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.

sitting in kc....

Sitting in my hotel in kc. snow is supposed to fall tonite. my pee is clear, i am ready. bring it on driscoll, and summerhill.

It's Rye Rye

sweetness...she does stuff with M.I.A. too, shes in her new song Paper Planes, and shes 16.

icky thump

I rode with AA today. It was cold as balls. We rode out clayton and after a little over an hour we stopped at the starbucks by mason/clayton intersection. We tried to buy stuff to drink but its more expensive out there, so it was only I, the moneybearer, who was able to savor a mocha latte. Our hands were so cold at this point that it hurt to sit there and let them thaw. We decided to head back to the k-wood webster area, as to stay closer to home base in the case of even more extreme coldness. We rode back in about 30 minutes, with a nice tailwind. Our actual ride time after a little winding through k-wood was arund 2+ hours. So just for good measure I sat around the house looking at my computer in my bibs. As Scotty Hill would say "Chamois time is ride time!!" so I rode for 3 hours. I ran the turkey day run on thursday, my legs hurt. I was lured in to a fast pase by Logie and Austin. They pulled away around 1.5 miles, but I was able to ruthlessly kick Logan down in the sprint. Sprinter on the bike means sprinter on the road?? Listning to a White Stripes cd that I stole from a friend, album is called "icky thump", it's quite good.

yo

So i raced this past weekend. did the b race. i raced super well for some reason. i had like 2 hours of sleep the night before, or really the morning of from 7-9. but i felt great, and i kept attacking/moving up. i started really far back and worked my way into 6th, where i finished. I went to the gym yesterday, felt good. it hurt a little. i was suprised how little weight actually made my legs burn. but im not worried, i should be up to speed soon. this might be the funniest video ever. its 1500 philipino inmates, all men (the one "girl" is in drag), doing thriller. if you havent seen it watch it, if you have watch it again.

CX recap

Hey,
So ive been racing cx. its awesome. i really like it. I did my first 3 races in the c race and then my 4th in the b. I started out with a 6th, then a 4th, then a 2nd. So then i thought it was time to move up. I kinda got by butt kicked but, i think the course and my over inflated tires had something to do with it. I'm also doing cx nats, in the u23 category so that should be interesting. i rode fopo the otherday. people need to get their shit together. walkers and joggers on the gravel, bikers and rollerbladers? on the paved part. I hate weaving through the people walking. Seriously, walk on the gravel. I might just ride my cx bike on the gravel trail if they are so keen on the pavement. fopo needs police to enforce this rule.
bye.

CX Bike

So i realllly dont feel like talking about state crit, gateway and the twilight crit. I raced well at sedalia, 4th in the 4's crit, 17th in the 3/4. I was 5th in the 4's road race the next day. gateway was disappointing as usual..

im racing cross. heres my bike. its pretty hot.

Covert Ops.

Hey so nothing has happened in life worth blogging. I think i posted about the tt? maybe maybe not. read mike t's blog if i didnt, it finally says something other than "SUMMER!!". heres whats been going on.

i built a wheel rack. in the shack. in the back.



i got a cool new sign.................CHECK IT OUT.





in other news i decided that i needed to investigate a better option for shaving my legs. i decided that i deserved a better, smoother longer lasting shave. I purchased myself a venus. I didnt get the vibrating one, i didnt really want anything electric in my shower, and i didnt get the one with the big ass lube strips. After conferring with my friend Libby last night, neither o us know what "model" it is but we both decided to call it the "bright blue" one, she likes it though, so i expect great things.

I have a list of movies that i want to see. I just saw bourne ultimatum last night. It was the shit. I loved the first two and this lived up to them. I was almost slightly dissappointed by the ending, then it got freaking awesome for the last like 20 seconds. If you saw it you know whats up. I wonder if there will be another. I think bourne and nikki, juila stiles character, dated before he was in the treadstone thing. I also want to see superbad. It looks realllly funny.
heres the unedited trailer.


i also want to see clerks 2. if anyone saw it please tell me how it was. logan and mike t are coming over and we're riding and then leaving for jeff city for the state crit. yaaay.

wattage cottage?

I rode the grants trail today, it was pretty nice. The only thing that sucked was that i had a cup of yogurt rite before i rode and i had cramp, i think caused by the yogurt, for the last 45 minutes of my ride. Another sketchy part of the trail was the kid practicing his bb-gunning skills, on the side of the trail shooting paralell to the trail, at coke cans. I thought he was gonna pop me.

I found this picture of logie up in canada, getting put in the hurt bucket by team japan.

20 inch blades, on the impala!

Check out this new bling. You don't even know how much I love things that are banned for mass start events because they can cut off peoples appendiges. Allthough, frozen chickens have proved that wrong. Just ask.

Colorado...

So im in colorado rite now as most of you know. I drove out with my mom on monday, the 2nd, and im staying with dan while she stays at a friends house in breckenridge. I'll recap the rides. The first day we started off on a cool bike path that ran along a creek then we did a cool dirt road climb that was pretty hard. Then we finished riding through the U at boulder campus. The next day we hit the mountains and did a 3:40 min, 60 mile ride with 3000ish feet of climbing. We rode up a long climb and then down a switch back road then a slight uphill to nederland, where we got some hippie cookies and water, and cruised downhill for about 18 miles to boulder. I rode the climb that this segment of American Flyers ends on. Its pretty difficult actually.

Yesterday we rode some more dirt roads and some singletrack trails that, considering how they handled the dirt roads last year, would make keaton and austin poop their chamois. It was really fun, and the only part that i couldnt ride was a technical descent that would give most people trouble on a mountain bike. Tommorrow we are riding up Mt. Evans, the highest paved road in north america, at 14,000-something feet. It is like 24 miles to the top and it should be pretty interesting. I also visited CU, CSU and Regis. I'll report on those later.

Some Races

So, I'll start back at webster and work my way up...I raced webster juniors. It was pretty easy. We basically rode around at a fair pace and chased any attack that was made. I was kind of working with ben pholman because neither of us had a real teammate in the race. We both knew that zach and daniel would work together and rory and zach are both on the same team. Coming into the last corner i was sitting 3rd wheel with rory on front and zach right in front of me, on rorys wheel, and daniel just to my right. He pushed into my spot because he chose a stupid time to move up on the inside, considering there were 2 youger juniors right there. I knew that at third wheel i could at least get 2nd. I could either come around zach and rory would have a big gap through the corner, or zach would stay just a tad infront of me and rory would blow up, or, more realistically i would just outsprint both of them. Anyway, we werent going very fast, 23 maybe, and i just jumped right around the group on the left side of everyone and took the corner first. I sprinted and put about 20-25 feet into zach/rory who went 2/3, and apparantly i was opening a gap. Then there was the 4/5 race. I rode at the front for the first few laps and nearly had a 50$ prime, which some MACK guy ganked from me. He took the corner like i did in the jrs race and i almost caught him at the line. I ended up finishing in the pack. Rory offered me a pull to the front with 2 to go but the 2 crashes in the last 2 laps put a damper on our ambition. I finished top 20 somewhere. This past weekend i raced proctor, which i'd never raced before. The road race was pretty stupid. It was flat and narrow. You couldnt move up because the group of about 60 never really got strung out or separated. We just rode as a solid pack. The climbs werent big enough to do anything to the pack. I can usually make the front group on a climb in a road race, ala hells kitchen, joe martin and dogwood, which ends up benefitting me. About 4 miles in we came across the sight of a crash which ended up killing a cat 4 woman from xXx racing in chicago. It was pretty humbling to see that and i was kind of in my own thoughts, not really wanting to continue racing after seeing that. I finished just off the back of the pack. The crit was the next day and mike convinced us all, me keaton and mike t, to ride in support of logan to try and get him the illinois state champ jersey. The race was really fun, not quite quad cities quick but not stupid lame like most stl jr races. Mike t lasted like 10 minutes with the group which was constantly attacking. Keaton and i reeled in breaks and took fliers of our own to make the others, who, for the most part, didnt have any teammates, chase us back. Logie ended up attacking with a half a lap to go and holding on to win. It was hella tight. The 4's was pretty fast and not too fun. It was windy and people seemed not to know how to ride through the 4 lane wide corners w/o hitting their brakes, but we accomplished our goal for the day.

heres logan with 1st and 2nd loser on his left and right.

bear

So, winghaven kinda sucked. It was really wet and was pretty much like an ice rink. It was actually kinda funny watching all of the crashes in each corner because no one was seriously hurt and we were riding at like 15mph so it was ridiculous how many people went down. I got gapped off of the pack on a huge crash in the roundabout just before the finish line on the first lap. After watching keaton go down on the roundabout after the finish, i found myself in a chase group with mike heff. Our group didnt seem to be compelled to catch back on, instead they just wanted to ride the same pace as the pack, about 30 seconds back. I tried to jump a few times but i couldnt quite make it more than halfway each time. We caught them on our 3rd lap right before the downhill. Then after the downhill going through the roundabout before the finishline, some idiot decides to try and pass me on the inside. He slid out and the guy on my outside slid out too, but it was the moron on the inside who clipped my wheel and took me down. It wasnt my tires at all or my braking. I didint skid or slide once the whole race, and my courchevels worked perfectly. Today and wednesday I rode around dusk when its not so hot, and i rode my super close to home "lap" rides, where I ride various laps as many times as I want to. Sugar creek has gotten reallly nice now, because of the daugherty ferry bridge bieng knocked down there is no traffic on daugherty ferry and about half of the traffic that was on sugar creek. Right now I am watching the NEW EPISODE OF MAN VS. WILD!!!!. Bear is a pimp and he just parasailed to the top of everest, if you dont believe me, read his blog, I believe its linked. Riding long this weekend, high ridge/covered bridge, and out to ellisville. Austin says 4 hours but....

dog.

some of you know my dog, echo. this is what he looked like:

This is what he looked like when i came home yesterday:

doob

So I raced Iowa, and Tulsa Tough. They were both good races that were well organized. I like the races up in Iowa, specifically the snake cause its awesome and badass.

That photo is from ethan, the kid behind me, but I find it particularly badass. The before, and during, our race up the snake and down the backside made it even more tricky and epic as usual. I raced jrs everyday and 4s the last 2 days, I think that I shouldhave done 4s at the snake also but I didnt for some reason. I was pretty tired on the way home and collapsed for a while when I got home, but hey, its summer. I drove down to Tulsa with my dad and watched the crashfest of a 3s race on friday and then watched the rest of the races. In the rain, pretty epic. I raced 4's on sat and finished in the middle of the group. I raced 4's on sunday, one of the toughest crit courses I've ever done, and I pulled out cause I didnt make the front group, my fault because I wasnt riding in the front and I didnt wanna hit the corner first on the first lap, and mentally I only wanted to do the jrs race. Judging from the front group of about 8 that was leading, I feel like I couldve and shouldve been there, and that I couldve done well in the sprint. I did jrs too, and ended up 9th. It was a tough race. It was fun, on friday before I left I rode with perry, the girl from nerinx, and had a good time. I might end up riding the ms150 with a group of nerinx girls and some guys from my school but we'll see where that goes. One thing I didnt like about the races this weekend and in Iowa is how they run them, by laps instead of time plus laps. On the snake its understandable. In tulsa they would start with 60 minutes, for example, as our racing time and then take our average lap time and then tell us how many laps we would do, so it seems to me like a lot of calculating for not really any purpose. On saturday we wernt even told about the laps and I didnt really know where we were until 1 to go when my computor said 53 minutes and we were supposed to do 60. oh well.

title.

So i raced joe martin but i dont feel like explaining 3 races in depth. In short, i more or less finished the road race with the pack, like 5 seconds off but they gave me pack time. The tt was ok, i got 25th. So i was in 25th overall. I wasnt feelin it in the crit and after the first crash on the first lap i was almost gapped off, 2 crashes later i was pretty much dropped and i got pulled with like 5 minutes left. So then i ended up 35th overall. My friend brice, who i met at hells kitchen, had a good weekend and ended up 5th overall i think. Long drive home and i got home at 1 am. This past weekend was the state rr on sunday. I did jrs cause i didnt reeally wanna ride 70 miles and i wanted a decent shot at a jersey, where on such a hilly course if i did 2 laps i would proly get dropped on the second lap. Anyway Luke, John, Jan, Ben, some other mesa kid, and I were in the 17-18 jrs race. Ben and I are both cat 4's and John, Jan and Luke are cat 3's so I figured it'd still be a good race. We rode slow for the first 7 miles then we started a fairly easy paceline at like 19 mph, and then the attacks started. First Ben, then Jan, then John then Jan then Me. We dropped Ben and the other Mesa kid, and john looked to be hurting. Jan attacked up the next hill and luke and I were the only ones able to hold on. We pulled hard for like 4 miles until John finally caught back on. we rode fairly easy till the main climb, where Jan hit it hard seeing that John was hurting again. Initially luke and I sat on his wheel but i felt like i was jsut churning a huge gear and wasnt able to hangon. I thought i tried to shift down and i was in my easiest gear but i got to the top and looked down at my cassette and i saw 2 gears left? whatever. Luke almost hung on to jan but then jan hit it hard up the next climb and shelled us both. I caught luke and then he dropped me on the next climb. John eventually caught me and seeing as we were around 5 minutes down on jan and 3 on luke, john said to ride in slow and sprint at the end. I was fine wiht that cause i was pretty sure i could outsprint him, and i knew i wasnt gonna pull luke or jan in. We rode slow, so slow in fact that ben and the other mesa caught us. We rode moderatly in and sprinted, i won the sprint really easily, and took 3rd. Yesterday I had 2 10 minute intervals. I decided to ride solo, and headed out towards high ridge after warming up around the webster crit course for like 20 minutes. I rode my intervals on marshall after the downhill and before it hits 141. I was able to ride for about 6 or 7 minutes before i had to turn around quickly and go the other way. All in all one of the best training rides ive had all year. I think it was nice to ride solo and actually do my workout well and exactly like i was supposed to. Riding with austin usually works cause he has something similar and he knows what to do, but riding with keaton or mike t i always talk too much. I had 5 sprints today. I headed out and warmed up in webster again and then went to adams by the golf course leading into k-wood. I thought for some reason that i had 10 sprints and after the first 5 i was cooked. It was pretty windy and the road was bumpy. I headed home after the 5 cause i was really hurting. I came upstairs and checked my plan, turns out i was only supposed to do 5, so im all good. I have it easy for the rest of the week and then snake alley this weekend. Im riding with a girl from nerinx, Perry, tomoro so that should be fun.

"drip drip drip...goes the water"

Quoted from chumbawumba.

So the tour of stl was this past weekend. It was a pretty good weekend that got me siked for summer, where we all just go to the races and hangout when were not racing. Its been a while since weve done that. I did the 4's races all weekend. carondelet was hella sketchy. There were 3 major crashes. The first was like on the second lap, some guy hit the curb and a dogfish guy went into him, I skidded and was able to stop, on an endo, pretty much hitting him lightly. so I took a free lap, which I wasnt going to be given because I didnt really crash, but I said I fell into the grass, cause Im sure as hell not paying 25 bux to race 2 laps not even crash and quit. So then a ghishallo guy crashed himself out. Then mikey b comes back to me, cause I havent really been able to move up too much after getting stuck smack on the end, and starts to pull me up to the front to lead me out. With 3 to go, another bigger crash, which took out the same dogfish guy and some more. Anyway Mike and I shoot to the right side of the road to go around it, we were around 25th at this point, and he makes it through before i get cut off by some momentum guy ridng sideways, and I have to unclip and kick my way through, in the meantime the pack has put about 10 seconds into me. I chased solo for about a lap then pulled out to watch the sprint. keaton finished 5th and mike finished 7th, not too bad. The dissappointing thing is that I know I could've been top 3 because Mike was 2nd or 1st wheel at the place that austin said to start my sprint, and had I only been on his wheel. The tt was next, all the way out in hell. It was a waste of time. Sketchy course, lonnie broke his collarbone, waste of gas gettting out there and bad roads. I think i could've gone a lot faster. I kept seeing old guys come up after me, dying. Gasping for breath, and I wasnt really worn out at all. I think mentally going into it I thought it was maybe a 20k tt, so I needed to save something but I dono. Fopo was next on sunday. I love the forest park crit, cause mainly I like racing in Fopo. The only thing that made sunday kinda suck was that it was pretty hott, Fopo is usually either cold, cool or rainy. Id like it to have been a little cooler. Anyway, I raced decent and was able to move up into the strung out top 15 but then the first guys would slow down in the corners and right before them and we would get swarmed and I'd be on the back. So after doing that a few times I desided to sit at the back and chill. I was getting set to move up at 30 minutes in, with 5 minutes and 5 laps to go, when they rang the 5 lap bell. So I guess they shortened it to compensate for the classic, big shark race = late to start. I moved up and was on mikey b's wheel but I kept getting it ganked and kept getting swarmed in the corners again. I moved up solo to about 15th coming thru with 1 to go, and I finished 13th or 14th, but I didnt go to the "i think i was in the top 15 meeting" afterwards so I dono for sure if I was put in there or not. Im sorry, but this race had one major flaw. They didnt have a working video camera. The jrs race at carondelet had to be solved by a coin toss, and every race from there on had to have a meeting where everyone in the top 10-15 voted. Stupid. How cant you get a video camera over night, everyone at that race prolly had one theyd be willing to lend.

Our team had a good weekend:
Mike Heffernan won the 5's at Carondelet got 3rd(ish) in the TT, got 2nd at FOPO and maybe won overall.
Austin got freaking 2nd in the 1/2 race at carondelet.
luke was in the money both days I think.
And keaton and mike 5th and 7th respectively at carondelet.

Rite now I should be getting in my car after tuesday nights but its pouring and it has been for the last 2ish hours. trainier ride tonite

My friend, and head mechanic at Trekstl, Katie Arehart-Rose had a really bad mountian biking accident on sunday. She was riding at castlewood and ran into a guy going around a corner, and fractured 3 bones in her face. It was her first mtb ride of the season and the first ride on her procaliber. She has some kind of surgery next week but apparently is in quite good spirits, I recieved a jovial text message the day of the crash telling me what she had done. I wish her the speediest of recoverys and that all of the surgery goes well.

peace.