next year.

this is what i'll be riding. oh yeah. 09 orca with Sram Red. Ritchey WCS everything.

this blog sucks

so this blog is starting to suck. i need to post more. davey b has even been ragging on my blogging in person. i just got back from cross nationals in kc last weekend. they were a blast. no good result. I was pretty sick the weekend of state cx, and it kinda continued the whole week before nats. it was fun to hangout and watch some intense racing though. i was even right there for that fight that happened in the pro race. we all gave the puncher the finger the next lap in the same corner, and he ate it on command right in front of us. perfection. heres a pic from nats.


it was kinda warm.

Hermann Cross Under the Lights

So last night, I drove out to hermann with adrienne and ian for the hermann cross under the lights race. it was the first cross race of the season, and i was signed up for the advanced race, the faster of the two races offered. The course was awesome, with a lot of twisty grassy sections and a barrier section up top, before taking about a quarter mile on pavement down the the fields that were grassy until they hit a sand pit, then turned to straight mud after the pit. From there, there was an out and back on pavement, and pavement up to the infamous stairs. The staircase is about 60 or so stairs long, but this year they cut off the bottom set or two, because we came into it kinda sideways, and already up a few stairs if that makes sense. I got a call up for 14th spot, or second row. It was pretty cool to have my name called, and ride up to your spot, so pro haha. Anyways, the race started FAST. The first turn and the s turns that followed were nuts. Everything on the first lap was chaotic. The muddy section got muddier, and harder to ride each lap. I got taken by the mud into a goal post and ate it on like lap 3. I was feeling pretty crappy about 6 laps in, and thought i was gonna puke, which i never do. I ended up lasting 8 laps, i think, before josh lapped me. I was cruising up the stairs, i guess walking up to the 4th floor everyday like 5 times helps. This race was awesome though. The course was excellent, the turnout was amazing and the fans on the stairs and around the course were pretty good too. The whole venue and atmosphere made for the best cross race i've ever done. It had a really organized and well put on grassroots feel to it. i'll post some pics when i find them.

today

So im gonna try and update this thing with daily happnin's. Went and watched some of the ToM, the finish in St. Charles and the STL stage. I met Boy Van Poppel who was super rad. I made his day showing him a pic of him winning cross worlds in 2006, and letting know that there is someone in missouri who knew who he was before he won a stage. That boy has a bright future, he is only 20. We also got to meet Mark Cavendish right before he went pee in a cup, snapped a pic with him and got his John Hancock. In STL we also got to meet some rad folk. The night before, keaton rory and I went down to BS and met the Whole liquigas team, who were supercool and supereuro. After the finish in STL, we got a pic and autograph from LARS BOOM, the current world cyclocross champ. He was here acting as a soigneur for the rabobank squad. He was pretty nice, and I actually saw one of his rainbow jerseys in a bag that he was carrying around, OMG haha. We also snapped a pic with DZ, who is as witty in person as he is on Youtube. We also got another dirty look from big George, following up last year when McT asked him if he had a nice pee, this year AA yelled at him to put a helmet on after the stage, which he responded to with a mean STANK EYE!Today after class i decided to go do a little dismount remount practice so i dont embarass myself out in hermann. I did a quick WG crit lap and ate a clif bar before heading a block over to blackburn park. I got into the park and stumbled upon a cross country running course marked with spray paint. I followed it for a bit, and found that it was an excellent 3+ Kilometer lap. It has a few long slow climbs, a few steep ones, and a lot of technical sections. There are a few bad water ruts, and some harsh path crossings, but it was an awesome trail to ride, and even a tad muddy in two sections. I did 5 laps i think, which with some water breaks took about an hour. It was cool to see in the muddy sections, where I had ridden before, seeing as i was the only set of wheels going through there. I was invaded by the WGHS xc squad halfway through, but they didnt start using the course till I was about done. Tonight I went and saw Matthew Shepard's Mom speak about hate crimes, and the tragedy that is her son's death. It was pretty amazing, and she was a great speaker. Here's a link for more info.

http://www.matthewshepard.org/site/PageServer

Fo' No'

So, yea, been a while. Anyways im at college. Third week of classes. Just got the Ok to bring my bike in my room, big thank you to Michael Staenberg for helping me out. I'm having a blast, making new friends, and...learning. Cross is here, practice tonight and Hermann Race next week. Should be sweet. The Tour of Missouri is coming this weekend, looking forward to watching Cavendish take home the last stage. Also hoping to see former junior cyclocross world champ Boy Van Poppel, and have a chat with DZ about his oakleys. Last night I went to the Vampire Weekend concert at the Pageant. Abby offered me a free ticket to go with her and Hillary, and I couldn't turn it down. The opening band, White Williams sucked. I wasnt a huge fan of Vampire Weekend before i went, simply because i wasnt exposed. I am now.
here's a taste.

snews

So it's been a while since i updated last. I drove up to Wisconsin for superweek, with jan and logan. It was pretty fun, not really any good results though. It was fun to race so much, and just hang out at a bike race for basically a week. Next up was the state crit. I was hoping to be flying coming off of the 1.5-2 hour long crits at superweek, the state crit being 40 mins pus 5 laps. It was hot as hell, and i was hurting pretty bad. The air is so much thicker with humidity down here compared to Wisconsin. I was moving towards the front when we got in laps to go and was lined up behind logan and jan sitting 5th 6th and 7th going through the finish straight with one to go. I thought for once our team had a leadout organized. A little miscommunication and everything fell apart like usual. I ended up 12th i think. The next race was tour of KC. Keaton and I really wanted to do this race, as we had a blast, and some good results, last year. We loaded up his car and headed out to KC. We stayed with my friend caleb who goes to rockhurst, free housing rocks. Mike Tayla was supposed to come along, but he was flying in the night before we left but his plane was delayed and he missed his connection. he ended up staying the night in pennsylvania and not getting home till 2 the next day. It was a shame, it woulda been cool to have him along. The races were ok, the first night i ended up 20ish. The next day was nuts. It was rainy and they had just widened the roads so there was a ton of mud running on the roads. I ended up getting dirtier than i did in all but two cross races last year. I was going well, and flying past people in the slippery sections. I was really surprised that when i followed Jim, i was getting passed by a ton of people. Maybe he isnt confident in the wet? Ended up flatting with 2 to go, and because its a circuit race that means no free laps. I rode the remaining two laps because a trek kc guy convinced me to. I usually pull out if i get dropped or flat or something, but its a fun course. the last race was kinda dumb. I got a last row starting spot, and was sitting last 5 guys for 30 minutes till i pulled the plug. I couldnt move up with 7 corners, a roundabout and no stretch over a block long. I didnt really feel like racing. This week I am moving into the dorms at Webster University where I will be going to school next year. I'm pretty excited, but I'm bummed and nervous cause they wont let me bring my bike in my room. They say its a fire hazard, but i dont see why a bike is anymore a hazard than a chair our couch or chello. I am gonna start a team so maybe i can get the rule changed or get a place to keep it. I am realllly getting excited for cross this year. Last year i wasnt sure if i had a bike, or what it was all about, but this year i'm really ready for it to start. I have some new bling for the bike, and i'm hoping to actually train this year for the cross season. Keaton also just bought a sweeeeet ridley frame, which i'm helping him build up. Sedalia next weekend, then gateway, then cross.....

Fitchburg.

So, i guess its about time I write about fitchburg. Its an epic post that needs to be done, and i've been putting it off for a week. So we left two weeks ago from today, and headed to indianapolis. We raced the zionsville crit. It was the weirdest crit ive ever done, it was 8 blocks long. Two 3 block sections, and two one block sections. The lap times were under a minute, it was crazy. K-moore and g dewey took 1-2. The next day we started our drive to fitchburg. We stayed in dubois PA that night. We took Larry Warbasse along with us, he normally rides for Priority Health u23 team, but he rode for us at fitchburg. We finally got to fitchburg the next day, and settled in. We preroad the tt course, and the next day finally got into our dorms, which i'll talk about later. In the 3's it was only Logan and I, the rest of the team was doing the Jr race. The first stage was the uphill tt. My original goal was to go under 20 mins for sure, but maybe under 19. I ended up doing a 19:48. Not toooo tooo bad. I was never going to win the tt, so i wasnt really disappointed. The next day was the road race. 69 miles, 6 laps of an 11 mile circuit with a 3 mile climb up a ski resort mountain. I was pretty nervous already for this stage, but waking up to rain and 65 degrees made it worse. We started in the cold and rain, down the beast of a descent on the course. Its a descent where you reach 50mph pretty easily. I was scared, big time. I basically got gapped off every lap and would chase for a minute at the bottom to catch back on. There were also 2 big climbs each lap. The feedzone climb, and the KOM climb. The KOM one put the hurt on me, as it was long and fast. the feedzone one was short enough that i could just power up it. My goal was to stay with the group till the last lap. After going pee on the bike, my first time during a race, and a whole peleton natural break, I made it to to the feedzone climb with the group on the last lap, right before the mountain. I basically rode to the finish, just trying not to lose tooo much time. The third stage was the circuit race. It was pretty fast with one three block steep climb to the finish, and Sprint points every other lap. It was pretty hard, but my legs felt good for a sprint. Just not the sprint that the course provided. That race was where my legs felt really good, and i thought i could possibly get a result, but i couldnt do anything up the climb. I hoped to carry that motivation and energy into the crit the next day. I was motivated, but my legs werent. I was basically fighting to hold on. But i made my goal, finishing more or less with the pack each day. That was one of the hardest races I've ever done. Id say Joe Martin x3. The way that our team controlled Joe Martin and other 3's races, couldnt have been done at this race. We got on the road right after the crit, and ended up in dansville PA that night. Pretty interesting night. ask me about it personally. Back to the dorms. The dorms were basically what made the trip awesome. They were floors, with two sides to each floor that had 4 rooms, each room having 2 beds. We were on the second floor, with the juniors having a whole side, then me and logan sharing the other side with emile abraham and some other team type 1 guys, and 2 juniors that never talked to anyone from some team in NY. Below us was the Hincapie Barkley u23/junior team, and jackie kurth (leibo's boo) somewhere? Above us was an Australian track team, Team Budget Forklifts, who brought a whole roster of juniors, both boys and girls. The guys raced with logan and I in the 3's, and Tommo Richards, age 16, won the rr, and the overall. His teammate Peter won the circuit, and another teammate was 3rd in the crit. They were suuuuuper strong. Basically controlling the whole race. One of their guys, Pat Lane, got dq'd after getting 4th in the rr, for not passing roll out. He passed the day before, but went to SRAM to get something done and they unblocked his gears. I felt really bad for him, as he obviously deserved to be there. The girls on the team did the 3/4 womens race, and did really well also. Miffy won the rr and circuit, and got 2nd in the crit, and won the green points jersey. They rode well as a team also, pretty much controlling the race. But more importantly our dorm was the best dorm in the world. After a day or two of figuring out who everyone was, through awkward hello's, we finally started hanging out in the common room. Their managers were so nice, easily the nicest people that ive ever met at a race. We traded some clothes, and i ended up with a pair of gym shorts that say australia on the butt, and a long sleeve skinsuit from their team, thanks mickey. The girls were super cool and fun to hangout with, even though they would only eat dessert and not dinner with us the last night, haha. Its not too often that you meet a bunch of cute girls, especially with awesome accents, at a bike race. It was pretty sad to say goodbye. I compared the feeling to going to a highschool dance, where its not that great at the beginning but by the end you dont want to leave at all. Hopefully, and as Audrey promises, we'll all get the same dorm next year, and reunite. Meanwhile, i'm really wanting to go to Australia to visit and race. I definatly want to stay in contact, and see them sometime before fitcburg next year.
sorry if this post is rambling and grammatically incorrect. its 12:38 AM.

heres a pic with 3 of 4 aussie girls, Mickey Lara and Brodie. Not pictured is Miffy, but you can read her blog in my links.








heres my "schweeeet" new skinsuit.

so

so since i dont really like recapping races i'll give you a quick rundown on whats been happnin and then go on to somethinginteresting. state rr was pretty good, got 3rd. joe martin was ok got 13th in the rr, nothing really in the tt or crit. tulsa was ugh, it was hot and i crashed and the last day got cancelled. winghaven was hot, and i have never wanted to lay down and curl up in a ball more during a race.

As most of you know who read this blog, i am a person who cares about appearance. I like to look fresh both on and off the bike. on the bike one of the most important elements of image is one's sunglasses. I like to observe the newly formed trend of "radarspotting". this involves spotting the new trend of wearing eyewear that is crazy colored and doesnt necessarily match one's kit. I also like to see some sweet oakley radars that pro's get to have but no one else can get near. Think of the inevitable vino turned millar retina burns before they were released to the masses, only to be quickly spotted on the dome of justin macsilfiijspofnaokovich, and then keaton.













we'll start off with one that anyone who payed any attention to the spring classics will recognize. here is fabian cancellara's orange beauties. they would complement the mesa kit perfectly.












next we'll go with an offering that some may have seen, definatly if they belong to OREC, but these radars only appeared to be pro only. they are actually womens. they were only really spotted this year, but the picture i have is from last year, when t mobile still existed.









now we have an interesting pair. the gold radars, or used to be m frames. glasses that can only be obtained by winning a tour stage.











Now on to one that i have only seen once, these almost "thinglike" radars modeled by valverde.
















One trend that oakley had back in the 80's and 90's was the splatter frame. it has seen somewhat of a revival but only in the pro peleton.
here we have fabian with world champion colors splattered on white frames.

here is hincapie wearing possibly some national champ splatters

and finally here is mcewen with the australian flag colors arranged in splatter
















here are a few ones that have popped up very recently. first is the new celeste colored radars, first shown to me by adam leibovitz in some pictures he took in europe, with mr phinney modeling them smugly.

next we have Florian Vogel from the recent world cup mtb race wearing the same.


and finally from that same day mr geoff kabush modeling a sweeeeet purple pair, ey.















the final pair i would like to show, i cannot. It was a pair i have only seen once. displayed by dave zabriskie in the prologue of the 2007 tour. they appeared to be blinged out with rhinestones. if ANYONE has the 12hour dvd collection and would let me borrow the first disc to confirm or deny my suspicion that would be ideal. i will leave you with a long distance picture of him, which only confirms that they are sparkly and silver.

yea.

So. I dont really feel like talking about the far past. I'll go back to tour of stl. It was pretty fun. We pretty much took it by storm. Chief Wallace took the Carondelet crit, 5th at fopo, 3rd? in the tt, and 1st overall. Graham took 3rd at Carondelet 2nd? in the tt and 2nd or 3rd overall. Adam took 1st in the tt and 1st in the fopo crit and 3rd or 4th overall. Pretty killer. Fopo was a blast. I went down to New Orleans friday and saturday to visit Loyola New Orleans. I didnt really like the school but the city was awesome. I sampled lots of southern delicacies. Such as praline bacon, boudin balls, beerbq shrimp, fried oysters w/ bleu cheese, collared greens and the best omelet ive ever had. I raced washington on sunday. It was a pretty fun but hard course. Two killer hills. There was a nasty crash, and they neutralized us with 5 to go. So we started and raced 5 laps, getting back up to speed pretty quick. I was able to come around and take the final corner fast and first, and sprint to victory. my first 3's victory. I heard from Jon Gohl that i had 5 bike lengths by the time i crossed the line. I dual posted it, but of course, no one got any pictures.

sprinting

before the dual post i guess.

it's not february.

Thanks austin for reminding me. Life is going well. Froze toes went well, with Chief Wallace taking the 3/4 race. I went to mesa today and got re-fit, got some Speedplay zero stainless. Dropped my stem down, so it doesnt look like a boner anymore. It's good now. Glad to see that you're reading my blog Katie. How is Philly?

its february

just trying to keep this thing up to date. no one else really cares....Training is going well. I'm excited for the season. Life is good.

funny

this blog has been cracking me up lately. i really like the thing about the guy doing bike fits. funny shit.

http://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com/2007/12/worst-of-nyc-craigslist-38-41.html

more bad

yeah i forgot another bad thing. I totalled my car the first day of winter break. My beloved subie has hit the dust. She had a good life. It was fitting that she went out to the point where she is undriveable. I could never actually see getting rid of her. I was backing out of my friend caitlin's driveway and got trucked by a H1. I was given a "failure to yield" ticket, but thats still pending. I have another court date so we'll see.

so blogger is being stupid... but i can beat you blogger....

http://hs.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2001597&l=5f076&id=1307790285

so yea. put on my members only jacket yesterday, handfulls of glass in the pockets. it was in the trunk when the accident happened. but i found a possible replacement the other day. A 2002 honda civic si hatchback. sick nast. i hope i get it.

oh and i got my braces off. my teeth are alot bigger than i remember...i feel like michael boogerd.

Ketchup...

I think that it's time I do a little ketchup. I can't count the times that I have thought about blogging but haven't actually done it because the task of recounting everything from the night before CX nationals till right now is way too daunting. But I know there are too many people out there that have clicked on my link on someone else's blog once in a while, and are, yet again, disappointed to see that I haven't updated. I decided that to try and make it easier to ketchup I am going to do a list of the good and the bad that has happened since CX nats.

THE BAD:
-CX nationals: Had a little good and a little bad. I guess it could be considered a learning experience. I got lapped after doing 2 or 3 laps. I really hadn't trained whatsoever for cross at all the whole season.
-I saw 2 guys in the past week smoking cigars while driving. weird.
-On a way more serious note, I found out today that my friend Hannah's father passed away last night. It was really sad to hear that. I can't imagine what she is going through, losing a parent at 18. My thoughts go out to her.

THE GOOD:
-way outweighs the bad.
-I am racing with a new team, just in case anybody didn't know yet. I am racing with Mesa Cycles for 2008. I am racing as one of 7 guys on the u23 side of team. My u23 teammates will be Logan VB, Joe Kukolla, Matt Brandt, Adam Lang (no we aren't brothers), Francis Hamre, and Zach Hockett. The team is also gonna have a killer junior squad again with names such as Adam Leibovitz, Jan Bradford, Graham Dewart, Chris Wallace, Alex Edwards, and the infamous and humorous Ian Murphy, to name a few. The program that Mesa presented is awesome, from the quality of the riders, the organization, the equipment, everything. I am excited to race for Mesa in 2008.
-We had a team camp. It was for 4 days and 3 nights at Adrienne's house. We basically bonded a lot. We figured out things about the team that we, the riders, needed to decide. We went paint balling, hot-tubbed and just had fun. I liked all of them and I am excited to race with them. It was nice to meet guys that i will inevitably sharing hotels with and hanging out with a lot this summer.
-I got a new bike. I got a new Specialized Tarmac Expert, as my new team bike. Its got Ultegra SL, its pretty tight. It's also my first full carbon bike. Its pretty stiff, and accelerates really well.
-I rode with Tom Danielson on christmas, it was tight. He put the hurt down like it was a spring classic. He also came to our team camp, and talked to us about racing and then rode with us the next day.
-I have an awesome girlfriend. Her name is Hillary, and she goes to webster. She is the best.
thats all for now. training is going well, i am finally in a groove.