Rainy Days

Well, now I know why Wes bought the XBOX. This last weekend, the team left Matt and I the house to ourselves while they went to do the Rochester Crit and another Crit on Sunday. No TV or internet, usually easy sources of entertainment, left us scratching our heads to find other ways to keep from going nuts. It rained the entire day, which didn’t help at all. We still managed to get out and ride for a solid two hours in the pouring rain. That wasn’t that bad actually; it doesn’t get cold here when it rains like it does in Colorado.

Matt and I kept ourselves entertained by driving to Norwalk and shopping the local Wally-world. That place was a madhouse, every corner you turn, someone would be there with there shopping cart, oblivious to your presence, completely prepared to slam it into your shins. After Matt and I finished shopping, we were both cracked and bonked we drove home and watched Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. We’ve got the entire trilogy here; I’m sure I watch the next two movies soon.

The riding here is pretty damn sweet. I still miss the long climbs of Colorado, but there is definitely no shortage of hard climbs here… most of the time you’re either going up or down, and when you’re riding with Frank, you’re punching it up every single climb.

Yesterday I did a V02max test, and I had some pretty high numbers. I was obviously a little worried before the test that I would score low numbers and have it mess with my head. But, I was higher than I expected, so that’s great for my confidence going into Fitzburg.

In less than a week I’ll be flying back out to Portland to see my lovely girlfriend. I’ll be spending a little over two weeks out there and will also be racing the Cascade classic. My team’s not doing it, so I’ll be racing solo. It looks like a good race for me, so I’m looking forward to it.

Ya sure, Minnesota, don't ya know

After about a four year hiatus from Minnesota, my home state, I’ve finally come back to ride in yet another race, the Nature Valley Grand Prix. The race was by far the low point of the trip. Seeing all of my old friends after all these years, catching up and reminiscing made my post-race feelings disappear. Coming back to Minnesota was like walking through a time warp. All my friends are still there, still as tight as ever, doing all the same fun shit. My time in Minnesota was short, and I have a tendency when in these situations to try to pack in as many activities with as many people as possible. Luckily for me, my friend Tom was able to organize a party on Sunday night, with all my closest friends that I grew up with. It was just like the good ol’ days, minus the hackysac. We also got together one last time on Tuesday night before I left at Jeremy’s house. We had the crazy idea to do some night urban assault. So between four of us we had a Big Hit (DH bike), a tricked out Schwinn Homegrown XC from mountain biking's heyday, a low-end MTB, and a 35 lb dirtjumper… it was quite the selection of awkward bikes. We switched bikes throughout the ride, because each one was uniquely fun to ride. I haven’t gone urban assault in years; I forgot how much fun it was. You can basically turn anything in sick singletrack. I wish I had more time to spend with my bros; I would’ve loved to go ride some of the real MN singletrack that I spent all my early days shredding as a youngster.

I fulfilled a typical Minnesotan summer tradition by heading up to Alex’s cabin a couple hours north of the cities, which is on a beautiful lake. We drove up Monday morning. We canoed the around the lake, fished, dug for worms, played dominoes, and ate some fried walleye. Mainly, spending time up at her cabin was incredibly relaxing. I need a hell of a lot more time than only a couple of extra days to spend in MN, but these two days were incredibly refreshing for me. A break from the racing/training boat, albeit a small one, was greatly needed. I can’t think of a better way to recharge the CNS than by chillin’ at the cabin and getting crazy with great friends.

As I write this, I’m listening to the music of one of my very close friends from HS, Dom Bazzett, he threw a couple of his CDs my way, and I’m totally impressed. He’s always been an extremely gifted musician/artist. It’s really cool to see how much his ability has progressed. Him and I used to rock out and record music back in the day, I was no musician, Dom and I just had a love for music, and we still do. I’ve been away from home for so long, I don’t know if I’ve ever felt such powerful nostalgia, it’s a strange emotion. It feels like there’s a magnetic force that wants to keep me here.

I'm back at the team house in Westport, CT now sitting on the side of a busy road borrowing free wi-fi from some unsuspecting neighbor. Wes bought an X-Box to pass the time and he and Shriver have been glued to the thing playing Madden Football since I arrived. I think I'll try to avoid getting sucked into playing the new toy. It looks like it takes a long time and a lot of patience to figure out, there's about 20 different buttons on controller... a lot has changed since Nintendo, with only two buttons. The riding around is really beautiful, the roads are real narrow, barely any traffic, and every house is a mansion. I can only imagine what the singletrack is like.

I still have a couple months of racing ahead of me, which consists mainly of stage races; Fitzburg, Cascade, and Toona. I need to make it through these… hopefully more than just make it through them, and then it’s back to my real home, Boulder.

Philly week is over!!

These have been the hardest races of the year by far. Ever since my crash at CSC, I haven’t been feeling 100%, so that just made these races even more demanding. Reading, PA was the second race of the Triple Crown series in Philly, and it was my first race back after crashing at CSC. During the race, I was constantly thinking about crashing again, which is possibly the worst thing to have in your head when you’re racing road, so I was pretty timid most of the race. My lack of aggression put me a little too far back in the field on the last lap when I should have been fighting to stay at the front. Because of this, I was back with some of the weaker riders that were opening gaps when the pace was lifted. I wasn’t able to close the gap, so I just rode in with a chase group.

The final race in Philly was amazing. I couldn’t believe what a huge production it was. Coming from a mountain bike background, where the only spectators are either your friends who race in a different category, your girlfriend, or your parents, the amount of spectators at Philly completely blew me away. Climbing up Manyuk almost made you deaf from the loud screaming drunken fans. Dustin made the early break, which took a lot of pressure off our team and made the pace chill out for a while. I abandoned the race about halfway through due to a flat and the slowest wheel change ever at the bottom of Manyuk. The guy who changed my wheel either mangled my rear derailleur while he was violently trying to force the new wheel into my dropouts, or simply the cassette that was on the new wheel just wasn’t compatible with my components, because the shifting was way off. Just about every gear skipped, sending my knees into the handlebars a few times while ascending the Manyuk wall. Dustin small breakaway group stayed away for most of the race. With Dustin being the strongest climber in the group, he won almost every KOM point of the entire race, and in the end was the KOM winner. Frank Pipp was our best finisher in 14th place.

Tomorrow I’ll be flying up to Minnesota to the Nature Valley Grand Prix. I’m looking forward to this race. After a pretty shaky week at Philly, I think that my body and mind will be a little more relaxed at Nature Valley and I predict I’ll feel a lot better. I’m also really excited to see all my friends that I grew up with… I haven’t seen any of them in a few years. My girlfriend is also coming up there, so I’ll get to spend some time with her and meet her folks.

Today, my teammates and I are without bikes, so we’re forced to find other things to do with our time. Well, Guptil and I have been online for about the last three hours, which is nothing new for most pro cyclists… I wonder what pro cyclists did to kill time before wireless internet? We’ll probably go check out a matinee movie later… you gotta love rest days.

Crash and Burn

After seeing so many crashes this year at just about every race, I knew that it was inevitable that my time would eventually come. My team has already lost a couple riders this year from crashes which have thinned our team down to only 9 available riders going into Philly. My form has been pretty decent lately, so I ended up being slated on the rosters for every race leading up to and during Philly week.

Yesterday was the CSC Invitational crit, which was a race that I was originally going to sit out. I started the race feeling a little fried from all the traveling and racing we've been doing, along with two nights in a row of bad sleep. I felt ok in the race, but probably the worst that I've felt since I've been out here. The race was extremely fast from the gun. I started in the very back once again, so it took me a few laps to get near the front. I rode somewhere in the top third of the field for the whole time I was in the race, but found it extremely difficult to move up since the field was totally strung out for about 90% of the race. The pace let up enough only a few times to move up to the front. At some point in the middle of the race around the final corner (corner 5) the field was pushed a little to far to the outside which caused a rider about four guys up from me to slam into the barriers. My teammate Wes slammed into him, blowing his bike to pieces; I was then pushed into the barriers. It happened so fast that I don't exactly remember how it happened, but I went face first into the barrier and put a deep gash in my chin, that's now got 18 stitches in it, and I also chipped my tooth.

I got to spend the next few hours in the hospital, mostly in the waiting room, in the company of all the other cyclists that went down in the multitude of crashes. For a flat crit, with only five corners, I can't believe how sketchy it was (especially corner five and the metal barriers!!). Even more unbelievable, only 25 guys finished from the original 150 that started! I pretty glad to be done with crits for a while, and doing road races and stages races instead. Other than my messed up face, the rest of me is ok, just slightly sore.

Wes and I made it up to Lancaster that night, and the neighbors of our host family were having a big ol' BBQ. We were over there immediately after stepping out of the car eating burgers and cookies, drinking some brews and mingling with the locals.

Wes's competitive side came out in full force when he took on a bunch of eight-year olds in tug-of-war... they kicked his ass.

I'm going to sit out Lancaster today and rest up all week so that I'm fresh for Reading on Thursday, and Philly on Saturday. I'm a little bummed that I'll miss it, but I think it's for the best.

On the East Coast

I've been out on the east coast for only a week now and I'm about to hop in the team van again to drive to my fourth home in Arlington, VA. Travelling has been a major theme of the last week. It started out on a really bad note with me and teamates flight from Farmington, NM to Philly.... I'm not going to explain what happened, all I'll say is that it sucked. We started racing immedieatly the next day with BikeJam in Baltimore, MD. This was a fun crit in a park in the ghetto. The whole team rode strong and Alejandro took 3rd. A couple days later we raced the Tour of Somerville in Somerville, NJ. This was by far the hottest I've ever been in a bike race. I was feeling heatstroke overwhelming me as the race went on... I had the chills, goosebumbs, and felt like I was going to pass out and hurl for much of the race. After this race the we went to our new team house, that we won't be living in for a few weeks, in Westport, CT. This is a beautiful area. I think every house has got to be worth over a million.

Right now I'm in Richmond, VA for the CAPTECH Classic crit that I raced last night. That was probably the hardest crit of the year, or maybe second hardest next to the Joe Martin Crit. We had to do fifty laps and each lap had a big climb and some fast downhill corners, and it was at night. I felt great on the climb, but I sucked on the corners and kept letting gaps open which would cause me to chase hard every lap to close them down. Only about 30 guys finished, and I wasn't one of them. However, I stuck it out longer than most of the field (about 3/4 of the race), and felt good.... I just need to figure out how to corner faster.

It looks like I'll be doing all three Philly races now, which I'm really excited about. Lancaster is the first of three and starts on Sunday. My form is pretty good right now, and I think it'll keep getting better as the season rolls on. The rest of the team seems to be riding well too, so hopefully we'll be able to pull off some good results in these upcoming races.