Camp Day: Negative 2

That's right, were here two days early, well Hartley, myself, and a few other lucky few. Three days of travel sure takes it out of you, and so does packing this sucker:

That's taken at some point where i was clearly not helping fill the trailer all the way to the back, probably drinking coffee, most likely watching Chad T do most of the work, probably handing out help-less input and opinions, definitely sitting down complaining about how cold it is in Ohio. Volunteering to roll the huge trailer down to Macon, GA does come with its perks, like right now, im watching the Olympics on a pretty awesome tv in a warm room writing to you! That's a perk. I figured while i was at it, I would take a picture of our room here on day one of camp, before all of our bags puke all over the place and you cant see the beds:

I will be sure to take an "After" picture at the room's worst. While i am at it, taking pictures of stuff that is, I may as well show you around. Well above you have my bedroom, chad's bedroom, the living room with the nice flat screen, the garbage room, the office, the kitchen table, the foyer, and the art room. Here, follow me to the pantry:
Spacious. Delicious. And maple trim!! Lovely.

Well camp does not really start for another two days, hence the title of the blog post, but it has not stopped us from loading and unloading the trailer, moving the trailer to 6 different parking spaces talking about the pros and cons of each individual space, moving in to our room, setting up our bike building center and fit area for some WN fits, and learning how to cook brown rice in a microwave. OH hey, here's a cool tid-bit of information i got today, apparently i should be riding a 58cm frame, not the 56 frames i have ridden for 5 years... good thing we accidentally ordered 2 extra 58cm frames, apparently.

So, bike camp. Im bigger than i thought. And microwave rice is still really good. All i need now is a way to open the can of tuna. I will keep good updates going, don't forget to check out the flickr photostream (also in the sidebar on the right) that I keep for more pictures from camp that I post this week.

VOS Stage 2

90 mile road race today, Stage 2 Valley of the Sun. We focused on the stage as a primary goal and the overall as an afterthought today as I was the highest on GC, 2:18 back from the lead. With small time bonuses and only 2 days remaining that seemed like a better plan. We had a lot of plans for the race, and a lot of thoughts on what would happen, but no one thought that 5 miles in, a break of 12 would put 3 minutes into the group in one lap, and continue to an eventual 9 minute lead on the pack. Well, that... just... happened.

Chad took some advantage of a clean run and got a group of about 6 up the road almost immediately into the race. Up the climb the first time chads group came back and 5 countered, Marcotte and Ariman bridged right past me, and I jumped as hard as i could to cover those two, knowing what marcotte has been up too (not loosing any races this year? yea hes alright), before we reached the top of the hill, another group with Chodroff showed up and that made it 12, and 5 miles in it was the race. Johnny and Stefano were in a chase group that sat 15 seconds back from my group but no one was missing a pull up front and it was all but over 85 miles from the finish.

Getting away from a group working that well together and with no wind or really any parts of the course to put anyone into difficulty was tough. A few attempts on the time bonus laps showed that any effort was going nowhere fast. I picked up a 1 second time bonus but that ended up not mattering. Coming up the hill the last time i found Marcotte's wheel but when he went, by the time i got on it, i was already learning how much better sprinter marcotte is that me. I ended up 7th finishing same time, and moved into 9th overall.

Chad rolled in a bit later with a 4 man group, he won the bunch and moved into 13th on GC. All in all, we would have liked another guy up in the break but when its that good a group, theres not much coming across.

The parrish family has shown me and the guys nothing but the best race weekend imaginable, and tonight their BBQ was nothing less. They deserve a ton of credit for taking us in and making sure we have been happy as clams all weekend. I love a good burger.

Tomorrow is the last day, a 70 minute crit and our last chance for what we came for: stage win. The GC is all but sorted out, so tomorrow will be about finding a way to beat marcotte and put the new red pin-stripes on top of the podium. One last note: Congrats to Aly Dudek!! She qualified 2nd in the 500m short track sprint tonight and is moving on to the finals on Wednesday. She still skates the 3000m relay tonight at 10 so wish her luck as she represents the USA. Its incredible, she did it!

Talk to you folks tomorrow.

Quick VOS Update

Time trial today. It gave us all a chance to see where our fitness is at here in Feb, and get some really great TT race scenario practice in. I concentrated on feeling good and enjoying the fact that I finally get to race my bike, had a great warm up, and consequently a pretty good ride in the TT. It was a little bit slower than I had hoped, but then again, when isnt it? I came in 13th with a time of 30:53, while chad, stefano, and johnny were all close behind. Chad gets honorable mention for the day, rocking a single-speed track bike for the TT, which required a combined mathematical effort this morning to pick a gear. I think he was happy.

We discussed the next two days over dinner and we all seem pretty excited to finally race a bike. Tomorrow is the road race which starts at 11:30am, I will be sure to let you know how it goes.

Also, a fellow Wisconsinite and family friend is competing in the Olympics in short track speed skating (the 500m individual, and 3000m relay) tomorrow, be sure to root for Kenda p/b GearGrinder AND Alyson Dudek tomorrow!!

New Kits and Valley of the Sun!!

The new kits are in and ready to go for Valley of the Sun this weekend! Chad, Johnny, Stefano, and myself sat in Johnny's living room busting open all our bags of new stuff, and of course within 5 minutes all of us were standing in the living room in our skin suits. The kits are awesome and we are all super pleased with how they turned out. As you will see below, a pretty good look at the kits stationary and in action!

Me and my continuing battle with "mirror pictures" attempting to give you all a good idea of what were dealing with here:


Once outside, we attempted to take some pictures before setting out, i got into a track stand that looks under control, but almost immediatly unraveled into a near first ruined kit of the year moments after this was taken:

Chad showing his new feelings of awesomeness that a day of new kits (and full zip jerseys!! 2 handed high five!!!):
Very confident chad, very cool. Way to be.

Tomorrow is the Valley of the Sun TT and I am super pumped to get out on the road and unleash all the pent up racing energy that builds in the offseason. Cant wait to get that new skin-suit some miles on it.

I will keep you updated on how the racing is going. So until tomorrow, enjoy the kits and wish us all good luck!

My miles program

Hello, you've reached the miles department, all of our personal miles coordinators are currently helping other customers find out that their miles are about as good as a plane without any gas, Mr Rodgers' sweater collection without Mr Rodgers, or trying to cry your way out of a drunk in public ticket. Dave Matthews without his band? McDonald's without corn? MILK WITHOUT COOKIES?!?!

RRRAH. Im not even going to bore you with the story. Not worth your time.

Oh, hey guys, how do you do?!

Saw some horses, took a bunch of ride-by pictures, they were being all shy and stuff but couldn't help looking to see what the heck was going by, so they tried to hide behind the fence. Fail. Its tough when your a giant animal to be inconspicuous.

So there was the second race of the year yesterday in McDowell Park up in who knows what part of phoenix. "Hey Jim how did it go?" Well.... I can show you how it felt...

Not really a bad thing this early in the year and the day after the shootout, but not fun. It was like dealing with airline miles, you may feel like your working really hard, but you seem to get literally nowhere, and maybe in this guys case, sometimes backwards.

Got to watch the Superbowl, but only the second half. By far my favorite ad was the one with all the old stuffed animals jumping the kia. I don't think i saw anything as good as the 1-second commercial for miller last year, "HIGH LIFE!" and nothing beats terry tate.



Unbeatable.

Whelp, i just enjoyed a nice hour long exploration on the bike at 4 miles an hour. Time for a shower, but, admittedly, its really just to get the sunscreen off. Enjoy your weeks!

Race Picture!

Well, the season hasn't really officially started until you can find one of these on the Internet:

So that's me. And behind me is Evan, who I have found to be a great guy to ride with down here in Tucson, riding for the Bahati Foundation Pro Cycling Team this year (also a new guy to the pro ranks).


As for answering the question "What have you been up too?" i guess i could do a list:


1. Lost my camera, then found my camera


2. Switched my car insurance to save about 200 bucks next year thanks to being a member of USA Cycling. This also made me feel like a man.


3. Computer started to make funny noises, i have done nothing but squeeze it where the noise comes from until it stops, seems to be working quite well.


4. Finished Omnivore's Dilemma. Currently wanting to have real sit-down dinners for the rest of my life. Current books: Harry Potter 6, American Pastoral, and Racing Weight. I like to keep good variety.


5. Started doing LT efforts, and therefore started doing Yoga to make my legs feel better.

6. Listening to radio milwaukee live stream


So that's a good quick list of the things I have been up to. I've been reading a bit about achieving my racing weight, and despite it being my lest favorite part of training, knowing how to control your body composition can be a powerful training tool in peaking for your target races. I had a short bout with what can happen when you lose too much weight too quickly and get dehydrated, and your body does some interesting things in response to not getting what it wants. When you think about it, your body is pretty temperamental sometimes (then again, nowhere near as temperamental as cyclists). You have to do alot of experimenting to find out the kinds of things that make you happy and the things that get you a night on the couch, figuratively speaking.

Today it rained, it winded, and it cold-ed. So that happened. I dont really want to talk about it, but the pool being cranked to full heat was a welcome homecoming after a long slog.

Theres a race this weekend in phoenix, i think were going to give it a go. We will see, i will talk to you all then most likely.