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.