and I had never used tubulars in cross before, so I was worried about rolling the tires and that's why I ran a super high tire pressure. Turned out to be a big mistake, but oh well. I still ended up 8th on the day, only maybe 1:30 down.

Spent a good amount of time today practicing cornering with the new wheels and am feeling pretty good for the KY state championships this weekend. Time to make up for my horrible performances these last two weeks.

Regionals video

2009-11-24T19:18:00.000-08:00

LWC fest...

Another frustrating regionals

2009-11-22T18:12:00.000-08:00

This fall it seems like I always have my mechanicals at the most important races. Ex. the double flat at xc regionals and my brake going out at mtn nationals.

This string of luck continued into this weekend's CX races, where it was our home race. No one really showed up since there was a double OVCX day in Indy where there was actual prize money, so you can't really blame them for that.. Anyway, it was kind of nice because we needed a way to determine starting spots at nationals.

Day one was just another conference race, so there wasn't really much on the line. Danny, Alder, and myself managed to break away and were building our gap until Danny flatted, then I flatted in the same spot on the next lap, and then Alder had issues with his chain popping off multiple times. There were a lot of bumpy sections on the course and a crapload of transitions over sidewalks where it was easy to case your rear tire at high speeds (how I flatted...) I pretty much gave up and started walking to the fnish. One of my teammates who raced early offered me his wheel, and I continued on. Keeping pace with the leaders, but being 5 min down kept my motivation low, especially since the important race was the next day, the regional championship race.

Sunday was another dry course with slightly colder conditions. Alder flatted in the first turn and so it was down to me, Kip, and Clayton (they went 1 and 2 on Sat). I washed out in a turn on the first lap, but was able to bridge back up to the other two pretty quickly. My legs were feeling really strong and they were hungry for redemption from the prior day's flat. I took over the lead in the race and I was trying to work my way away from the group, but I crashed hard going into an up and down section that had a giant hole right in the middle of it... I had been good about dodging it earlier, but going through it at attacking speed ruined my line a little bit.. I got up quickly again and was about to give chase until I found out my chain was skipping.

Turns out I bent my derailer hanger. After checking it out for a while and getting passed by 2 other people, I found a larger gear that was still working and I gave chase once again. I caught and passed the two people who passed me while I was fixing my bike and I was closing in on the top 2. The larger gear kept me at a big disadvantage in the tight turns and the large hill, but I just made sure I went all out on every chance I got. On the second to last lap, I gave an all last chance effort to try and bridge up to the leaders and I put in 20 seconds on them, but it wasn't enough. I finished about 20 seconds down, which I'm fairly happy with, considering I was stuck in a large gear most of the race, had 2 crashes, 2 dropped chains, and time spent finding a gear that worked.. I would have really liked to win the regional race, but I guess once again, I'm glad to get the mechanicals out of the way now.

One good thing out of this weekend was that I believe I was able to secure the MidWest CX omnium title. It's not confirmed yet, but if I calculated correctly, then I will get a front row call up at collegiate nationals, which would be amazing... I am really hopefull about my performance at nationals this year, it's been a great season for me so far and I've exceeded my expectations so far. It will be nice to see what I can do with a front row start rather than the last row starts I have always gotten.

Anyway, 3 more days of school and then I'll be back home in MI for a couple of days, then heading back down to school and stopping in Dayton, OH for an OVCX cross race.

What happens on a rest weekend with no racing

2009-11-19T07:16:00.001-08:00

nothing like hanging out in Nashville and buying swords...

Tonight I get to go see a play and eat at Olive Garden for free in Louisville for my Literature class, so that's pretty sick

Then this weekend is our home cyclocross race with regionals on Sunday, should be pretty fun.

A new team for 2010, RGF Sports Marketing

2009-11-12T07:33:00.000-08:00

I have recently just signed with the regional RGF Sports Marketing elite cycling team based out of Cleveland, OH. The team is well known for helping younger riders reach their full potential and getting the experience they need in the larger races.

I'm grateful for the opportunity to be a part of such a great team for the 2010 season and I am also grateful to the Wolverine Sports Club team and American Cycle and Fitness for helping me get to where I am now. I'm really excited about doing some larger races next season and I can't wait to get started. Still have the rest of this cross season to keep me motivated and training.

Here is the team website
RGF Sports Marketing Cycling Team

Also, the team twitter

My first OVCX race, Lexington KY

2009-11-09T11:49:00.000-08:00

Since most of our cross team got sick with illness last week, we decided to not go to Mizzou for their conference race. Instead, I was able to get in a good long training ride in on Saturday with some warm weather, and go to a nearby OVCX race in Lexington (about 2 hours away).

I was pretty excited for the race and glad to get some competition since the collegiate races are usually pretty small. The OVCX series is nice because they have a larger payout in the elite race and it draws from all of the surrounding states: OH, IN, and KY.

The elite race was later in the day, so we were able to take our time getting up and heading over there. It was also above 70 degrees at the race and we were running out of water. So our warm up ride composed of us leaving the park to go find water since the bathrooms were closed at the park. Unfortunately, it was so hot that I didn't want to risk wearing the sexy long sleeve skinsuit. oh well..

They started us on an uphill road section which was very nice. I got a second row start and was able to move up to third wheel going into the first turn, which was also nice! The course was very dry and fast. I was pretty close to flying off of the course a few times and I was losing time on the 2 guys in front of me on most of the turns, but I would close it on the straights. Eventually, they got a big enough gap that I couldn't close and I was stuck in between them and everyone else. A couple people bridged up to me and I sat on them for a little while to recover. Alder, my teammate, took over the lead in our group to try and bridge us to the leaders, but then he dropped his chain. I attacked the other guy with us and pretty much stayed in 3rd for the rest of the race with a solid group of 3 chasing and staying really close. Alder managed to finish 5th, which is scary since he just started racing cross.

All in all, it was a good experience racing against some good competition. The winner of the day I think was a top 20 rider at the USGP and I think I finished within a minute of him, so I guess that's good. It's hard for me to know where I am right now when I rarely get to race against the same people to compare myself..

Not sure what the plans are this weekend yet... Every race is so far away and no one here wants to race, but maybe I'll find my way up to Columbus for another OVCX and maybe even Chicago for their big race on Saturday.

3 fun races and some good training this Halloween weekend

2009-11-02T16:36:00.000-08:00

Our team was split on what we were going to do this last weekend. Our van and trailor was being used by the school and everyone seemed to want to do their own thing. A couple of us headed to Purdue for the first set of collegiate cyclocross races in the MidWest. The Purdue cycling team was kind enough to host us for the weekend, and that helped out a lot!

It rained all day Friday and Saturday morning had some really strong winds and some cold windchill, but the course was still in pretty good shape. It featured 3 sand pits, 1 set of barriers, and a creek jump. All in all, it was a great course with a bit of everything; short/steep climbs, twisty sections, and decent length power straights.

The collegiate races were first on the schedule and the field was small enough for everyone to get a front row start. I managed to clip in right away and sprinted for the first turn and was the first rider to go into the sand pits. The people behind me messed up and that opened up a gap that thanks to the strong winds, I was able to hold and open up for the rest of the race. I was pretty happy when my last lap finally came around and I was able to take it easy and start recovering for the elite race which was about 3 hours later.

It was a good day for the LWC crew since we swept the podium, racking up some points.

The elite race featured an even smaller turn out, but it was much more fun with the money primes in the long sand pit run!

Made some money in the sand pit which I later used to buy some McDonalds pies 2/$1 and some cookies 3/$1.

I was surprised by how well I felt during that second race and I was able to beat the impressively large field of 4 guys to take win #2 and my first ever elite cyclocross win. Not sure if it really counts, but I'm going to pretend it does.

Sunday featured the course being reversed with much drier and less windy conditions. So it was fast. My teammate, Matt, and Chris Uberti (purdue) had a really strong start and I had to play catch up on the first lap. The reverse course seemed to have less places to really power the course and it had a lot of technical downhill turns that could only be taken at a certain speed, so it was hard to find places to make up time. I put in an all out attack going into the largest hill on the start of the second lap and pinned it from then on, trying to open up a gap. It was really nerve-racking on this course with everyone being so close behind most of the time, but again it was really good experience and I held off for win #3.

It was an odd transition going from a USGP weekend to these smaller races, but I really liked it. While it's good to be against the stacked competition in the UCI races, I still feel like I lack a lot of cross experience and I was glad to get the opportunity to do some more close racing in smaller fields where there's less stress when you mess up a little bit.

Next weekend will be the second set of collegiate races at Mizzou, only this time we will have the full force of our LWC CX team that was ranked 3rd at nationals last year. I'm looking forward to seeing how I stack up against everyone else.

photo credit
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andymj/collections/72157622714674436/

My first UCI Cross race, the Derby City USGP

2009-10-26T12:03:00.000-07:00

This weekend I got to enjoy the luxury of traveling only 2 hours to get to a race rather than the average 6-10 hours that I've had for the last month or so. The USGP Derby City cup was taking place in Louisville, KY and it was my first UCI cross race. Glad I finally got to use that UCI license that I paid like $60 more for at the beginning of the season!

Saturday was day #1 and the course started out being pretty muddy in some spots, but since we were the last race of the day, there were many lines that were made from the previous races that made it not too bad. Though a pit bike would have still been nice, my skinsuit and bike was completely drenched in mud by the end of the race. I started last row in the 70-80 size field and my nervousness at the start kept me in dead last until about halfway through the first lap. Once we got into the first bogged down straightaway with a ground that absorbed everyone's energy, I went into passing mode and sprinted to pass as many people as I could until the turn. This kept happening for the rest of the race and I managed to catch up to 38th by the end of the race, which I was pretty happy about.

Sunday's race was pretty much the same course with a couple of minor changes. I got called up 2nd to last row this time (improvement) and made sure to pass as many people as I could before the first turn and going into the deadly mud pit. I was a lot better about passing people in the start of this race, but paid for it in the middle of the race when I was low on energy and people started to catch back up to me. Eventually I got a second wind and broke away from my group again and managed to catch and pass a couple more people before the end, this time ending at 32nd, 2 spots out of the money... Oh well, it would have been nice to cover some food costs from the weekend, but I'm still happy about my performance. I felt really strong during the races and was pretty close to some of the top U-23 guys. I finished 7th in that category both days. I know there's a lot I can improve on and I'm looking forward to the next cross race. I think experience is the main thing I need, if I can work on improving my starting position, I believe good results will follow. I'm glad I'm getting the preparation in the larger events before nationals this year!

Not sure what the plan is for this upcoming weekend. Thinking about driving back to MI to do the 2 races in Ann Arbor, but that might be too expensive to do by myself. Gotta check and see what everyone else is doing..

Pictures from mtn bike nats

2009-10-21T15:46:00.000-07:00

We took 5th in team omnium despite numerous crashes/mechanicals that we suffered

rode to Lake Tahoe with Kelsey after the short track to check out the scenery

rode with Brent, Ashley, and Kelsey on our day off to get some long hours in :)

Fall Break

2009-10-20T15:25:00.000-07:00

Fall break consisted of me going back home to MI for a few days and hanging out with some good friends before I had to head back to school to fly out to CA for mtn bike nationals.

The west coast is sweet, especially the pacific northwest region. Our team rented out an awesome cabin and we stocked up on a lot of food so it was pretty much paradise. Thursday, we went to the Northstar resort to pre-ride the XC course and it was pretty sick. A 7.5 mile loop with a crap load of climbing and then a fun descent.

Friday was the XC race: crashed, leg locked up, rear brake stopped working, tried to keep racing, kept crashing, not fun, though the course was really fun until all of that started happening.

Saturday was the Short track: some people rubbed elbows in the start and took out my row. Everyone else got away and passed us while we untangled our bikes and ran up the stupid gravel hill that they decided to start us on. I waited literally for minutes to get into the backed up single track entrance for the downhill behind the 70+ rider field, then can finally start passing people after I've already lost 3/4 of a lap to the leaders, awesome! and my rear brake still doesn't work, wooooo! I tried to catch as many people as I could before I got caught, not enough time :(

Post-short track XC: 3 hour ride to Lake Tahoe to enjoy the trip and get some hours back in, then watched the 4 cross races where our team had a bunch of podiums!

Sunday: get up early to ride to the downhill course from our cabin, watch some qualifiers, ride to lake Tahoe and back to the downhill finish, then up the mtns to as high as we can go and find snow! 4.5 hours of riding time, mostly which was climbing, felt like a champ.

Not a good end to the mtn bike racing season as far as performance goes, but it was a good trip with some really good team bonding. I wish I could've been more competitive, but it was a good experience nonetheless.

Right now, it doesn't look like I will be doing Iceman this year. I have no one to drive there with, and I really just want to focus on training right now until CX nationals and I want to keep traveling down to a minimum. I'm glad I was still able to race almost every weekend for the last 2 months, but It really has been screwing up with my classes and having a routine when I average 8-20 hours of driving time every weekend. I just need to get a couple solid weeks of training back in before CX nats so I can be more prepared.

Today was the first day that I've touched my cross bike in a while. I'm hoping to be pretty competitive since my short track usually goes pretty well, but we'll see. I think I'll get a pretty good idea of where I am after this upcoming weekend at the UCI Lousville USGP where I'll get spanked by some pros...

The good and the bad....

2009-10-05T19:16:00.001-07:00

Let's start with the bad and get that out of the way.

School and work is still having a mean toll on my riding time, and only allowed me to get in 5 hours of riding time this week, 3/4 of which was racing time haha.

We made the 10 hour drive to Missouri to race mtn regionals. I got in the lead group of 5 on the first lap of the XC race and was feeling really comfortable and we already had a big gap on everyone else. Unfortunately for me, the course was very rocky and there were many places where it was easy to get a pinch flat and so of course I get one. I watched as the rest of the A and B field caught and passed me before I got it fixed. It was my first time using C02 and it filled up my tire fast, but it wasn't a high enough of a pressure where I felt comfortable. I finished out that lap pretty slowly and carefully so I wouldn't flat again only to have the ref tell me I couldn't use a pump to pick the pressure up at all. So I continued on and picked up the pace and caught a lot of people only to get another flat at the start of the last lap. I didn't feel like walking 6 miles so unfortunately a DNF for me, and 0 points on a day that was worth double points, pretty much screwing me out of omnium contention.

I spend the rest of the day fixing my bike only to have problem after problem occur. After fixing my 2nd flat, I look in the trailer later to find that I have another flat. I check out my tire and have a small puncture, so I change tires. I also notice that my hub needs to be rebuilt, sweet. Eventually, I get everything in good-enough order and can rest for the short track race the next day.

Here comes the good news! I attack from the start in the short track and go for the whole shot with my teammate, Adam, close behind. A couple people goof up in the steep climb so we instantly get a huge gap on the first lap. I lead out the first few laps and may have burned myself a little too quickly standing up on the steep hill every lap so Adam managed to get away. I was able to keep it steady, though, and not blow up to hold onto my 2nd place, and I got a pretty cool medal!

I took the reflectors off after the XC out of frustration haha, but they were pretty cool for a while

Back at school now and still haven't showered from after the STXC race and I've been cramming, working, and taking exams all day. Tomorrow seems to be a repeat of that, but maybe I'll get a chance to get a shower in and maybe even ride for a bit, that would be nice!

I'll be back in MI early Friday morning. Anyone wanna hammer out some dirt roads then? I'll be doing another hard dirt ride on Sunday too in Ann Arbor, let me know if anyone wants to meet up since there seems to be no races in the area...

passed the 10,000 mark for this year!

2009-10-01T18:05:00.000-07:00

So a few days ago I passed the 10,000 mile marker for 2009. I'm pretty pumped because I hit it earlier than last year. Though I did have a lot of road miles for the majority of the year, most of my miles for the last 3 months have been on my cross bike or when I'm racing my mtn bike on the weekends.

I usually get 10 hours a week now on the bike and 5 of that is from the weekends races. Combined with 16 hour work weeks, 5 classes, and traveling every fri-sat, and there goes all my free time.

Though, I am technically at work right now while I'm writing this, so really it's not that bad... Going back to my dorm in an hour to pack up for regionals in Missouri, leaving tomorrow morning. :)

Still ranked second in omnium right now even after missing the Mich Tech points, so first is still in sight with double points this weekend. Though I have a feeling Clayton might jump up from 5th to take the win from double points in xc, stxc, dh, and slalom.... dang it.... guess I need to start racing dh next year

Management: frustrations, disappointments, hope

2009-09-29T15:46:00.000-07:00

Collegiate Track Nationals 09 has come and gone.

Before the racing began, I really had no expectations. Really, how could I?
- I hadn't touched my track bike in about 2 months
- There is no flat riding around here, hills are everywhere
- I had been racing purely mtn bikes for the last 6 weeks
- Most of my training has been mtn/cross specific

Not to mention I raced XC and STXC a few days prior, then got slammed with schoolwork for 2 days before leaving for PA, leaving me no time to ride. Then on Wednesday, by the time I get registered and get my track stuff together, it starts raining. So all of that on top of 3 days of no riding leading up to the first day of racing, which was the 4k in the morning and the 1k in the afternoon.

For some reason, even knowing all of this and mentally preparing myself, I still couldn't help but feel frustrated with my performance at track nationals. I gave up halfway through my 4k, my legs were feeling really bad and I wanted to try and save whatever I had left for my 1k. But when that time came, I still felt like crap.

After my events were over and I saw how much my performance had gone down from last year, I seriously considered quitting track racing. I wanted to quit the rest of the events that I had scheduled and focus on mtn bike nationals, which was about a month away.

Never before has the philosophy of training specifically hit me so hard. I have been told by many people that I need to pick a discipline and stick with it and that I can't expect to do good in everything. After a while of working out my frustrations, I finally calmed myself down and was able to think rationally again. I thought about the differences between this year and last year's nationals.

Last year track nationals was earlier in the year, there was only 1 mtn bike weekend before it. I also traveled to multiple tracks a couple of times in the weeks leading up to it to keep my form fresh. I also limited my riding to only short intensity and I would rarely go on long rides with big climbs.

This year has been almost the opposite. I have raced 8 mtn bike races so far, have been doing longer workouts, running, and most of my work has been hill oriented. I also did not ride on any tracks until I arrived in PA.

It's odd to think about how much performance can decrease in one aspect while increasing in another. I have been very pleased with my mtn bike results, and that and cross have been my main focuses for this fall, so I was able to overcome my disappointment and focus on finishing the rest of the events as best I could.

Kip and I qualified for the points race finals. We both raced 6 total events and spent a lot of time warming up on rollers. So much time that I actually got good at riding rollers and can now ride no handed!Our team persuit went pretty good. Despite never practicing it, and with 2 people on drop bars, we managed to get 7th place.

The Italian Sprint is always fun. We had a goofy start, but rocked things at the finish. Finishing 6th, but about 0.1 seconds away from 3rd place...

The points race finals was an unreal experience this year... I noticed a lot more this year compared to last year which was just a blur with me trying to survive the whole time. Most of the big teams qualified 4 guys into the finals and so it was a constant battle for control. Teams were doing lead outs, launching riders off the front while blowing themselves up, and it was just too cool. I would work my way up to the front a few times only to get swarmed when it was time for the sprints. I tried bridging up to a few breaks, but would end up bringing the whole field with me haha.. Even though I didn't get any points, I felt really good throughout the whole race and it got me excited about track racing again. Kip managed to bridge up to the final break that ended up lapping the field, gaining him a bunch of points to take 6th overall.

Our team actually took 6th overall in the team omnium which is pretty crazy.

All in all, my mood seemed to change more frequently than a teenage girl throughout this trip, but I think I gained a better perspective from it all. It's all over now, and I can finally get back to my mtn and cross bikes :)

This is my schedule for the next few weeks...
mtn regionals in MO
UCI Cross in OH, stopping back home in MI afterwords
mtn nationals in CA
UCI Cross in KY

been super busy with classes lately too, so I think I'll only be able to ride when I'm racing, but that's ok, I don't want to burn out anyway!

Another quick/busy week / racing at Purdue

2009-09-20T19:04:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, there was no school because it was a community volunteer work day. The cycling team went to Holmes Bend, or local marina/mtn bike trail area, to help clean it up. After a few hours of hiking in the woods, we managed to fill up quite a few trash bags full of old bottles and random litter. It was really cool to give back and do something special. The only downer was getting infested by a bunch of ticks, but I killed them all with an ice bath, so it's all good.

This weekend we traveled to Purdue for their mtn bike races. Saturday was the XC with a super late start for the A field. 2:45 PM, 25 miles on a 5 mile loop that was built on a flat square quarter mile. It was basically a million figure 8 turns and you were constantly on the brakes. I entered the woods in 6th and after a few laps of banging into everything in my path I finally started to get a decent pace down and started catching a few people. By the last lap I was in 4th and closed in on 3rd (Brendan) right as we were about to exit the single track for the slightly long two track finish. I got a little excited with closing the gap though, and went too fast through the last turn and clipped a branch and went down. It would have been cool to have the epic mtn bike sprint finish, but oh well.

Sunday was the short track and the course was a perfect redemption for Saturday's horribly twisty/flat (not my forte) excuse of an xc course. It consisted of multiple good climbs and some slippery turns. The start was crazy because everyone sprinted for the first turn and then hit their brakes and ended up drifting like 3 ft. Luckily, no one went down and we all made it to the first big hill ok. A couple of people went hard on the hill, so I tried to stay calm and hang on their wheels for a while and see what happened. The pace was high for a while, but then it dropped down the next time up the hill and mostly everyone was still together in a stretched out line. I decided to put in an attack on the hill and break it up a bit. No one came with and so I tried to build and maintain my lead until the end, and it worked. This was the first race where we (Lindsey Wilson) decided to start racing each other and not use team blocking in order to prepare for the intensity of nationals. My teammate, Adam, who won the XC, got pretty close to me near the end and kept me motivated for most of the race. It was tough and I'm glad we were able to push each other that hard. He's currently sitting 1st in the omnium with me in 2nd. Regionals is double points and 2 weeks away at University of Missouri!

Definitely looking forward to that, but this is going to be a week off of the mtn bike and an attempt at cracking some results at Collegiate Track Nationals. I don't really have many expectations since I haven't been on a track for almost 2 months now, but we'll see how it goes. Leaving for PA early Wed morning and I've got a lot of HW to do and tests to study for and I gotta stop procrastinating and writing blog posts rather than doing that work, so time for me to go do that...

I got my mtn bike

2009-09-14T21:35:00.000-07:00

Saturday morning I hitched a ride to the local Best Western and meet up with the University of Michigan guys to pick up my brand new Gary Fisher Paragon hardtail 29er mtn bike! I forgot to bring my pedals with me so I had to run with it for like a mile back to my dorm room haha.. Luckily some parts were downhill so I could rest for a bit. I quickly got the bike set up to my liking and then rode off to the home short track course. We were the first race off at 9AM.

The course is on the same huge hill that our dual slalom course is on and it started with a flat but bumpy ground sprint and then a quick turn where we would start a slightly winding climb, then a slightly technical descent, U-turn, and then straight back up to the top of the hill with mud right at the top and steepest part so you had to stay in saddle to keep traction and boy did that feel great! These collegiate starts are always fast and furious with everyone fighting for position, but I seem to be getting the hang of things now and managed to get in at top 5. People started blowing up on the second lap and so we were quickly gaining a good gap on everyone. My teammate, Matt Dooley, went off the front and Purdue was the only non-LWC rider to make it to the lead group and was stuck with the duty of chasing for most of the race. The gap stayed pretty much at about 5-10 seconds for most of the race, but the Purdue guy couldn't close it. With 2 laps to go, he tried an attack to lose Kip Spaude and myself, but we had been sitting in comfortably for most of the race and countered while he blew up so Matt rode in with the win, I took 2nd, and Kip in 3rd. Niiiiice!

Spent the rest of the day watching the rest of the races. It was really fun to hang out with everyone and cheer everyone on. Not so much fun shuttling the slalom bikes back up the hill, but it wasn't too bad haha

Sunday was our home XC race at Green River park. Even though it was our home race, I hadn't yet ridden the course, so it wasn't really much of a home advantage for me. My goal was to not get stuck behind people in the start and make sure I kept contact with the lead group. Most of the trail ended up being fairly wide with a good amount of passing room, so I was able to accomplish this goal and it was Adam (our xc specialist), Brendan (Mich), and myself off the front. Everything was going pretty good until we hit the dreaded "Lindsey Hill". Which is basically a super steep, rooty, scary descent which I went down like a grandma and so I lost a few seconds on the group. Then you have to go up Lindsey hill. The first half is rideable if you don't mess anything up, but the second half you have to push your bike up since it is so steep and rooty. Unfortunately for me, I had bad chainsuck going up the hill the first time and had to run the whole hill. Clayton (Lindsey) is a crazy good technical rider and caught me pretty fast in this area and him and I managed to bridge back up to the lead group, while Adam was low on energy and got popped. Clayton decided to keep the pressure on and was going pretty fast through the technical sections of the trail. I was losing a bit of ground here and there, but was able to motor the big wheels and catch back up on the open sections and climbs. At one point on the second lap, Brendan took over at the front and wiped out hard on a blind corner. Clayton and I sat up for a second to wait, but his injuries seemed to bang him up a bit. So we continued on. From that point on, we basically kept a smooth, steady pace and had a pretty good lead on everyone. Coming in to the start/finish for the last lap, Clayton had a flat. I felt pretty bad since he was doing most of the work on the course, but I continued on, not wanting his work to be in vain. I managed to keep it consistent for the last lap and take my first win on a mtn bike in quite a while.

Actually, I think my last win on a mtn bike was at Iceman 2 years ago in the Expert Junior division where I was also on a Gary Fisher Paragon. Guess I picked the right bike to buy this year haha Seriously though, the bike felt amazing on the course, and I seemed to bond with it instantly. I named her Beatisa - bringer of happiness.

So far my results have been 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 7th haha. As cool as it would be to get the 6th and make the series complete, staying consistently in the top 5 would be a nice thing too.

Mtn biking rocks! (I'll try and find some pictures from this weekend and maybe post them later)

My first WORS race

2009-09-08T12:35:00.001-07:00

Almost. No, I did not race WORS, but I did race on a course that is used by the famous Wisconsin Off Road Series.

We left early Friday morning to head up to WI where we stayed at Kip Spaude's house for the night and got some awesome homemade cooking. Kip's dad built their house and it was really sweet with tons of great riding all around. With a cool house, good food and good riding, no wonder he's so fast..

Saturday morning was the XC race at Nordic Mtn. The A race didn't start until 1PM so me and a few people went out on a pre-ride of the course. Lots of uphill single track, big random rock gardens, tough uphill switchbacks, and some super fun decents. I felt pretty good with my warmup and was ready to go with a front row start. The start was uphill and I wanted to try and get into the single track early, so I put the bike in a pretty big gear at the start. This turned out to be a pretty big mistake since my shifter skipped when I put force down and so I ended up smacking my knee on my handlebars and getting passed by everyone. When I got going again, it felt like my Iceman start from last year. Where I had the speed to pass, but it was so clustered on the trail so it took forever just to pass a few people. I kept catching random groups on the uphill trails and getting stuck behind them for a while, and finally got to an open clearing where I sprinted as hard as I could to escape most of the mess. By the end of the first lap, I think I was around 8th place with a couple more positions in sight. The next 3 laps went pretty good and I was able to catch up to a few more positions to 5th on the last lap. There was a nice flat grass section near the end of each lap and 3rd and 4th positions were in sight. I tried to use my track strength to lay it down and catch at least 4th, but to no success. He made it into the last single track right as I was closing, and then it was downhill to the finish, so no luck. 5th for me.

Sunday was the short track which turned out to be a pretty sick course and race. It was basically a grass switchback climb up the mtn and a fast decent to the finish line. I got a front row start again and made sure the gear I was in was working this time. The start was pretty fast once again, but the pace wasn't constantly high enough to drop anyone, so everyone was still together. I decided to put in an attack at the base of the climb. It was pretty scary when I looked down the switchback section and saw the huge line of riders chasing. After the first lap, I had put in a 16 second gap. After a few laps, thanks to some blocking from my teammates, my chasers were starting to fade and my lead grew to 25 seconds and only 5 people remained in the chase group. Only one of them was a non Lindsey Wilson Rider.

Near the end of the race though, my previous hard efforts seemed to be catching up to me and I was starting to fade on the steep sections of the uphill. Adam (who won the XC) bridged up to me solo and then shot off, getting a large lead of his own. Fearing completely blowing up, I decided to drop back to the chase group and recover for a while so I could counter again if they caught Adam. After I did this, I then found out that it was only 3 laps to go... Oh well, the off the front solo for most of the race win would have been really cool, but it still worked out well for the team. Adam kept his gap and won, while the only people left in the chase group was a Purdue rider, myself, and 2 other LWC teammates. I didn't have the energy to get past the Purdue rider at the end, but my teammate Matt did to take 2nd. I rolled in at 4th. It was a pretty dominant day for LWC, taking 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th out of the decent sized field.

I'm really starting to fall in love with mtn biking again. This next weekend is our home race at LWC. I haven't ridden the course yet, but that's ok. It's kind of cool racing on new trails every weekend.

Seeing this was one of the few exciting things that happened on the 14 hour drive back home.

Thank you's

2009-08-31T20:28:00.001-07:00

I have a couple of people I would like to recognize for making this last weekend's racing possible for me.

Thanks to Alan for letting me use his bike

Thanks to Brendan and the Michigan crew for bringing the bike to me

Thanks to Weston for letting me use his mtn bike when I didn't fit on Alan's

Thanks to Jacob for letting me borrow his front wheel because Weston's was taco'd

Thanks to Tyler for getting the shifting to work good on the bike

Thanks to Coach and LWC for making this trip possible

Thanks to everyone who was out cheering on the course, it helped so much!

It's nice to have so many people to rely on and hopefully I won't have to do so as much soon. I'm proud to say I was able to adjust the brakes by myself to stop them from rubbing! :)

My first race in a month, and breaking the curse of the 7's

2009-08-31T10:28:00.000-07:00

Early Saturday morning, the team headed towards IN for the first collegiate mtn bike race in the MWCCC. The schedule was for the XC on Saturday with the short track on Sunday. I'm used to and would have preferred it being the opposite, but oh well.

My bike still has not come in, so my plan was to have the University of Michigan team bring down Alan's bike so I could borrow it for the bike. It was a great bike with a good setup, but ended up being way too small for me to use. I was scrambling around for a while, but was able to steal parts from 4 different bikes to put together an old Santa Cruz full suspension bike for me to use. The bike was completed with 20 min to go until the start and so I started to roll around on it and was feeling pretty good.

The course had a short sprint before it went into single track, so I made sure to get a front row spot. It was a very fast start with a quick downhill with a lot of sharp turns and steep elevation changes/roots. The course ended up being extremely technical, which was not fun for my current lack of technical skills. Luckily there were a lot of big hills, so I was able to stay with the lead group thanks to my fitness. Halfway through the first lap, one of our riders and a Wisconsin rider went off the front. I was in a solid group just a few seconds down with two more teammates (Scott from MI and Matt Dooley from CA). I pushed it hard on one section, scott came with me, and we were able to bridge up to Brendan and got pretty close to the Purdue guy. We knew the two leaders were gone, so now it was a fight for 3rd place. Brendan was a lot smoother than me in the twisty trail so I was following him for a while until he flatted. After that, I tried to really go hard on the climbs to catch up to the Purdue guy. After 2 laps of pace setting and trying to be as aggressive as possible, I could feel my body starting to get the pre-cramp sensations, so I decided to cool it down for a bit while Scott continued on to catch the Purdue guy. I tried to recover for a bit and then start chasing again, caught the Purdue guy, but then the leg cramps came. For a good 5 minutes I was barely able to pedal and had to try and stand and stretch. I was on the last lap and just wanted to hold my position for 4th, but during my cramps, the Purdue guy managed to get away from me. Brendan fixed his flat really quick and passed me, bringing another rider along with him. I was able to finish a 7th, just 6 minutes down from the leader. Scott, whom I was with until the last lap, was able to hold off for 3rd, just 2 minutes down from the leader, and 1 minute from 2nd place. I was glad for him, and my other teammate who got 2nd, but at the same time I was a little frustrated with myself. After thinking about it for a while though, I realized that once I get a mtn bike and get accustomed to the position, I will hopefully not have cramping problems, and my technical skill will be better, so then I might be able to fight for the podium. I felt really strong on the climbs, but I was definitely losing time on the downhills.

Sunday was the Short track course, which featured a super steep grass climb, a u-turn at the top, flat section to a single track tricky decent, to the parking lot, jump the curb, go back up the hill. I made sure to do everything properly for this race and get a good warm up in. The start was fast, and again, I was able to make the lead group of 4. It was pretty much the same riders: Wisconsin, Purdue, myself, and Matt (my teammate). We were going really hard for a while and pulling away from everyone else and eventually the Wisconsin rider crashed on the downhill and then it was down to 3. The Purdue rider was really strong on the decent and I would have to catch back up every lap on the uphille (which hurt a lot btw). Halfway through the race, I had to slow down a bit so I wouldn't blow up and Matt and the Purdue rider rode away. Matt put in a strong attack on the uphill and was able to get away from the purdue rider and I was slowly pulling him back. Wisconsin managed to catch back up to me and pass me, and I was able to catch the Purdue guy and pass him with a safe distance on the climb with 2 laps to go. So Matt ended up winning, Wisconsin took 2nd, I took 3rd, and Purdue took 4th. I think we lapped everyone else in the top ten at least once, and everyone else twice. The confidence increased with this race, and I can't wait to finally get a bike so I can train on it and see what I can do then.

The team also did really well in every other race we entered. There was also a 4 cross race on Sunday which was really cool to watch! Weston Pope (teammate and world champ bmx racer) destroyed everyone. Watching how he raced was unreal...

Anyway, sorry of the report is long and boring with random info. Definitely glad to be racing mtn bikes again. Brought back a lot of good memories and I'm looking forward to really testing myself this season. The fitness is here, but the skills need work.

One Week

2009-08-21T07:58:00.000-07:00

So, it's been one week since I left home for Lindsey Wilson College.

Things have been going pretty good since I arrived. My room is really nice and big with carpet, so that's a nice upgrade. My roommate (Bill Gates) and I enjoy blasting our speakers really loud throughout the day and having spontaneous dance parties before and after rides, which has also been really fun!

The first few days were amazing simply because there were no worries. We had no classes and were just exploring the area and meeting a couple new people. The roads out here are very hilly terrain, mainly twisty farm roads and smaller highways, so we rarely get bothered by cars. The weather has been really hot and humid, but it's been cooling down lately.

Classes have started now, so things are starting to get busy, but getting a routine going will be good. The team is doing TT's for everyone today, so hopefully my long break from racing will give me a good boost of energy.. We shall see

work sucks

2009-08-08T08:53:00.000-07:00

I've spent the last few days helping out with some landscaping work for my neighbors. It's basically getting up early, mowing lawns, digging, moving big things, and laying cement until sundown.. No time for riding, not like I'd have any energy for it anyway, but it's good quick money. And I need to make bike payments before I leave haha

Some people have been wondering why I am not racing O2S or Grand Rapids. My reasons are a combination of being clustered with getting everything done before I leave for school, trying to make some last minute money, and wanting a little break of racing before I get submerged into nonstop racing threw mid-december.

So far I've had about a 6 hr riding week, probably my shortest of the year.. But I've been running a little bit too, and the hours of work are racked up. It sucks being so tired before your ride even begins, but it's all good. Easy spin rides with friends are fun. I'll start tearing it up again when I head down to school in 1 week :)

Bad news

2009-08-05T09:19:00.000-07:00

The track championships have been postponed until September...

Obviously, I will be gone at school then, and it's like right before nationals...

oh well, time to start focusing for cross now anyway. Started running again on Monday, my shins hate me a bit right now, but I'm still feeling strong. First cross drills practice tonight for me, so I'm excited about that.

Gotta start getting my stuff together too, I think I'm leaving in about a week.

Mulberries!!!!!

2009-08-02T18:28:00.000-07:00

So the last week has been pretty cool. Been getting some hard workouts done on the track and some hard dirt road miles in, so the fitness is good. Most of my road rash is gone now, so that is nice. I'm finally able to sleep any way I want again..

I've been eating really healthy again lately too! Lots of fruits, including my favorite, kiwi. I've been reading a bit about anti-inflamatory diets for athletes and it seems pretty interesting. So I'm toying with the idea of trying to reduce my gluten intake. Not sure if that will happen though, I love bread a little too much.

On another note, my friend introduced me to the greatest thing ever yesterday, mulberries! There are trees everywhere and I've just been eating them like crazy.. Now I know why there are sometimes random purple stains on the ground, it all makes sense now! There's a couple nice mulberry trees in Rochester park that I discovered today, so I will be sure to stop by there more often now on my way home :)

Another random thing, I'm starting up running again tomorrow morning for cross training. I've been debating whether or not I should do this for a while now, but I now I think it will effect me for the better. Hopefully my body won't be too sore this week, still gotta be ready for the kilo and persuit at the state track championships this weekend.

Road racing season is over!

2009-07-25T14:44:00.000-07:00

well, for me anyway... Still got the state TT championship tomorrow, not sure if that really counts.

Maillot Jaune was today, it was a 65 mile race with 5 laps. Really humid weather, cloud cover, and some rough pavement and some hilly roads. It was a pretty small turn out, but there was still a couple of strong people there. We rode the first lap at a decent pace to get a feel for the course, then starting the second lap, there was a move where Alan (Essex Brass) and the Williams bros (Priority Health and Bissell) were slowly riding away and getting a good gap. Of course, the top positions were their teams blocking the whole road. I quicly moved up the pack and shot off trying to bridge up to them. A priority health, Bissel, and RBS rider all sat on my wheel as I destroyed myself closing 3/4 of the gap. The peleton was fading away quickly and I was sure this would be the winning break. I took the left turn onto the huge hill at the start. I didn't think much of it on the first lap, it wasn't hard to ride tempo up, but I was attacked by everyone who had been sitting on me and was left with my legs completely shattered. I watched as they all managed to close of the last few feet to the lead group while I was falling back, barely able to turn my pedals anymore.

Lesson learned: BAD IDEA to do a huge effort right before a huge hill with 3 people sitting on you that have teammates up the road.. I latched onto the chase group that cought up a little while later, recovered for a while, and when I was feeling good again, I got my team up to the front to try and bring it back. We kept the break at 35-45 seconds for the next 2 laps, and then on lap 4 we got it down to 20 seconds. It was practically in our grasps, but then everyone sat up again.. I was blown from chasing for so long and couldn't set a fast tempo up front. By the time I had the energy to try and reel it back in, the break had regained lost time, and it was just Pete Ehmann (Giant) and myself pulling up front for way too long. I gave up hope on the last lap and just tried to conserve what little energy I had left for the sprint and for the state time trial tomorrow. I pretty much blew myself up multiple times today, so tomorrow's gonna go great.... Cory won the field sprint and I got 2nd, so we took 6th and 7th. Not the result I was looking for in my last road race, but I'll take it. I'm looking forward to not having to deal with the large power house teams launching guys and sitting on me while I bridge up to it, and then attack me.. The last month has just been ridiculous, it happens to me in every Michigan race.. I'm looking forward to a break from it..

Anyway, enough of that! I'm borrowing an Equinox 7 from Darek for the TT tomorrow, and now I gotta get my position set up on that. The way my legs feel right now, I don't have many expectations..

Maillot Jaune coming up

2009-07-22T18:19:00.000-07:00

This could possibly be my last road race of the 2009 season. Next weekend is the Track state championships and the following week is the Detroit 6 day which I am thinking about participating in. I heard that there is a USA cycling coach that will be watching and I would like to make a good impression. Need to find a good partner though...

After that, I head down to school and will be converting to the mtn bike while trying to hold track form until nationals and then it's finally CX season! Wow, seems like everything is changing so quickly.. Speaking of mtn bikes, I'm trying to decide between the Gary Fisher Paragon and the Superfly for this upcoming season. I will only use the bike for 4-5 months and then I intend to sell it after Iceman, so it's not something for the long run. I think I'm leaning towards the paragon since it's cheap, durable, and I'll still be able to race decent on it and sell it fast. Probably will get a set of RXL wheels to lighten it up.. any thoughts?

Been focusing on some track workouts lately while still getting some hard dirt road intervals in. I feel faster everyday and stronger too, thanks to proper recovery and setting goals while riding.. I'm looking forward to the fall season

Crash #2

2009-07-18T23:05:00.000-07:00

Somehow I managed to go all of last year without crashing, and in the last 2 weeks I've crashed twice...

I just got back from the Troy Classic race in Ohio. It was a fun race, a top notch regional event with big squads from Panther, Texas Roadhouse, Kenda, and some other strong teams. 10 turn course with a roundabout and 35 laps of racing, shorter than the 50 from last year.

The pace was fast from the gun, but after doing the crazy Daniele track workouts on Wednesday where we recover at 31 mph, it felt pretty easy. Made a couple of moves and got in a few breaks, but the field was going pretty darn fast and brought everything back. Near the end, a small group got away and withered down to 3 riders. Kenda's 2 riders that were in the break got popped and they sent up some people to try to bring it back. I sat on Uberti's wheel (panther) who was sitting on their wheel for like 3-4 laps in 4th position. It felt awesome, it was the perfect position. Eventually they ran out of gas and gave up hope on the chase, so it was a field sprint for 4th place, and they were paying to top 20. I went back a little to save energy and on the last lap I started to work my way back up. In the roundabout (the final turn) I took it a little too hot and ended up sliding out :( but luckily didn't take anyone else out, although I probably did ruin a few poeple's sprints (sorry). There were a lot of other crashes though, and it got pretty scary when everyone was fighting for position going into the turns in the beginning of the race.. Reminded me of the chaos at Athens Twilight and I managed to dodge it all right up until the end where I make a stupid mistake. Oh well, that's bike racing.

I got up quickly and still ended up finishing. I think less than 40 people out of the 80+ field finished and I heard the average speed was something like 28mph, so it was no picnic.

Back in serious training mode now, but will prob take tomorrow easy to let my wounds heal a little..

All over the place

2009-07-12T22:00:00.000-07:00

It's the middle of summer, and with no job, and very few responsibilities, I often find myself to be very unorganized.

Sleeping in every day without having to wake up to an alarm is nice, but it makes me feel lazy for the rest of the day. There is nothing pressuring me to organize my time, so even my riding has been subject to my lazyness.

This last week has been pretty nice though, I've been spending more time with old friends, trying to enjoy the time I have with them this Summer before I leave for school. What better time than during a burn out period? I also got my cross bike back together and have been exploring some dirt roads. These last few weeks have been some of the shortest and easiest rides I've been doing so far this year and I know it will have a good benefit for the rest of my long season.

I couldn't go 2 weekends in a row of not doing any road races, so I didn't want to pass up BTR. The team had small numbers, but we made sure to stay on the offensive. I initiated a couple of moves early on, but the field ended up working extra hard to make sure to bring everything back. Eventually, Ray managed to get away with a Bissell and Priority Health rider, and the other teams took too long to organize their chase, so they were gone. For the rest of the race, I made sure to cover every move that went and after numerous hard jumps into the monsterous wind, I finally managed to split away from the main pack with many other strong riders. Near the end there were a couple of attacks mixed with some blocking tactics and hesitations that led our group to split into numerous pieces of scattered riders. I jumped my group and went into persuit mode on the last lap and was able to catch 2 other riders before the finish to take 5th place. In the breakaway, the Priority Health rider was dropped and Ray was jumped by the Bissell rider near the end and took 2nd place. He also won 2 primes, so it was a pretty good day for him and the team! I was also happy to feel pretty strong during the race after a pretty easy week on the bike.

I've got a spontanious family trip going on in Bay City, MI for the next few days, so I'm pretty excited about that. A couple more easy riding days just to let the body relax a little bit more, and then serious training will resume when I am back Wednesday night. I have my goals set for the rest of the year, and I will do my best to start organizing my schedule better to be more focused and dedicated. Until then, I will enjoy my sleeping in and eating all day while watching TDF stages multiple times!

Mid-season break

2009-07-06T09:59:00.000-07:00

Been taking it easy the last few days since the crash.. Too many people told me I needed to take a break, and so I am taking their advice and living like a normal 19 year old. Actually, no, I've mainly been just laying around and watching TDF and some of my other favorite shows.

I went to the Stony Creek fireworks on the 4th, which was pretty cool. It was my first time going to those ones and I was pretty impressed. Luckily, my knowledge of the area allowed my friend and I to find a close parking spot while avoiding the crazy traffic so we could get in and out without having to deal with a mob of people.

Just trying not to go crazy with all of this extra energy right now, but I know this break is important so that I'm not burned out for the rest of the year.

Going to a Styx concert on Thurs, pretty excited about that. I haven't been to a concert in a long time and I couldn't pass up free tickets. I want to go kayaking sometime this week too... yeah, normal activities!

Crash + time to heal

2009-07-03T19:44:00.001-07:00

I think I jinxed myself in my last blog post about the madison because tonight, wouldn't you know it, I crashed during an exchange.. Luckily, no one else went down, and my rash isn't too bad. Just a bit bruised up with some burns on the typical contact points in a crash.

I had origionally planned on not racing the 3 day this year, and this is just helping me feel like I made the right decision. I'm not comfortable in the madison, and I have other focuses, so it all works out. I will still be training at the track though, so no worries there.

Despite me starting to feel good again, multiple people have told me that my jump is crap right now and I need to take a break. Maybe it has something to do with the 20 plus hour week with 5 races :)

sooooo 3 days off, this will be good for the burns to heal too, and maybe I'll get to do some normal teenager things this weekend..

The plan for the rest of the year, a new school, new opportunities

2009-07-01T15:05:00.001-07:00

This fall I will be moving down to Kentucky to attend Lindsey Wilson College. It's a small private college with a top notch cycling program. Sound familiar? haha. Anyway, I've been in contact with the coach for a while now and I've been able to meet a bunch of the riders and it seems like it will be a cool place to go to. You can check out the very fashionable team kits, featured in the picture below..

The team is expanding its' program this year and I am very glad for the opportunity to be a part of it. Last year they were able to pull off some top results and it is sure to be even better this year. One of the things I am most excited about is participating in the fall collegiate mtn bike races and then cross season. I'm getting my cross bike rebuilt right now so I can start getting my dirt legs going again so I'll be ready.

School starts mid August, so I'll be at the local road races until then. Hopefully I'll be able to go to crit nationals on my way down, I believe that is the weekend right before school starts, so that should work out nicely!

Can't wait to get back on the mtn scene!

Rochester is growing on me..

2009-06-30T23:22:00.001-07:00

Looking back at all of the results for the past weekend, it seems that a lot of the top competition is coming from the area of Grand Rapids. Must be nice to have that much talent concentrated in one area. I hear the roads are nice too..

Lately I've been searching for some new riding buddies, but they are hard to come by over here. Especially since most people have work schedules and lives... Also, most of my usual strong companions are on the dirt, and I am out of a bike for that at the moment, but hopefully not for too much longer!

Today, I convinced our new junior rider, Brett, to come along with me so I could show him my awesome loops of the Rochester area. We did some hill repeats to start the ride, rode around for a while and then where on our way down to Royal Oak and ran into teammates Ricardo and Tim. Rolled around with them for a bit, fueled up on Wendy's, and were off again on the treacherous Tuesday night ride. On the way back, we stopped by the velodrome to say hi to all of the people who dared to come out and lucked out with no rain. After finishing, we rewarded ourselves with peanut butter and nutella sandwiches, Bretts virgin experience!

When I think about it, I truly am lucky to be in the area I am. While there may not be too many great paved roads around me, there is a velodrome in my backyard along with some top notch local mtn bike trails. Not to mention some killer dirt roads just a little North, and some decent rides down in the city. It's funny how sometimes you don't realize what's been right in front of your face the whole time..

Superior Bike Fest 2009

2009-06-29T21:44:00.001-07:00

After being sick for a week, and trying to ramp things up again for the next week, I was hoping to still be pretty competitive for the Superior Bike Fest, which is pretty much the only stage race in Michigan. It was also this years state road race championships.

We drove up Friday morning and got to downtown Marquette with plenty of time to set up and get things ready for that nights criterium. I remembered having a brutal experience in the crit last year with eating too much too soon before the race, so I made sure to eat my main meal way in advance this time. I rolled around the extremely hilly town to get a quick warm up in and was ready to go. The turn out was only 30 riders or so, but that just ended up making the race a lot safer. Most all of the top guns in Michigan were there and the pace was fast and furious. I made sure to sit top 5 for the start of the race and found myself in a 4 man break with some Bissel and Priority Health dudes. We stayed away until about 15k to go, then the pro, Graham Howard, brought up some friends to our group and left us in the dust. Then a couple more Bissel and Priority guys got away while I was left to get absorbed back into the pack with their teammates who obviously didn't want to help me chase them down. I was pretty darn cooked at that point and tried to sprint for a good spot, but had to brake to avoid a crash at the finish. Came in at 11th and was regretting racing that hard right before the state rr.

We ended up having our huge group of Wolverines staying at Topher Chase's parent's house again, which was awesome! There were a lot of people stopping by to hang out in between races and it was good to catch up with a lot of people.

Saturday morning was an 11AM start for the 100+ mile road race. Last year there was a split in the first climb and I was stuck chasing the whole day. I didn't want that to happen again, so I made sure to be ready for everything that went. Only 20 people or so survived the brutal attacks going up Marquette mtn. Bissel and Priority were relentlessly attacking in the following headwind section. Luke, Tim, and myself were doing our best to cover all of the attacks, but every time we brought it back, another would go at full force. Eventually, a big group of riders got away while we were too low on energy to do anything about it. I was stuck pulling in front with no energy watching the distance between our groups just get bigger and bigger.. After a moments rest, our teammate, Cory, managed to catch back on to our group, and the 4 of us laid down a mean team time trial up front to try and bring back the group that got away. After some long and hard work, we managed to bring the group back in sight within a pretty good distance. The lead group must have realized their danger, because when they saw us, they picked it up big time and the gap started opening up again. The four of us were pretty cooked again, and everyone else in our group had teammates up the road, so they were unwilling to help chase. After a while of nothing happening, we eventually convinced everyone in the group to just rotate through to finish the race. The winds were getting wicked strong and it was raining, so we didn't really want to be out there all day long. When we entered back into town, I attacked hard with about 5k to go and was able to get away from the group and hold off my chasers until the finish line to take the last top 10 position. Same place as last year in the state road race, but I also got ranked as 3rd in U-23, which was kind of cool, though I was still bitter about not making the break.

Sunday was the circuit on a new course, which was really unique. It was like a one way road with a pretty punchy/long-ish climb and a fast downhill. It was a 2 mile loop, and the race only lasted for 7 laps. The best way to describe this race would be short track with road bikes... Every lap, more and more people got shelled from the lead group. I was toasted from my efforts in the last two days and was just able to make sure I stayed with the main group. A couple of animals got away, and I did alright in the sprint to take 7th.

I ended up tying for 7th place in the omnium, which was pretty cool. I would of liked to have cracked a top 5 result, but I'm still getting back on form. I haven't been feeling my top end in weeks, even my TT intervals are down a bit now, so I guess I couldn't have expected much.

I've got some new training methods and diet ideas that I'm going to be starting this week, so hopefully they will help me get back to feeling strong again.

Also, I'm still not sure if I want to race the 3-day this year. Tour of the Valley in Ohio looks pretty fun, but then again, there's still superweek... hmmmmmm

A lame weekend

2009-06-21T21:23:00.000-07:00

Friday night nas-track, SKETCHY racing, 2 crashes in the madisons... The scratch race and miss & out were pretty slow so I tried to lap the field by myself. I maintained a half lap lead in both races until I got caught in the scratch race with half a lap to go, and got caught in the miss & out with 2 other riders left having been out by myself since the first bell lap. Was pretty sloppy in the madison and had to chase back on a few times because everyone ahead of us would ride up track in our way when we were trying to do exchanges, then the second half of the last madison was cancelled due to rain and everything was left where it was, which sucked. But I was glad to be done with it all, my heart rate was super high just from wanting to survive without getting scratched up.. Not sure how many more nas-track's I will be doing, it's not worth the risk to ruin my season with a crash. Maybe I can convince them to do more scratch races or even points races, or maybe we'll get the Wed night races going again.. I'm not going to risk my season because of other riders not knowing how to race a madison properly..

Saturday, I tried really hard to tame myself and only ride for 90 min. I was feeling really good and wanted to ride more, but I knew I needed to save it for the TT Sunday morning. I went home early and even went to bed at a good hour with everything packed and ready to go.

Sunday morning comes along and I am just about to head out the door when I hear that the State TT is cancelled due to flooding... I was pretty upset because I was very excited to make my TT debut and see if I could land myself a podium spot, I was pretty confident with the roster that was signed up, but oh well..... Decided to go back to bed and sleep in and let my food settle so I could ride later. Ended up getting a pretty hard day in with some long TT intervals and then some hill sprints with a total ride time of 4.5 hours, so some solid training.. Though, I do need to stop doing the longer rides and just focus on pure intensity, I know.......... maybe this week I'll just ride the velodrome....

not....

SUPERIOR this upcoming weekend!!! can't wait!

Back at it

2009-06-19T10:44:00.000-07:00

3 days off the bike was hard, but it is over now so I am free to ride and tear my body up once again!

On my first day back I went on my secret 3 hr hill destroyer ride and even ran into Tanguy at one of my secret locations... we did some repeats together, which was fun, and then I finished my trek home with my legs still full of energy, so that's a good sign!

Gonna do my first race at the track for the year tonight, hopefully the rain will stay away. I need to get the intensity back in my legs for the state TT this weekend, which I am really looking forward to!

Time to rest

2009-06-15T08:56:00.000-07:00

Racing when you're sick is NOT fun, but I didn't want to put my pre-reg money to waste, so I just sucked it up this weekend and did what I could.

Saturday was the criterium, it was a pretty stacked field and I got a call up with some pretty sweet people. Got to the first turn first and led out the first lap feeling pretty good so I'm thinking "alright, this won't be too bad". A couple more laps go by and I'm still feeling pretty good. I was smoother than a lot of people in the turns and was saving energy there, but about 30 min in my heart rate started to pick up and my breathing got deeper, which meant I started coughing like crazy. I stayed in like that until about 60 min in and then decided it would be better to not kill myself in the crit, and save it for finishing the RR, so I dropped.. And while I was coughing my lungs out on the sidelines with snot drooling down my face, Frankie made a lovely announcement to everyone that I had dropped and basically to all look at me.. yay!

For the rest of that night, I was a trainreck of different emotions and thoughts like:
- I shouldn't be racing and making my illness worse
- sometimes athletic activity heals illness
- should I have just finished the crit?
- should I even race tomorrow, a 100 mile loop and I'm not sure I can finish..

Bottom line though was that I paid for the entry fee already, it would be less intensity than the crit so I could keep my heartrate low and not having breathing trouble. Plus I had to do the race so that I could be a part of all of the post race gossip later!

The road race ended up to be an amazing experience and I'm really good I took part in it. We had multiple cop lead vehicles shutting down all traffic where we went, a motor bike ref yelling at us when we crossed the yellow line in the crosswinds and for the leadout positions. We passed through many towns with cool crowds and it was a great feeling. The race itself was a blur, basically 4 hours of motorpacing. The pace was pretty consistant most of the time, so it was pretty easy to stay in. For the middle half of the race, I was hanging out in the back and found myself dozing off and gettting gapped and having to bridge back up to the field. It was pretty funny and stupid, especially since it happened multiple times. I was also messing around with my pack skills, trying to move up past people in the middle, and I started to get pretty good at it by the end. I worked my way up to the top 10 near the end and it was a brutal and dangerous fight to try and hold that position. Everyone wanted to be up there and the refs were getting really stingy about the yellow line rule and would slow down ahead of us on the yellow line and force us to squeeze in.. I started wishing that I had pre-ridden the ending, because I had no idea where the sprint was, I was just going to wait until everyone else started sprinting. We ended up hitting a suprising left hand turn and there was the finish line. Unfortunately for me, I got pinched off in the turn (this is happening too much) and I tried to catch as many people as I could at the end. Ended up 29th, which is good considering I had no expectations of myself for that day and no top end.

But now, enough of all that racing stuff... I'm done cycling, mentally and physically for the next 2-3 days. Time to heal!

Sick...

2009-06-12T08:54:00.000-07:00

So halfway through Wednesday's track workout, I started to not feel so well, so I decided to stop and not push myself any further. This turned out to be a good choice because later that night I was hit by a huge headache and passed out and basically slept all day Thursday with a slight sore throat forming and I was also unable to eat much of anything the whole day.. Today, the headache seems to be not as bad, but the sore throat is worse, hopefully it'll heal up by tomorrow, or at least by Sunday. We'll see how it goes...

Track workouts

2009-06-10T12:35:00.000-07:00

I guess I can't really say I've "trained" much this year.. I mean, I've ridden long hours, and I go hard when I feel like doing so, but I never really had a set workout in mind. I usually just went with what the weather allowed and with how my body felt.

However, now that I have basically had my weakness of the short race finishing speed stamped onto my face, I have decided to start doing some real "specific training". Also, looking at my log from last month, it only showed 10 hours of track time... So, last night I decided to go to the Daniele training session at the velodrome for a good butt kicker..

The velodrome training sessions are very different from anything I do on the road.. Everyone warms up by practically blowing themselves up in a crescendo type format. Then it's a full recovery where we sit around and talk for a while, and then we start our first set of the workout. Last night we were doing drills where we would lap the field in pairs, trying to be the first one to catch onto the group. The goal is to do it as quickly as possible, to push yourself beyond your normal bridging speed and then recover, then do it again. After a full set of that, it was another full recovery, then another set, full recovery, then another set.. The good thing about having a lot of endurance is that I still have full energy for the last few sets when everyone else starts blowing up :) But that also means that I'll need to push myself harder in the earlier sets so that I'm not so fresh...

Another track workout today, this time with some motor pacing and maybe some madison practice. Should be a good time!

Back home from Chicago

2009-06-08T00:41:00.000-07:00

So Saturday night was the Winfield Twilight Criterium, though there was still daylight.. It took place in a subdivision/park and featured a long hill prime sprint point, and a technical downhill finishing sprint point. The locals had a lot of stuff going on and seemed to be really into the race, which was really cool! The race started out as a shocker to me, I've been pretty used to the 4 hr road races lately, so I was pretty nervous at the start when everyone would try to pass at every given moment.. Eventually we settled down to a pretty good flow of the course, but there were primes every few laps, so a lot of people would bunch up in the turns and so it was hard to hold a front spot.. I regretfully did not go for any of the primes, but I did manage to be sitting 5th wheel with two laps to go and a field sprint only to be pinched off at the crest of the hill turn when people decided to brake. Didn't have the guts to do any risky moves on the downhill so I rolled in pretty much where I was for 20th. Luke used his mad bike skills to his advantage and managed to pass a lot of people on the downhill and finished in at 12th. It was a pretty fun race, but I had a lot more in the tank.. ah well, save it for the next day!

We luckily were able to find host housing with a local family from the ABD cycling team, the Witt family. It helped us out a ton and was GREATLY appreciated!

Sunday was the ABR National Championship Criterium, which was a 4 corner course with a steep hill and a long downhill finishing straight. I decided that I was going to be a lot more aggressive in this race since I was pretty upset about not doing anything the night before. I stayed in the top 10 most of the time and even helped chase down a couple of small breakaways. Eventually, a small group with all of the big teams represented started to pull away. We tried to get a couple of people up front working to bring it back, but to no success. I then focused on trying to get away from the pack to try and secure a decent finishing spot. I was attacking every chance I got and I got into a couple of different breaks, but none of them stuck for too long. Then with about 6 laps to go, I got into a good break with 3 other guys and we stayed away until 3 laps to go. We were going pretty good, but the pack managed to close the gap. I still tried to go for a good finish but was gassed from my earlier efforts and I think I probably got passed by about 5 people in the last 2 seconds of the race, which sucked.. oh well, I'll get this crit thing down soon enough, hopefully.. came in at 17th and managed to win a PowerBar prime earlier in the race with about $40 worth of stuff, so that was kind of cool. Luke managed to get 13th, one out of the money (he also was one of the 5 who snuck by me at the end when I blew)

So... I have a lot of work to do if I want to get better at these kinds of races. These hour and a half crits are soooo different than road races, which has been what all of my training has been focused on this year, obviously.. I think it's time to start backing down the long hours and start going to the track more often to get some high end training in..

A double crit weekend

2009-06-03T10:54:00.000-07:00

Looks like Luke and I will be traveling to IL this weekend to race a set of criteriums! (finally)

Motorpacing tonight
Waterford race tomorrow
Nas-track Friday
Crit Sat and Sun

ouch.... maybe I won't do the nas-track...

Where I'm going..

2009-06-02T13:13:00.000-07:00

So I just got some bad news in my e-mail inbox. The Mtn Khakis pro development camp that I was planning on going to next week is cancelled.. I was really looking forward to the exposure to prove what I can do and to maybe get the hookup on a really good team for next year..

So now, my plans for the next 2 weeks are about to change drastically. There are some crits and the state road race in Indiana this weekend that I am thinking about going to, but I only have so much money and I might just stay home and get some good/long training in and save it for SuperWeek expenses...

One good thing out of all of this is that I will now be able to participate in what is most likely going to be the toughest race in MI this year, Tour de Mont Pleasant. That is, if the big dogs are gonna show, and I hear that Panther will be there and I'm sure some Roadhouse boys and maybe even some Kenda will show.. So maybe if I do some hard work there, I'll get a chance to talk to some of the big team directors...

It's starting to get pretty stressfull lately. Sure, I can pull some decent results in MI right now, but what does that really show? I need to get out of state and do some big stuff, since I missed out on the Junior development bandwagan, but money concerns always seems to be restricting me... Don't get me wrong, the MI scene is fun and all, but I don't want to settle for this level of racing. Continued development requires challenges and exposure to higher level racing..

I don't know if I'm wasting my time by staying and racing in MI right now and trying to get results, but I can't help but think about all the other people my age who are going on to do bigger things.. If I have any chance of pursuing my dream of becomming pro, the sooner I advance, the greater a chance I have for being successful.. This camp was the perfect opportunity to prove I had what it takes and I would of got more one on one rather than a 50th place in a big Pro/1 race where no one even knows who I am...

I'd appreciate anyone's thoughts on the matter, my head's going in circles right now...

Time for a small break from the big road races (maybe)

2009-05-31T23:26:00.000-07:00

Saturday was the first West Branch Classic road race. I was pretty excited for this race since I got to ride the finishing part of the course during the Wolverine's spring (winter) training camp. I tend to prefer uphill finishes and this one was over a mile long haha

Friday night I drove up with Luke, Natalie, and John to go to Ray's super sweet cabin in Rose City. We stopped in West Branch to pick up our numbers so we could be all ready to go in the morning. I think it was around 50 degrees again for the start, so it was nice having heated seats on the drive over. Basically did my usual road race routine of putting my bike together, going to the bathroom, and then to the starting line.

The start of the race was fairly slow. I don't think many people felt like riding a hilly/windy course for almost 90 miles by themselves. But sure enough, a couple of miles in, a small group manages to get away and no one wants to chase. I set tempo for a while and kept the group close and most of them popped off, but then a couple of other people managed to get away.

The next two laps were pretty interesting.. The pace was either unbearably slow, or it was extremely on with attack after attack going nonstop with more people trying to get away. When I was moving around the pack trying to get my team organized to chase, another group managed to get away and so I started to get worried. I didn't want another Kensington replay, so after the hill and starting the last lap, I decided to give it my all up front to to reel the small breaks back in. Tom Burke seemed to have similar feelings since he joined me up front and we got some pretty mean pulls in. A couple of people would rotate in with us every once in a while, but we were the only two to be up there the whole time and there were a few times where it would be just us rotating up front and we were gapping the rest of our group haha.. We ended up catching everyone but the lead 6 riders and in the meantime we shelled more than half of our group from the previous lap.

The last 5 miles of the race got kind of scary because we were fast approaching the straggling group of positions 4-6 when all of a sudden our group started to go into the super slow speed again. I didn't want us not to catch that group for such a stupid reason and luckily I still had some people on my team with some spare energy to keep the front moving. On the closing 2 miles, we were appoaching the finishing hill and still 2 riders from the break were away. Simon launched an attack to try and get the pace moving to bring it back so I could save some energy. No one really chased, and then Stewart went. Again, no one chased. I guess a lot of people wanted to save everything they had left for that last hill. The hill itself was kind of weird, just by tempo riding it, me and a couple of people dropped our group and were catching a couple of people. Stewart was already long gone, and I caught everyone else from the straggling break except for I think Ben Whitehead, who held me off by a bit... shoulda started sooner, but still a good finish, and I felt strong the whole time, so that's what matters..

I ended up taking 6th place, and my number was also 6... Alan got second and his number was 2... Last week I got 3rd and my number was 103..... scary stuff.. The rest of the team also had a strong ride with Simon holding off most of the charging group for 10th. Tom got 11th, Brian 13th, and I think Alan got 15th.

Overall though, it was a really cool race! I love the finish and how challenging the course is. The half gallon beer and while prizes were pretty cool too. So were the free water bottles, guess how many I snatched!

Tom Burke and I about to lay it down after the hill

So Sunday morning I drove back to Rochester to get ready for the Bloomer Park 2k TT race. The distance was hard to judge since I haven't really done a race like it before, but I had some pretty high hopes. I seemed to do everything right, got there early, was on the rollers with a long warm up. Was able to borrow some good wheels and an aero helmet from Cullen. I decided against the aerobars since I haven't really used them yet this year and wasn't too comfortable riding them earlier this week.. I was last to go, so I knew where I needed to be.. I figured around a 2:25 would be the winning time and David Williams had set the bar with a 2:26. While watching the other people go off, I was noticing that most people were blowing up with 5 laps to go (out of 10). The wind was pretty strong and I didn't want that to happen to me, so I decided to go out with a conservative start. I was going hard in the headwind and recovering in the tailwind sections... STUPID idea.... just plain stupid.. I've been developing a conservative mindset from all of these road races lately and I have no idea why I did that in a 2k TT, but that's how it went and so I crossed the finish line with a lot of leftover energy.. 2:35 was my time, which was still able to secure me 4th... Not bad, but definitely not what I'm capable of doing.. ah well, not too stressed about it, just happy it happened here and not at nationals...

It was still a pretty cool event, it was David's first time at the track and he was still able to win it. Though his school has a track on campus and he's got a national champion jersey for the track, so it's not like he's un-experienced or anything. Terry Palmer got a close 2nd and also set a new record for the flying 200m shortly afterwords!

All in all, it was a good weekend! Good time hanging out with the team, prize money covering entry fees, I got lots of cookies, and now I'm back home with internet and a cell phone connection.

Prepping for this weekend

2009-05-28T20:50:00.000-07:00

This was a pretty boring week in terms of training and everything else..

It pretty much rained on and off every single day with clouds always in the sky and temps mostly pretty chilly.. I sort of enjoy training hard in this kind of weather (minus the rain) and so I mainly did some hard solo stuff.. Every ride was pretty much determined by trying to dodge the rain that would end up coming at a different time than expected and that really ruined my track training for this week... oh well, got some good solid TT and hill efforts in..

Did an easy ride yesterday and today, and gonna have another tomorrow... I don't usually do stuff like that, but the weather really threw off my training schedule and I pushed it to earlier in the week, so I had 3 more hard days after frankenmuth with a couple of double sessions... needless to say, I was pretty cooked... I decided that I'd prefer to be fully charged for West Branch and the 2k TT, so then I can go balls out with some more good training after that!

Oddly enough, I seem hungrier when I do the medium length really easy pace days than when I do my long hard days... I've been on a feeding frenzy all day and I can't figure it out... hmmmm not riding hard makes my body go crazy... At least I'll be pretty fueled up :)

Das Tour de Frankenmuth

2009-05-24T09:11:00.000-07:00

Went up with Ray's family and Scott with his son to stay in Frankenmuth Friday, the night before the race. We walked around town and got to eat a delicious meal and tease our senses with the smell in all of the chocolate shops....

This pizza was amazing! (went to T-Dubbs)

Now, some info on the race. Woke up at 6am to 50 degrees and sprinkling rain. Not so much fun, but we went to McDonalds to get some Egg McMuffins to brighten our spirits. Then we get to the race start and it's still pretty cold. I went with the arm warmers and vest and figured I could strip those layers if it got warm later.

Like most of the races this year, the start was pretty tame. A couple people tried to get away, but the pack kept rolling, keeping them at a safe distance, and brought everything back. I must say that this is the best race the Wolverines have raced as a team that I have ever witnessed. With some new guys from other teams and people just getting their upgrades, we seem to finally be working really well together. Kroske, Alan, Adam, Weinert, Ray, Simon, Tom, and sammut were doing a great job at controlling the field when things got away that Luke and I were not in. We are learning to cover our defensive weakness and it really showed with this race.

The field was stacked with some top MI riders as well as some tough out of state people. Attacks were going like crazy with people trying to get away, but there were always too many strong people not in the lead group who would bring it back, then counter, then the other group would come back and counter again.. It was pretty nerve racking, not knowing when the break would get away, but the wind conditions were pretty tame and I wasn't too concerned about it with my team riding so strongly.

At the beginning of lap 4, 2 riders got a little bit of a gap in the small roller section and I was stuck in the front chasing it down. To my suprise, when I looked back, only a few riders followed me and we had a strong group of 6 with a huge gap. We instantly went into a perfect rotation and did some hard pulls to increase our gap. It was nice because everyone was working together and doing a fair amount of work. Once we secured the gap, we just kept it at a steady tempo and everything just fit into place. Everything was calm until the last few miles of the last lap. A couple of people didn't want to take their chances in the sprint and were trying to break up our group. For the most part, we stayed together and came into the final stretch together. The downhill sprint is kinda weird because it seems like you can only go so fast and we all were kind of dangling right next to each other. I ended up waiting too long to do my full sprint and I went for the wrong line, which I think almost all of us did, and I ended up taking 3rd. Hopefully they'll mark the finish line more clearly next year. Also, I need to get rid of this compact crank at races with a downhill finish haha..

Patrick did good in the 3's and will remain the points leader. Kroske had a great race, he did a lot of hard work for me in the beginning of the race and still managed to get in the 2nd break to finish 9th!

I got a little bit of podium glory and a cool medal. A lot nicer than the dollar store ones they had 2 years ago. (I actually got 3rd 2 years ago in the cat-5 race haha)

Big $$$ or at least grocery money for this week :)

Next on the agenda is West Branch and the 2k TT at the track. I'm really looking forward to both of them. Can't wait to see the field shatter on that finish climb haha

POWER!!!

2009-05-19T22:33:00.000-07:00

Cullen is letting me test out this sweet power tap wheel for a while and I'm pretty stoked about it. I'd never be able to afford anything like this, and it will be good for me to know what my body can produce with some hard-fact numbers.. I put my hard case on, so this baby is indestructible! I think I'm gonna run it at Waterford on Thursday to see what kind of numbers I produce in a race..

On my first ride with it, I went for 3 hours, and averaged 98 watts. I'm trying to take it easy for a few days since it's been a hard last few weeks of training and racing and I really want to do well for next week's West Branch race and the 2k TT at the velodrome.

This weekend I'm planning on racing Frankenmuth on Saturday. This race is dear to me, since it was my first ever road race 2 years ago, racing in the freezing rain as a foolish cat-5 that didn't know where the finish line was..

There's a really big crit in Chicago I'm thinking about going to on Monday. If that doesn't go through, I'd like to do this 150k road race in Canada on Sunday or maybe even the Bloomer XC race, which is also very dear to me. It was my first mtn bike race 3 years ago, and I've raced it every year since! I'll need to scam a mtn bike off of someone to pull that off though... hmmmmm I'm liking that option the best right now.. it's the cheapest and Bloomer is right next to my house... too bad I haven't trail ridden at all yet this year, but I think I could pull it off... Watch out, you might not want to be behind me on the technical sections.. oh wait, that's everything at bloomer..

What I learned at Kensington

2009-05-16T23:04:00.001-07:00

So here's the deal...

5:20 AM - wake up
6:15 AM - leave from Luke's
7:45 AM - arrive at Kensington 30 min before race starts, put on our numbers, go to the bathroom, and ready to go. Got plenty of time to warm up in an 85 mile road race..

I got to wear the leader number, so that was exciting, but also kinda a big target on my back..

The first lap went out pretty slow.. The roads were wet and it was pretty windy so I guess no one wanted to really do anything too crazy right away. Lap 2 comes around and a break of 3 gets away with a Bissel Pro dude. We keep it at a safe distance for the next few laps and everything is going ok. Then out of nowhere, the chaos begins..

A couple people bombed the big descent and a ton of people were letting gaps open and not closing them.. I had to cover pretty quickly, but was able to bridge up to the front as we continued to keep the pace high up the hills and on the long straight. Instantly, a good chunk of the pack was gone... Then we start catching the other packs from the other categories really fast... People are all over the place and I couldn't tell who was who, especially since people were popping while others were breaking away in the middle of other fields... A couple of people got away, and so I chased hard for a bit, bringing a few of them back, but I guess another group of 6 got away in all of the chaos.. It took me a while to realize what had just happened and I tried to organize a decent chase, but few people would help work and a couple would sit up and not pull through after I would do a long effort. I actually ended up pulling for the out and back section in it's entirety and when no one would pull through even after all of that, I ended up attacking and going solo for a while, but was chased down... And of course, everyone sits up as soon as they catch me, letting me do the pulling again.. I didn't really care at that point, I didn't go there to sit on wheels and do nothing, so I ended up pushing myself pretty hard, and my body responded well on the tough course, so I guess that's a good thing.

With 1 lap to go and having put no serious time on the lead groups, I gave up on my chasing effort and decided to conserve what I had left for the sprint and sit on all of the people who had been sitting on my wheel for the last 40 miles. Danny launched an attack on one of the big hills before the descent. No one gave chase, so he was able to stay away for the last lap, and I ended up taking the sprint out of the few people who survived for 11th.

Thanks to Brent from Flit Wheels for letting me use a set of Zephyr wheels. It was my first time using carbon tubulars in a road race and they worked like a charm!

After the race, I was extremely frustrated, and a lot of those feelings are probably still lingering a little as I'm writing this.. I had the physical strength and stamina to drive the groups and stay with the leaders in the race, but everything seemed to go wrong. I got stuck behind so many people who just randomly would let gaps open and I had to close them.. And the winning break went away when I was busy closing the gaps in the stretched out field..

There were a couple of other issues I had with some other aspects of the race, but bottom line, I should've been more aggressive and in the front, ready for whatever was going to happen. I learned a lot from this road race, and even though I didn't get near the result I wanted, the lessons learned will help to not let me make the same mistakes in the future.

Road racing is nothing like XC mtn bike races, where the strongest guys wins. There's a lot more to it, and I still have a lot to learn...

Bring it on...

2009-05-13T22:32:00.000-07:00

Brent hooked me up with some sweet Flit wheels for the Tour of Kensington road race. I'm pretty excited and nervous at the same time since it will be my first time using tubulars off of the track... I'm gonna test em out tomorrow, can't wait! Oh yeah, I finally peeled off all of the duck tape and cleaned all the dirt off of my bike from Cone Azalia...

What's also exciting is the line up of riders in the Pro/1/2 field at Kensington... It's gonna be a top notch event with some of the best riders in the midwest. That is, if they don't chicken out because of the rain..

Time to load up on the calories, I have a love/hate relationship with cookies... especially a plateful of them... ah well, I'll need every ounce of energy I can save if it ends up being rainy and 50/60 degrees for 3 1/2 hrs.. Let's hope it doesn't come to that, but then again, It might be better for me with the rougher conditions... hmmmm I prefer mid 70's and sunny....

Thank you!

2009-05-11T11:05:00.000-07:00

As I've stated before, the last few weeks have been pretty insane and chaotic with everything that has happened. I'm finally getting in a routine of things again and so I'd like to take some time to put out a few thank you's.

Firstly,
Thanks to Mike Livingston and his wife for hosting me while I was down in GA for speed week. You guys were great hosts and were awesome to me!

Thanks to Eddie O'Dea from 55nineperformance.com who gave me my first professional bike fit. He used laser precision, video analysis, and all that fancy stuff. He also taught me a lot about pedal stroke and position efficiency.. I had to move my seat up a considerable amount, but I am already starting to notice a huge difference in my power and my recovery time..

Thanks to Dave Grigsby and the cycling team at Lindsey Wilson for hosting me for a few days and the awesome experience!

Thanks to Cullen and American Cycle and Fitness for putting up with my lack of mechanical knowledge and allowing me to do my repairs there.

Thanks to Brian Sheedy for offering his expert advice at speed week.

Thanks to Ray Dybowski for being a great mentor and friend to me for my whole cycling career in the Wolverines. And also for the great leadouts at the last Waterford race!

Thanks to Danny Klein for the funny phone calls.

And thanks to my grandma, who is allowing me to stay with her for the time being.

I'm sure there are more people who deserve recognition, but the above people have really stood out in my life lately, and I really appreciate everything they have done for me, so thanks again!

So much to do, so little time...

2009-05-03T22:27:00.000-07:00

(Thanks TMS for the cool pic)

I wish I had more time to write up a decent entry... Been going all over the place lately with spontanious living arrangements and I have been lacking much organization.. I've basically been living out of my car the last few days, staying at friends, but it's all good!

I rode Wed-Fri in the rain, and was getting pretty sick of that.

Sat I spent most of my day building up the X02 to be similar to my Madone set up and then test rode it in the dirt roads of northern Rochester to much disatisfaction with my rear derailer.. so I decided to use my Madone for Cone instead..

Sat night I also received confirmation of my approval to Cat-1 on my road license :) So I needed a good result at Cone to prove my worthiness of the upgrade...

Breif Cone Azalia write up...

Start: decided to go with the short warm up. I rode from the parking lot to the first dirt section and back.. After going down south, I'm all about the short warm ups now. The race started at a safe pace, everyone was pretty chill for the first 2 laps and most people were really bad about riding in the dirt sections.. There were potholes all over and no one was sticking good lines, so I hung off of the back and had a nice smooth ride.. Tim had an unfortunate flat, but Alan sacrificed his wheel so he could have a quick exchange. Ray, Adam, and myself managed to bring him back quick since the pack was still going easy. That was pretty cool, some good teamwork.

Middle: I think on lap 3, Danny punched it pretty hard on the rough dirt section and the field was splitting.. I jumped from my safe spot to get up to the front and then decided to keep it moving. Put it in a big gear and was just sort of rolling when all of a sudden I noticed that I had a pretty big gap and a Priority Health and Bissel guy where with me. So I put in a pretty big effot to get the gap bigger and those 2 started working with me.. A little while later, a group of 4 managed to bridge up to us, including Tim. For the most part, everyone was doing a fair amount of work and there was no one bringing us down. A couple of times we got disorganized, but once we saw the chase group behind us, we got it moving good again.. I was getting really anxious and wanted to try to split the group at times.. I would do some hard pulls, but Tim did a good job at getting me to control my efforts and put me in a good perspective of the situation.

End: Priority had 2 guys in the break and were launching some counter attacks. Tim and I were stuck covering most of them, and eventually they gave up with that.. One guy launched a pretty hard effort on the last stretch, trying to get away, and he almost did. For a couple of seconds, we looked around to see who was going to cover it, and at that point, I was in no condition to cover. I was the sprinter, and my legs were starting to lock up from my earlier efforts and all of the accelerations on the last few laps. Luckily we got it rolling in time to catch the rider before the end. I was riding out of the saddle for the whole last stretch, trying to keep my legs from locking up. As soon as I could see the finish line, I went to my 2nd biggest gear and pushed with everything I had left. I was just waiting for someone to pass me, since my legs were locking up, I wasn't sure if I could hold them off. No one was going by, so I put it in the 11 and drove it home for the win.. All that was going through my mind at that time was "I can't believe I held them off.."

Thoughts on the race: Alan had a great sacrifice by giving his wheel to Tim. Tim also had a stellar result with catching back up the field to take 2nd! Not many people can say that.. Luke got in the second break and took 12th. Kroske had an impressive performance for his first Pro/1/2 race and took 14th! Cone is an insanely rough course... Every party of my body is aching right now... Some of those dirt sections hurt so bad, but the bontrager hard case tires that NEVER get a flat were up to the challenge!

Goin with the flow

2009-05-01T19:08:00.001-07:00

So I decided to go up to Kentucky mid-week to visit Lindsey Wilson College, which turned out to be a good experience. The roads are in perfect condition and it's rolling terrain, which is perfect for me.. The people on the team are pretty cool, and it had the same small town, small school feeling as Lees-McRae. I enjoyed my time there, but the journey had to continue..

I chose to come back home to MI so I could race the Cone Azalia Spring Classic rather than do another weekend of the Pro crits. My training so far this year has been for the longer road races, so I'm looking forward to finally being able to put that to use, even though it's only 70 miles... Plus I have to defend my honor as the cat-3 champion from last year haha..

Now that I have no home, I've been house hopping between friends.. Hopefully I'll get everything figured out soon, but for now, I've just got Cone on my mind...

Some warmer weather would be nice, I was spoiled by the 90's and high 80's down in GA... oh well, 65 isn't too bad, and I actually like racing in rough conditions... Bring on the rough weather and the crappy roads! Time to really see where everyone is now :)

The First Few Days of US Speed Week

2009-04-27T08:56:00.001-07:00

The last few days have been pretty hectic.. I found out on Monday night that my dad sold the house and that I would need to move out all of my stuff before I left for GA Thursday morning. On top of that, I had exams on Tues and Wed. My exams went well and I managed to get all of my stuff out of the house in time and was on the road at 6AM Thursday morning.. It was a long and boring drive by myself, but I made good time and arrived at Mike's house in Atlanta with enough time for a quick ride to flush out the legs.

Friday was the Athens Twilight Computrainer race, which was really cool. The trainers were hooked up to a moniter that showed us our spot on the 3.5 mile course. I averaged 400 wats for 7.5 minutes for 23rd place, giving myself a decent starting spot for the Twilight crit on Saturday night. Words cannot describe how amazing of an event that the Athens Twilight criterium is... There were thousands of people screaming, a redbull stunt driver pumping up the crouds, crazy loud music, and the scariest race start I have ever done... About 140 people sprinting at 40mph + trying to pass in locations that they shouldn't led to a pretty bad crash in the 2nd lap. I got my handlebars chopped multiple times, but somehow managed to stay up.. The pace was all out, single file the whole time, with attacks stringing out the field going all the time.. People would get popped and it sucked to close the gaps, but I was feeling pretty good. At around 25 laps in though, I hit a bumpy section of the road and knocked my saddle nose downward pretty far.. I tried moving it back up, but it was difficult to do so with the pace being what it was.. I only lasted maybe 5 more laps before I was at the back of the pack with no success in moving my saddle back.. I couldn't pedal like that anymore and unfortunately had to drop out.. Some other bad luck was getting a flat on my only racing wheels, leaving me to race on my backup rear wheel, which wasn't that great.. Despite my misfortune, It proved to be a great learning experience with how those kinds of races go and I was ready and knew what to expect for the next race.

Sunday was the Historic Roswell Criterium, which also had a later start at 6pm. The temperature was high 80's, and Mike came with me, so I had some help getting ready for the race, which made a world of a difference. The start wasn't as hectic as Athens was.. Some of the turns were pretty dangerous, so people weren't pulling any stupid stunts in them any more and I was able to get a good flow.. It's kind of crazy how the 100 + fields can string out so far and you can be ahead of so many people, but at the same time be so far from the front.. I felt pretty good for the whole race and was able to move up in the long straight aways a couple of times, but at the same time I made sure to conserve most of my energy to make sure that I finished, since that was my main goal.. The field strung out again near the end, and I was slowly making my way up. There was a speedometer in part of the course and every time we went through it read around 33, so we were definetily moving.. I was pretty happy to reach the final lap since I was out of water and my mouth was getting dry.. I had a lot of energy at the end and wish I would've spent a little more moving up earlier in the race, but I'm pleased with finishing 64th in a field of top pro's.

Athens was a pretty big shock to the system compared to the riding in MI, but I felt that my body was able to handle it and it already seems to be adapting well to this type of racing.. I'm going for a nice recovery ride today with Mike. Not sure what my plans are for the rest of the week, gonna make it up as I go..

Oh yeah, I now know why Atlanta is also known as Hotlanta, and it's not because of the weather... :)

It's all coming together...

2009-04-17T18:14:00.000-07:00

Up until the last few days, I wasn't sure about if I would be able to go down to Speed Week, but it looks like things are working out.. I've managed to schedule my exams early so that I'll be able to leave in time for the Athens Twilight Crit.

The website was pretty confusing, but what I got out of it was that there is an optional computrainer race on Friday and the top 10 Cat-2 guys will be able to race the Pro/1 race. It's a 3k TT, so I should hopefully be able to crush it and get in, but we'll see.. If not, then there is a qualifier race early Sat for the Elite Amateur Finals, which will take place later Saturday night... sheesh... I gotta qualify for both races...

Sunday will be the Roswell Criterium, which I am trying to get an invite for right now... If not, it will be the boring 2/3's...

I don't think I'll be doing the mid-week races, because they will be too far from my host house, so the next race on the agenda will be the Sunny King Criterium, which, thanks to Jamie Smith, I was able to snag an invite for the Pro/1 race... Toyota United, Kelly Benefits, Bissel Pro, and Kenda Pro already have full lineups, so I'm super pumped for this race....

Everything is subject to change, just gonna go with the flow... hopefully it will all work out..

3 days left of classes and exams, then off to Georgia!

A couple days of rest

2009-04-15T11:50:00.000-07:00

Multiple 20+ hour weeks with racing for the last month has left me drained physically and mentally.. The breaking point was on Sunday's long ride and so I decided to take a few days easy and cut down on the hours and intensity to allow some proper recovery..

Nothing like laying in bed, eating a giant bowl of pasta, and watching movies!

Going to the velodrome today for the first time this year... Gonna ride tempo for a few hours just to get the hang of it again, should be fun.

Also, I was able to convince my professor to allow me to take my calculus exam early, so now I will be able to leave in time to make the Athens Twilight Criterium in Georgia next week... Now if only I could find someone to carpool with.... hmmmmm any takers?

Driving past empty...

2009-04-13T09:50:00.000-07:00

Due to Easter Sunday, there was only one race this weekend, Waterford Spring Fling #3. I thought about going down to Ohio to do a bigger 70 mile road race, but didn't really feel like driving 10 hours and racing in one day by myself for a small race... I figured I'd be just as well off to ride to Waterford, do the race, and do some extra riding afterwords.

Upon arrival, I noticed that the B field was very large. I started looking around and saw many fresh faces in the A field. There was a lot of talent present, and it was sure to be a fast day! The race started off at a decent pace. Essex Brass seemed to be pretty organized and was controlling the front. After a little while, a couple of people rolled off the front and got a gap pretty quick. No one really jumped, and the pack's tempo stayed the same. Essex had their guys, we had our points leader, and Lathrup had a guy up there, so all the big teams let it go.

I started looking for the people who would try to bridge the gap and made sure to watch them so I'd be ready for when they went. A couple of laps later, Larry and Scott from Waste Management launched consecutive attacks that strung out the field. The gap was formed right by the hill, and then we drove it. Frankie somehow managed to come up to us clean and drive at an insane pace. The next few laps were torture, the pace was extremely high, and I seemed to make almost every possible mistake. We were gaining on the lead group very fast, and I was taking too long of pulls up front. I guess from the past few races I was used to being with people who wouldn't do much work, so I'd have to pull most of the time. This time I was with some pretty serious riders and I should've shortened my pulls so I could properly recover for my next pulls. I realized this at the instant when the final jump came from our group on the hill when we were about to close the gap on the lead group. I had just taken another long pull and watched as half of our chase managed to get up there while I was left struggling.. I gave everything I had left trying to chase down the new lead group which was only a couple bike lengths away, but it was too late, I was drained.. Frankie made it to the front and the gap got bigger and bigger every lap, until eventually I was swollowed up by the peleton.

While it was a frustrating race for myself, Tom managed to make it to the lead group and help Luke towards victory. He sacrificed himself to wind up the break on the last lap so Luke could unleash the full force of his sprint to take the win. Our team definitely has the breakaway talent, but we will need to work on our organization in the peleton for the field sprint. Essex Brass had that controlled and we were all over the place.. Good to get the mistakes out of the way now though...

The two champs for the day

Tom and I had an awesome ride on Sunday, we rode to Milford and Kensington Metro Park. Had a nice headwind there, and then another headwind on the way home. About 234 miles in two days and in about 13 hours... The legs are starting to rebel right now, maybe I should let them heal up a bit...

Race weekend #2

2009-04-05T15:19:00.000-07:00

Looks like it's snowing and cold the next 3 days... Thought about going south for a while, but looks like it'll be cold there too.. This is probably a good thing considering I've had a couple of hard last few weeks with some good racing, so I guess I'll cruise around on the SS mtn bike..

Thursday I started the Thursday night ride, rode away, got lost, ended up in deep in pontiac with the sun starting to set... Not something I want to do again..

Saturday I decided it would be good training to ride to the Waterford race from my house.. Not a good idea with a 30 mph headwind the whole way there... Race was good, big field of 55.. Took a big pull right before the main break gets away (of course). Had Luke and Tim up there with some good odds, so I had to play the blocking game.. In the last 15 minutes I bridged up to a chase break with Danny, Adam, and some Essex Brass boys.. Somehow ended up dragging the break for a while to get it safely away from the field.. After Essex's guy in the break got popped, they started working and we ended up getting pretty darn close to what was left of the lead group.. Luke got 3rd and Tim got 4th in the break. I won the sprint in my group for 6th while Adam finished at 11th. Props to Peter Ehmann from Team Giant, who helped establish the chase groups distance from the pack. Rode back to Rochester with Weinert with a nice tailwind, ending the day with 5 hours and 100+ miles.

I had to borrow some money from Ray to pay for Sunday's STS race in Ann Arbor.. But it was well worth it, there were some big hitters there and it was nice to get some fast non-super-windy racing done.. Lots of breaks went and I was in all of them, but none of them seemed to stick.. Teammates chasing down teammates... Oh well... I ended up winning the 2 primes and launched my Kilo attack on the last lap before the turn to get passed by Frankie Andreu on the uphill finish, taking second. With the prime money, I was able to pay Ray back, and cover my entry fee from Saturday. Another weekend of breaking even.. Can't ask for more...

From my point calculations, Luke is leading the overall right now and I'm sitting in second... Looks like I might have to do more of these STS series races.

March is over!

2009-04-02T10:50:00.000-07:00

Not only did I find my favorite turner, but this was my best March ever, and also my best month for the year!

March Data:

Miles: 1,533
Hours: 81

75% road outside
15% trainer
10% singlespeed mtn (recovery days)

Longest ride: 7hrs, 125 miles.
Days riding: 28/31

On another note, I'm selling a couple of items that I no longer use and the money would be a great help to funding this upcoming season..

I got an Electric hollow body guitar, a bass guitar, some keyboards, pedals, recording software, wii controller, etc....

Let me know if this link works for you all, I set the gallery open to everyone..
Spring sale

1st weekend of races are over, strengths and weaknesses are clear..

2009-03-29T18:19:00.001-07:00

After a nice hard week of training, I was highly anticipating the first weekend of racing. My hours have been high, and I had sacrificed a lot to stay on task with my training this winter, hoping that it would pay off.

Rode over to Waterford race track from Ray's house with beautiful sunny skies and a pretty big field.

Race is pretty boring for the first 40 minutes, the pack is swarming everything that goes. I launch a solo attack. Felt pretty good until I hit the monstrous headwind on the uphill..

Ray bridged up to me solo and helped me out. He worked long and hard on the tailwinds and I would push through the headwinds. We were working really well together and getting a pretty good distance on the field.

The second half of the race always shows who has been training the hardest, so we kept the pace going, and a group of riders managed to bridge up to us, including DK, Luke, Renkema, and Terry. 3/6, liking the odds!

Ray and I, who had been out there the longest, start launching attack after attack making the others in the break work to chase us, while preserving our sprinter. Ray managed to get a huge gap in his last effort before the line and Ben waited a little too long before starting to chase. Great teamwork for early on in the season!

Sunday I raced the University of Michigan collegiate circuit race. Which was basically a big hill, an even steeper big hill, a false flat, then a fast descent and a fast straightaway. The pace up the hills in the first few laps was extremely high with attacks going all over the place.. Only a group of 18 or so remained near the end. Lindsey Wilson and Marian were the dominating schools with the huge horsepower, so I was basically trying to stick with their better riders. I was feeling pretty good once I got a rhythm for the course and was looking forward to the finish, but it didn't go exactly as planned. Coming around the last corner, I was near the back of the pack and winding up my acceleration when all of a sudden, the whole field slows down and widens to cover the whole road. I had to brake and wait for a gap to open, and by then, it was too late to make up much ground.. Finished 10th I think... The collegiate races are fast, but I'm not sure if I'll do any others this semester. Most of them are too far away for me to go to by myself..

Anyway, I learned a lot about where I am right now, and what I need to work on. Time to cut down hours and ramp up intensity...

Team Camp 2009

2009-03-24T10:32:00.000-07:00

At first, I had a tough time deciding between racing a collegiate race at Notre Dame and going to this camp for the past weekend. I had missed the camp last year due to a race and decided that I did not want to miss out on all the fun this year. We drove up with ideal conditions and everything was off to a great start until we randomly found ourselves in the middle of a snow storm. We were not sure if we would be able to ride, but mostly everyone stayed and we decided to make the best out of it.

The cabin had a huge amount of property, so we decided to go out for a hike. Amanda and I sported our extremely good looks in hunter-wear.

We had an awesome snowball fight!

While we were hiking, I threw a snowball pretty high up into the air hoping that it would fall and hit someone... Unfortunately, that person turned out to be me.....

Sunday started out cold, but warmed up very quickly once we hit the hills and the sun came out of the clouds.. Everyone split up into different groups and the above 4 (Sammut, Finkel, Dybo, myself) were the highest mileage with 200k for the day. Kroske was the next highest trooper with 90 miles.

Even if we would've been unable to ride, the camp would have still been a great and worthwhile trip. I met a couple of new teammates and got to know some people a whole lot better. I ended up with a little over 200 miles and 11.5 hours for the 3 days, so I did get some good training in. Especially with all of the great roads and hills that were around. I'm not looking forward to riding city roads again...

Time to taper for the first races in MI this weekend :) Maybe I'll get my new road bike together by then.. 16 lbs sounds so much better than the 23 lb cross bike I've been riding lately...

The fastest March ever, where is everyone else at?

2009-03-19T10:14:00.000-07:00

The weather has been pretty amazing for the last two weeks, which means riding outside every day! I've mainly been riding by myself since my school schedule usually allows me to ride during the day when everyone else is at work.. It gets kinda boring sometimes, but it's good for building the solo power out in the heavy spring winds.

One of my few trainer rides recently was at the Michigan Youth Cycling fundraiser event at American Cycle & Fitness last Saturday. I rode down there on my cross bike then worked on my tan while I was there on the trainer. It was nice not having to layer for wind chill :)

Sunday was my first epic Birmingham-Fenton ride. I've been having to ride my cross bike until my new road bike comes in, so that was a little challenge with being under geared, but I think the forced spinning is a good thing. The ride was pretty controlled until we reached the hills. Once the attacks started, it became evident who had been training hard through the winter as we dropped more than half of the group before reaching the French Laundry in Fenton. The trip back was also pretty fun, I was pretty comfortable riding in the breaks while taking decent pulls, and I was able to finish up with 100 miles. So it was an all around good day.

Tuesday marked this year's first Birmingham Tuesday Night Ride. Temps were at a season high as were the winds... Even the speed was record high, even though it was the first of the year, it was more intense than some of the rides during mid-season last year.. A lot of people have stepped up their training this winter, and it's really showing. We've got a number of new riders on our team this year that transfered from other teams, so even with Danny leaving, it looks like we're gonna be stronger than ever.. Hopefully we'll work well together to make things happen, we have a team training camp this weekend for some nice long riding and team bonding, so that should be fun.

First outside team road ride of the year

2009-03-07T12:57:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was an unbelievably warm day and I really did not want to stick around OU in classes during such good weather. So I looked for someone in my Stats class to hand in my hw for me so I could go home and get out earlier to ride until sundown. Met up with the infamous DK who had already been riding for 2 1/2 hours before I started (I was a bit jealous) and we rode around Birmingham and then to American Cycle & Fitness, where a group of guys were meeting for the first outdoor team road ride of the year. Once everyone was ready to go, we headed out and ended up doing the Tuesday Night Ride course. It was pretty exciting. Danny, Ray, Tom and I put in a couple of hard efforts which was a good test of fitness. I was a bit tired already from doing a new sprinting workout the day prior, but was still able to push the big gears when I needed too. It seems as though my endurance base is the best it has ever been, but I need to spend more time getting my fast twitch muscle fibers back in gear. That way I'll be ready for the constant attacks of the first Spring Fling in 3 weeks. Hopefully, I'll have raised enough funds by then to get the new team bike... And hopefully we'll constistently be above 40's from now on...

Grocery shopping

2009-03-01T15:53:00.000-08:00

My favorite part of the week (minus the bill, I tend to eat a lot...)

Of course I stocked up on some rice and beans, so I can have a delicious Mexican side dish for my meals...

Oh yeah, transitioning from training in mid-80's every day to mid-20's is not fun... Gotta get the hours in though, maybe March will be warmer...

A great start to the season

2009-02-26T15:14:00.000-08:00

I don't think I will be able to sum up, in words, how awesome this trip has been for me, but I will try. The riding here is very different, the temperature is an average 80 degrees all year round and the temperatures get very hot during the mid day. So most rides either start very early, or later in the day for those who work. Another difference is the team training. Every day, the members of team Artemis meet up and do rides together. These rides include everyone, the juniors, the u23, the elites, and the masters. In the mountain climbs, the lead riders will go back down after reaching the top to pick up the dropped riders. They will also start their rides earlier, so they have more hours than the less experienced riders. This type of training leads to a good connection between members of the team and allows them to work well together in races, which I witnessed this last weekend.

Last Sunday, my host (Tito), 3 other elite riders, and myself headed out to ride to Fajardo, where a circuit race was being held. It was about 40k away and it was very windy out. We actually got one of the teammates who was driving there to motor pace us in for the last 15k. Once we got to the race, the temperatures were somewhere in the 90's, and the heat was starting to get to me, but at least I had a good warm up for the race.. The course was a long stretch of road, with a couple of hills, and 2 U-turns. The start was very fast, I remember thinking to myself "what did I get myself into?" in the first few moments, when the pace was higher than anything I had done in the last few months.. After the first U-turn, I managed to get a quick acceleration in and get into a good break of about 8 people, including Tito..

This pro guy and us were the only people working and driving the break, but that could only last for so long. My race legs haven't developed yet and I had to sit in and rest. No one else really wanted to work, and we slowly got cought by the pack.. Tito and myself got to rest in the pack, while the rest of the team set the pace in the front and made sure nothing got away. However, a break of 2 people managed to get a decent gap, but we weren't too worried. It was very windy out and we kept the gap small.. Once we recovered, Tito and myself launched another attack to create another break where we slowly caught the 2 who were away. Once again it was the same 2 people working with me and I was getting sick of people just sitting on my wheel. I decided to try and go for it with about 15 minutes left in the race. I figured since I was doing most of the pulling, I might as well be by myself. I believe the long straights with the wind played to my advantage, because I was able to hold off the group for the rest of the race to take my first win of the season, and also my first Elite win ever. I couldn't of done it without the support of Team Artemis and my good buddy Tito.. The team made sure I got plenty of cold water during the race with the boiling conditions and Tito also helped me know who to mark. The team's coach, Papo, also lent me his bike to use for the week, so this wouldn't of happened without his help as well..

Things are looking good, more details of the trip to come later..

San Juan, Puerto Rico

2009-02-20T17:02:00.000-08:00

Got up early at 4AM on Thursday to head to the airport. After a quick re-route in NY, I found myself changing from 20 degree weather to mid 80's within a few hours... I walked off the plane with my skins and pair of jeans on along with a long sleeve shirt. Needless to say, I was ready to strip down a few layers and enjoy the warm weather. My buddy, Tito, was there to pick me up and we quickly went to his coach's house to get my rental bike for the week fitted so we could go riding.

Everything here is different from the US. Not only the landscape, but the architecture, the traditions, the language, and even how the cycling teams operate. Most of the teams here are very local and personal. They meet up with each other to train every day, and yesterday I got to do a group ride with my host's team, Artemis. Although not too many of the people speak English, all of the members introduced themselves to me and we shook hands. That seems to be another big difference here, everyone shakes hands. Not only when meeting people, but also for when saying hi or bye..

With the workout, we were doing pace workouts in certain gears and at the end we did a few sprints. It felt good to be outside and going fast again. My legs feel really good, and hopefully they stay that way until Sunday for my first race of the season.

Today was a rest day where I got to experience a bunch of Puerto Rican culture. I wish I could remember what half of the things that I ate were called, but all the food here is pretty much amazing... And cheap too... We went to the beach today, and that was great. Nothing like jumping into big waves for a couple of hours and getting my tan back...

Gonna ride to a rain forest tomorrow, and maybe gonna hunt out some mountains, so I'm looking forward to that... Pictures and better detail will come later..

A sign of hope

2009-02-14T14:39:00.000-08:00

I can't help but notice who I have become. In the last year I have transformed myself to the point where just about every aspect of my life is decided based upon cycling. I now think of fruits as desserts and of salads as a delicious snack... Before last year, I had never eaten or even considered to have a salad.. I used to think that just by eating a protein shake a day, I was being healthy. Now I make sure that I average at least 8 hours of sleep a night and even decline hanging out with friends to accomplish this. I'm constantly thinking about what my next work out will be and when the next nice day will be where I can go fast outside again... At school, instead of thinking about calculus or french, my thoughts are about what my competition is doing and what I could be doing more.. My obsession has taken over my lifestyle. I've even shaved my head in order to get ready for the coming season..

There is a slight sense of isolation while I walk between my classes or hang around on campus at Oakland University. I look around at other people and hear them talking about "normal" things that most teenagers do. Of course I would love to go out and not worry about what I'm eating, about how much rest time I'm leaving myself, about how bad something is for me, about what is the right decision, and many other things... But I am not a normal person, I'm a cyclist, whatever that means... The only people who truly understand everything that it means to be a competitive cyclist are cyclists and the people close to them. Some people ask me what I do and I usually respond by telling them that I'm a cyclist. Most of them respond with a good impression, but I do not think that the full meaning of what it means to be a cyclist also carries over. Many of my friends still tempt me with pop, candy, and late video game nights. I feel regret with whatever choice I make. On one hand I'm losing my social life, and on the other I'm doing everything possible to improve..

Sometimes I cave in and hang out with my friends, pig out, stay up late, and experience the life of a normal teenager. Every time I do this, thoughts like "every day could be like this" and "why do I live the way I do?" flood my mind. While it can sometimes be hard to maintain motivation throughout the winter months, I often find myself back on track when I hear of what my competition is doing and when I have fun people to train with.

Next week I'm hoping to gain a whole bunch of motivation after a week long training camp with my LMC buddy in Puerto Rico with 80 degrees every day :)

a delicious pizza I made

Road or mtn, pick one or the other...

2009-01-28T15:30:00.000-08:00

2007, my first serious year in cycling and also my last year as a junior, played an important role in deciding the path that led me to where I am now. I remember starting to consistently ride at the velodrome and also doing many of the hard work outs with some of the much stronger guys. I never really raced there though... I used to think of the velodrome as training for other disciplines, but lately I've been thinking about how other things can help me excel at the track.

The Velodrome at Bloomer Park is what started everything for me. It was there were I learned how to use clipless pedals, and it was there were I got the connections to join teams such as RBS and WSC. The Director, Dale Hughes, has always had a significant influence on my training. Soon after we met, we spoke about what my goals were. At the time, I was a mtn biker, so it was my goal to be able to compete in the Elite level. Dale thought I would be more suited as a track rider (definitely not a biased judgement haha) and told me that I would be able to be good in all disciplines, but to truly excell and be great, I would need to sacrifice and specialize in just one. Track and road are similar in many ways, so 2008 consisted of much of both, sadly not leaving much room for many mtn bike races.

The track workouts got to an unreal level by the end of Summer 2008. We had a great group of U-25 guys who were all cracking top results on the road by the end of the season. The Pro/1/2 crits which seemed hard in the beginning of the year, were becoming easier. It was no longer a matter of will I survive until the end, but rather "did I get in the break" or "how well am I positioned for the last half of a lap?" My results at Track Nationals also helped convince me that I was on the right path and led me to set even higher goals for 2009.

The schedule for the velodrome this year is going to be more exciting than ever. Not only will all of the top riders be at an even higher level, but there will be many new riders, including juniors, that will be racing. Some of the races are now part of the MBRA series, so that will hopefully lead to some more new riders as well. And of course, the UIV 3 day will be just plain insane.

Although most of my training for this year so far has been base, it seems as though track/road season will be here soon enough. Last night at the shop workout, Dale came out to give a few "words of encouragement" while we were doing the first sprint workout of the year.

It's hard to stay focused on the goal of things like Match sprints, Persuits, and Time Trials, when most of those simulations have to be on the trainer in this weather.. They definitely go by easier when someone is consistently yelling at you to go faster. This is an aspect of High School sports that I severely miss. A lot of motivation for my training right now is internal, I have no one to pressure me to train rather than to do other things. There is no consequence of a missed practice like in High School where you would be benched from the next match. I'm not saying that it is impossible to stay motivated by yourself... Much of my motivation is stirred up when I hear of how much my competition is training, but having someone push you, regarless of the situation, is great to help bring out true potential. I had the fortune of seeing some of Simonsonter's motivational techniques yesterday at the stairs at Bloomer haha...

One teammate whom I am looking forward to working with more over the next few weeks is Luke. We have similar goals and are similar types of riders. He's always been one of the riders at the Velodrome who pushes me to want to be a better and stronger rider. It's a good thing we're teammates. Hopefully we won't be paired together for some madisons.... not! :)

Double sessions...

2009-01-20T12:32:00.000-08:00

One way to help cope with the agony of 3+ hour trainer rides is to split them up into two different sessions. One in the morning immediately after waking up, and the next later in the day, usually after school.

I feel as if all of my mental energy is slowly being drained away from my body every time I get on my trainer to do a solo workout. I'll have a movie on when I'm just doing an easy spin, only to look down and notice my legs barely moving.

This super cold weather has made the outdoor riding almost as unbearable as well. Maybe it would be better if I invested in some toe/hand warmers, but where's the fun in that? I'll miss ritual of coming home with blocks of ice in place of my feet. Maybe once we're consistantly above 20's again I'll be ok...

Bike, eat, school, eat, bike, eat, school work, sleep

ahhhh well it will be worth it once the race season begins... 1 month + 1 week!

The beginning of 2009

2009-01-11T12:08:00.001-08:00

So I found this picture of me on cyclingnews, I thought that was pretty cool, though a little undeserving. And speaking of CX nats, at the time of the race, I was weighing in at a solid 185lbs. And now, after holidays, a rest week, and many long easy rides, I have managed to reduce my weight to 170lbs.

I think one significant contribution to my loss is my recent change in diet. I now buy and cook all of my own food. Most of it being purchased from Whole Foods and Trader Joes. I figure the slight price increase is a just investment with the extra health benefits. I've also been substantially increasing my fruit and vegetable intake, while decreasing my protein intake, which should be safe right now considering most of my training has been long/easy miles.

My most recent outdoor adventure was yesterday where I participated in one of Robert's WRCS rides. It was definitely my most miserable experience for the year so far. 4 hours of no fenders, minimal layers, and no hand/toe warmers is bad when combined with cold weather, windchill, and water/snow.. I prefer the prior weekend of mid 30's, sunny, and 6 hours of comfortable riding.

Other that the Saturday ride, most of my other rides have been solo, since I have no school tues and thurs, I usually go out for about 3 hours or so, exploring the dirt roads in the Lake Orion area. If anyone would like to go out then, let me know.. I figure I'd rather ride during the day if I can than do the night rides. Also, I have no light..

One of my other new training methods have been the stairs at bloomer park. Luke came over the other day and we did a few good intervals there. It's definitely a good, quick workout when you're running short on time.

In other news, school started last week. I'm back at Oakland University pursuing a Math/secondary education degree. Not many of my classes were offered at LMC, so the switch was unfortunately necessary. I am glad to be close to my friends and team again though.

Happy Training!