On the Road Again! US Pro Race Report

This time last year Christian, Paco, Nate, Bobby and I were fending off a mosquito infestation during our week-long stay in a cabin near Saguenay, faced each day with the question; "do I go right or left on the road?" Left was better. Paco was busy riding up a dirt path to the top of the ski resort and getting a flat tire. We all gave our best at our newly created Strava Segment "American Champion Climb" which Paco now holds, the only Spaniard on the trip. 

Oh the things that can happen in a Year.

Today we are in the race hotel for the Gran Prix Cycliste de Saguenay which starts tomorrow, a mere 40 miles from the infamous cabin of a year ago. I felt like a local when I was able to tell everyone that the town of La Baie, which is beautiful, is French for "The Baie" and that there is water here, just like I remembered. 

Ok so Im not much help, but the internet is quite good and I have some free time, so I figured I would review the last week and a half on the road, my first trip back racing from a broken collar bone 9 weeks ago.

After a solid 0.75 races done on the NRC calendar, I figured it might be good to more than double my race days with the US Pro TT, where I was 7th in 2012 but since then have not had great time trials. It being my first race back, I didnt expect a whole lot and thats what I got. I was happy I could ride hard for 40 minutes without exploding and started looking forward to the start of the new season. Then:

US Professional Road Race

I can't remember a time I was more nervous before a bike race than before this year's National Championship Road Race. Normally by the time nationals come around you have a solid half season of racing on your legs, you've righted the ship if need be, or just cruised on good off season training, but this year I was coming in cold with 18 days on the trainer and another 2 weeks on the road after collar bone surgery. Ill admit that I was far more worried about crashing than I ever have been before, partly because I hadn't been in the peloton much, but also because the accident in Redlands has really effected my attitude about the safety of sanctioned races.

From the gun it was clear Gamin wanted to be in the break, which I thought was interesting, so I thought it would be important to cover some early moves despite having the freedom to sit in an wait. The break went in the same place it went last year, 11 guys, including Sam Bassetti, worked well together on the opening circuits, and before we hit Lookout Mountain the first time the gap was already 6 minutes. Right then I knew it would be all about saving energy, maintaining cohesion in the group, and hitting the 4th and final time up lookout with my best effort. When Ben King, Chris Jones, and Julian Kyer attacked, all better climbers than me, I decided to ride my best 10 minute effort and hope it was enough, I caught on to those three half way up the climb, and we finished off the last climb with a bit of tempo, last time check was a minute to the remnants of the break and 2 minutes to the chasing field.

The break headed  up Lookout Mountain

That's when all cohesion stopped. From the bottom of Lookout to the finish line there was always someone hoping to sit on the group and get a free ride to the finish. Eric Marcotte, eventual winner, caught the 4 of us first and seemed willing to work, but he is also one of the best sprinters there is, so going to the line with him was not an option. Any time someone sat on, I tried to attack and make them work, you never know how people's legs are in those situations. When Alex Howes showed up with a small group of chasers from the peloton I was somewhat devastated that my chances of winning were now less, so when McCabe and Zwizanski attacked I thought it would be the best chance to stay away from the large group of strong riders, so I gave everything to get across. 

Under 10k to go!

McCabe, leading the NRC, was the clear favorite in the group, so its no doubt both Zwizanski and I wanted to get ahead of him before the finish. Zwizanski attacked first, and in my mind if he would have waited until after the short climb, the National Champion would have come from our group, but its Nationals, and everyone wants to win, so cohesion was a bit too much to hope for. McCabe did a great effort to pull him back and the 3 of us cat-and-moused all the way to 500m to go when I tried my last effort, but having cramped just 500m earlier I couldnt make it count. At the same time the chasing group was catching us, and Marcotte came through the last corner with about 4 mph on all of us and won a well deserved victory, and I was able to hang on to 6th after a long day of fighting. I was heart broken to be that close and to have worked that hard, also completely exhausted. 

Finish Camera Shot

 Im sure McCabe and Zwizanski, like myself, had some trouble falling asleep for the past week or so thinking about that move, replaying it, wishing you could tell your past self to just give a little more at the right moment, but Marcotte for sure earned that win, and Smartstop rode a great race taking 1st, 2nd, and 5th on the day. I was pleased to be back in the mix, and I credit Frank at FasCat Coaching for making the plan and calling me all the time and checking in while I recovered. It makes me really excited for the rest of the season!

Its all up from here!

Wise Rabbits and Trainer Rage

I have not made an appearance back here in the world of blog mainly because I have been heeding the advice of an imaginary bunny:

Well said, Thumper.

It's true, I have not had many nice things to say, which is great for emails titled "Crush Faces" to your teammates who are racing Joe Martin Stage Race, but not spectacular for, well, anything else. It's safe to say I am angry that I was part of a totally preventable incident which resulted in nobody's despair but mine (and anybody who has had the pleasure of talking to me during the past few weeks). Its Stupid. Its Unfair. Im Pissed off. But like so many things, I can only focus on things that I can control, so there has been a fair amount of me looking like the dude on the right over the past few weeks.

I picked an interesting time to have a car run my bike over, my parents and girlfriend were headed out to California to watch me race Sea Otter, so instead, we decided that we would make the best of the situation and go to Yosemite, Big Sur, and Monterrey.

Ahhhhhhh yes. Yosemite.

Giant Sequoia 

I think I had a premonition in the toy store that I would need some kind of mascot for the rest of my season, which was going to have a considerably greater amount of indoor riding than I had originally planned. I found it:

Destroyer of Trainers

I talked to some guys about when they were able to ride after getting collar bone surgery, and most of them said within a few days to a week, to which I say "wow, lucky you" because that was not the case for me, maybe this has something to do with it?

My sister mentioned losing her hairbrush...

It took me 10 days to get back on the trainer, and I am on my 15th day riding the trainer since starting back again. The doctor would like to see me wait longer, however I am finally starting to be of good body and mind, and looking forward to getting back on the road focused on my original goal of winning races and taking the next step in cycling. 

I can kind of sum it up according to my seat at the brewer game the other night. I had great seats, the brewers are the best team in baseball, they were about to crush the cubs, I had a $5 water and a $10 BBQ sandwich with coleslaw and a pickle when this happened:

At least he doesn't have a big hair-do, right?

I had everything in order, ready to have a great season, and then some big dude went ahead and plopped down in my way. Initially, I was really mad (mainly because the camouflage seemed to be a wholly ironic taunting of the situation), but I could still see the pitcher and the catcher, there was a jumbo-tron, he didnt slap my sandwich out of my hand, and I was still at a Brewer game (a rare treat). So I went on a walk, bought some of those smelly nuts (couldnt resist), and had a great time despite my bad luck. That's pretty much where I'm at, its going to be a much more difficult road to success than I planned this year, but I'm still going to give it everything I've got instead of sitting there hating the situation (which I've done my fair share of this month), because that's the only way this year is going to be a good one for me. 

So, if anyone wants to watch hockey on mute, blast music, and crush intervals, you'll know where to find me. 

Bike Racing > Parking

Lets all agree, without going into much detail, that human beings are not meant to be sitting in traffic or doing laps around the blocks near their home looking for a parking space on Tuesdays from 1-4pm because your road has no parking due to "street sweeping". I don't think San Jose owns a broom, let alone a 5 ton automatic broom that drives with a swiffer wet-jet bolted to the front of it. So, I parked there, tried to give myself a ticket (pictured: a note card with my grocery list on it), and they still got me:

I thought I was sooooo smart.

According to the structure of the law, I deserved that. According to things reasonable, I DO NOT DESERVE THAT. Sigh. Being passionate about justice but doing nothing about it is exhausting. If supporting NPR only costs $15/month, I cant wait to see what San Jose does with that $50 I gave them for not sweeping the streets.

What. A. Racket.

Back to things that are right and good. You know what I love about driving past all the farm land in California? Its the symmetry of all the trees and vines and plants as you drive by that look like an array of space between trees that forms an infinite number of lines going back into the field, like this:

I also like the color green... bodes well...

I took that while riding before racing the Chico Stage Race this past weekend. So, Chico is a really sweet town! Why didn't you tell me?! Donny came up for the weekend to enjoy my restful lifestyle in the hotel after the races, and we both got to watch our first full length NCAA game of the year, and Wisconsin won! The race itself was awesome, we did a circuit on this track:

I think they went a bit faster than us. The circuit itself was cool and fun, but its nature was against the 3 rules of attacking, which are: Don't Attack When:

1. You are already in the 11
2. You are doing 500 watts in the peloton
3. You are doing 35mph

So for me, it was pretty uneventful. The next day at the 90 mile Pakenta Road Race, however, was my jam! A crosswind start quickly sorted the field into tiny groups all doing a team time trial chasing each other. My group had 3 Optum riders in it, and was the front group, so my group won! Unfortunately for me I did not win. A combination of a well timed attack by Optum and a flat tire on the gravel 5 miles from the finish set me back quite a bit. Thankfully, however, it was a super good day of training, and you cant take that away from me!

The last day had a morning TT, which I couldn't take seriously without a TT bike (I did take my saddle bag and frame pump off, for some reason), and an afternoon Crit, in which I got 7th by actually trying to do the field sprint. How'd that go? You ask? I came out of the final corner 3rd.... so... that's pretty depressing. Nothing can beat the fact that the race director proposed to his girlfriend before the crit.

YEAAAAAAA!!!

Can we always have proposals before bike races?! That was teh coolest! It was a great weekend, a great race, and I had a great friend hanging out, so we decided to make a great choice and visit the Sierra Nevada Brewery which is in Chico.

Perfectly sized beers for a guy who's last beer was in February

This was just awesome.

This was in the parking lot, WHAT?!

That last picture is great, how cool is that guy? "Oh, I just drive my crazy car down to one of the first craft breweries and have me a pint and a massive appetizer and then give myself a high five. It'll be a nice little Sunday."

The last bit of my week was having to deal with my own mental shortcomings that I am experiencing with the season being neigh and wanting to win every race. That is the thing, I want to win, and its stressful, because I have worked hard for a very long time and I think its time to win. My coach Frank talked me down a bit from my craziness and now that I am sitting in bed the night before the first real race of the year I am confident and excited about the season. I also started my winning ways last night by beating that stupid 2048 game that my sister introduced me to on Monday night, PROOF:

VICTORY

So with that, I leave you for San Dimas. Its going to be a great season, and I hope to come back on here and tell you about how it feels to win.

Fog of War and the Annexation of an Orange Slice: My Latest Race Vacation

Did you ever play World of Warcraft or any other civilization-take-over-style game? No? Ok, fine, well in those games there is a map covered in fog that can only be cleared away by traveling into the fog revealing the map beneath. It looks like this:

Dude. You gotta move around.

This is how I think of the world; clearing the fog of war bit by bit as I travel around. Well, March is in full swing and I am super excited that I get to clear some fog from my map with a slew of local races. How excited did I get for a weekend fog-of-war-clearing racing vacation? Well, here is a folder that is on my computer called "March Racing":

Excessive.

Containing PDF files that I created all by my lonesome with pictures like this:

The past weekend's travel map. Totally pointless.

Lets take a second here to note the total irrelevancy and uselessness of this picture to my general well-being. When I got in my car, I did not load up the PDF document with itemized directions, no sir, I took out my phone and searched "Sonora, CA" on Google Maps, pressed navigate, and listened to podcasts for 3 hours with frequent interruptions like "In 1000 feet, keep straight on yada yada yada back to your podcast that you are kind of paying attention to." This unnecessary preparation can be likened to making a hand drawn map of the grocery store with all the items' locations, which you would ignore instantly because its just getting groceries and the isles are labeled and its not that big of a deal. You would think I have never driven a car somewhere new before. Anyways, I love bike vacations, got it?!

I call bike races vacations because that's what they are. Training is a lot of work, racing is a lot of fun, and going somewhere new is THE BEST THING EVER, so race weekends make me really happy. Probably the biggest bonus is that, unlike other vacations, there is no real work in planning involved (just fake work that I make up for myself, like making dumb maps and "weekend at-a-glance" note cards). You drive out a day early, pre-ride the beautiful course, and then Yelp a dinner spot. Suddenly, you have all these pictures!

Its not just the green landscape, its the smell and the calm warm weather that make these rides so good. The pace of an easy ride is perfect for short attention span outdoor lovers.

Out to dinner with my shoes. Cheapest date ever! Not great conversationalists, however...

I do not want to be a cow, but, if I had to be, I could get used to it.

I also raced, which is kind of my whole deal, but I find training races uninteresting to talk about when the primary focus is to ride as hard as I can and probably lose. Its not that I lose on purpose, its just that the nature of the "training race" is one of little strategy, and great amounts of self destruction. I was 5th at Ward's Ferry and 4th at Fort Ord, for the record, but I don't really think about these races that way. What I look at is how hard I was able to make the race for myself, and I made them really hard, so that is a success. Its actually a very nice difference from the upcoming season, where the focus is 100% about winning. These races are 100% about training, which makes them easy on the mind (hard on the legs).

Well, do you have a flag?

Since I foot the entire bill for these training race weekend vacations, I have to figure out a way to keep them under budget. My budget is essentially this: "You have no money, ever, why do you even look at your bank account?" I can only go out to dinner occasionally. Going out to dinner is getting strange, this weekend I got a plate of food with an orange that had apparently been claimed by another country already.



I ate the orange anyway, despite my lack of flag. I know military takeovers are kind of taboo these days, but I really like oranges, and I didn't think anyone would notice. I think I'm in the clear, apparently someone else in the world is trying to take over a lot more than an orange slice, sounds like a jerk move to me. Anyways.....

Not being able to go out to dinner is fine by me, I have actually gotten quite good at eating in my hotel room. These days I chop up a ton of veggies, make a giant bag of rice, buy a rotisserie chicken, and make some salad dressing. I proceed to carry that all around and eat it all weekend.

Mobile nutrition at its finest!

Food blogger I am not, so deal with that picture being merely normal, lacking some fancy wooden bowl from some ancient tribe on a bed of flowers and some strange garnish which has the same effect as wearing a fancy hat in public (you cant eat it, and it seems to have no other purpose, so why is it there? This is my philosophy for many, many things). 

Beautiful places, new places, chopped up food in a Rubbermaid, breakfast lunch and dinner in bed, spotty internet, racing your face off, and semi-listening to podcasts for hours retaining .01% of the information are all reasons I love race weekends. Luckily my military takeover of the orange slice stayed under the radar for the most part, and I was able to clear a lot of the fog off of my World of Warcraft map. I still have a lot to go, which I am thankful for, could you imagine if you didn't have new places to check out? You would feel like a hamster (the word hamster has no "p" in it?! WHAT WAS I BEING TAUGHT IN SCHOOL ALL THOSE YEARS?!) and probably understand a lot more about that running wheel they seem to love so much.

That's all for this week, here are a few more pictures of my weekend:

Weakest attempt (has a "p" by the way, senseless language we speak) ever at a wave-explodes-on-rock picture.

Pebble Beach and the Fog of War

Browsing music just isn't the same any more. Side note: Sonora has 15 thrift shops. So there's that.

Putting that Pricey Math Minor to Use, Sort Of..

Early in the week you may have noticed my coach (Frank Overton, owner of Fascat Coaching) posted on Facebook "This graph and the athlete's race(s) this past weekend makes me a very happy coach" and attached this:

Which gave me the idea to tell you all what that means, and how Frank's plan, and my legs, come together to make me the best possible cyclist at the perfect time. Its science and math, I love science and math. SO, here we go. This is my job.

Frank is a pioneering contributor and implementer of a mathematical model originally developed by Dr. Andy Coggan, Ph.D that aims to predict an athlete's peak capabilities by quantifying his fitness according to his training over time. Their concept hinges on a very simple formula:

Fitness - Fatigue = Form

Simple enough, right? Form, as a cyclist would describe it, is another way of saying an athlete's ability to do well, often an athlete is described as "being on great form" when he is peaking. Mathematically, form is best described as an athlete's potential to do well, like a rock held up high has the potential to create energy if let go, the higher the rock, the more potential it has to do work. Ultimately, form is an athlete's ability to do work, more specifically, form is POWER.

Every day I ride with a power meter, which records my energy output and saves the data to be later transferred to Frank so he can monitor my training. Power meters provide a unique opportunity for cyclists to quantify with great certainty the difficulty of a training ride. Dr. Coggan developed a method of quantifying training with a metric aptly named "Training Stress Score" or "TSS":

TSS = Exercise Duration * Normalized Power * Intensity Factor ^ 2

Using my power data, and Dr. Coggan's mathematical model, Frank is able to determine my Training Stress Score (TSS) for every ride I do, and thereby can determine the following graph (don't worry, its not as confusing as it looks):

Behold! The Performance Management Chart, 'Ye Holy Grail o Training

This is my Performance Management Chart, starting on October 1, 2013 and showing all the way out to mid-April. There are 3 important lines, numbered sections (which I have added) that correspond to different training blocks, and dots (which you do not need to worry about). SO, Lets get right to it:

• Blue Line with area beneath shaded: This is my Chronic Training Load (CTL). CTL is fitness.  It describes the historic load on an athlete over time according to training. It is logical to say that as you train more, you gain more training load, and you have more ability to perform as that load increases. Think of CTL as lifting that rock higher and higher.
• Purple Line: This is my Acute Training Load (ATL). ATL is fatigue.  It describes the recent effect training has on the athlete, or the negative gain training has on an athlete in the recent future. In other words, if you do a 6 hour day, your ATL will go way up, showing the fatigue associated to the intense load of that training day, however if you take the next 2 days off, ATL decreases as you recover from the effort. So, the higher the purple line, the more tired I am. 
• Yellow Line: This is the Training Stress Balance (TSB). TSB is form, which I talked about above. Form is what we are training for, and it is the relationship between your historic training load (CTL) and your recent activity (ATL).

See? Its not that complicated. We use TSS to quantify the training load each day. That has 2 effects on an athlete:

1. He gets more fit.
2. He gets more tired.

It is easy to conclude, then, that an athlete wants to increase his ability to preform as much as possible, without getting too tired. That is where Frank comes in, and where those numbered boxes are useful (which I will list at the end of this explanation for those interested). Frank implements Dr. Coggan's training model in order to monitor my rising fitness and fatigue, and applies scientifically proven training planning to help me increase my fitness as much as possible before the season of racing begins without getting too tired. Getting too tired can result in over-training, which can be detrimental to an athlete's season, and Frank knows how to walk the line without crossing it (believe me).

Every day during the build Frank has a targeted TSS that I am to hit. My job is to do everything in my power to be ready to hit that number, which means sleeping, eating properly an and off the bike, actually riding said bike, naping, stretching, and self massage with a triggerpoint roller. I also need to give him feedback with how I am feeling during and after rides, which can be valuable information when determining how much ATL is too much ATL. 

Put this all together, and you can actually schedule a peak performance. Look at the Performance Management Chart, on the right side you see dates that have not actually happened yet. That is the model's prediction of the 3 metrics if I were to take each day completely off as far as the chart shows (Frank often puts future training on the chart, which shows where I will be, but for this blog I kept it with 0 training to show what happens). My ATL (fatigue) plummets with the rest, while my CTL (fitness) gradually decreases and my TSB (form) rockets upwards. This, as my coach so eloquently puts it, is "The Shit That Will Kill Them." or the TSTWKT training plan.

That is my job. You can see why sometimes I feel like Frank's surrogate for graph making, because truly that's what I am; a spandex-wearing, sometimes princess-like, surrogate for Franks TSTWKT. Going back to that first graph Frank posted at the top of this blog; the first test of the season was a success that showed Frank we were on track for a great year with a 31 minute 376 watt effort in the opening time trial of the Madera Stage Race. 

We are both working hard and looking forward to a very successful season!

That concludes blog proper, here is the in-depth look at what each box was for my training so far this year (Yellow boxes are rest blocks):

1. Off Season. I was not riding during this time. You can see my CTL decrease from where it left off at the end of the 2013 season.
2. Double Days Part 1: Mornings in the weight room (Adaptation and Hypertrophy phases) and afternoons on the bike in Zone 2 with strength intervals
3. Visit Jackson for some time off.
4. Double Days Part 2: Mornings in the weight room (Strength and Power phases) with afternoons on the bike in zone 2 with anaerobic intervals.
5. Visit Jackson for some ski touring and rest.
6. Double Days Part 2 Cont.: Final build before Christmas break.
7. Christmas in Milwaukee, some weight room and spinning, mostly rest.
8. Riding Build 1: Monk mode training. Eat, sleep, ride, sleep some more. I dealt with some over-training symptoms for most of this build, luckily Frank kept an eye on the power numbers and kept the foot on the gas and got me through it. Big CTL gains with 6, 5, and 4 hour ride blocks with tempo and sweet-spot intervals.
9. Jackson rest with ski touring.
10. Riding Build 2: More CTL building, lots of tempo and sweet-spot intervals. The arrow at the top of the build was the highest CTL I had ever achieved to date, that includes after Tour of California last year. Thats some HUGE training!
11. Rest weekend in Jackson
12. Maintenance rides before camp
13. Rest before Team Camp
14. 5-Hour Energy p/b Kenda Team Camp
15. Big Regeneration Block in Jackson before transitioning into VO2 Efforts and training races.
16. Madera Stage Race and getting sick from the pollen, doing maintenance rides while my body heals.
17. The future!

Now you know how to train. Frank is probably going to be mad that I told you (read more here and here).

Madera Stage Race and Sympathy for my Teammates

Most of my teammates are down doing Vuelta de Mexico right now. I dont know what is actually happening but here is a quick synopsis of what I have heard about the goings on of that race so far:

• Chad Beyer was doing well until he started puking, and for all I know, he is still puking 4 days later.
• Gavin Manion may or may not have taken a chain-ring to the face. Probably as a part of a strange ritual related to Americans buying coffee in Mexico, because that would be tough to do in a bike race.
• Bobby said that the stages start and everyone just gets dropped right away. Sounds fun.
• I caught something about the whole race being neutralized due to a protest.
• There were 180 speed bumps on one stage.
• There are dogs with bib numbers acting like bludgers in quiddich from Harry Potter (no i will not check the spelling on EITHER of those two words).
• Someone glued half soccer balls made of steel to the road, everywhere.
• Christian was eaten by a 38 foot python, here he is with his new python sleeping bag! (unconfirmed)

Looks so warm!

 So, I am happy to say, I am in Madera, California with Sam Bassetti doing some road bike time trials, a crit, and a road race. I got 9th in the first TT which was cool because I think I was the first place dude on a road bike (meh, thats mainly meh), but then this happened:

At least the bees love it.

So, I feel terrible, and not 20 minutes goes by without either having some Zicam, taking benadryl, gargling antacid, drinking emergen-c, doing some crazy nasal rinse that makes me feel like im drowning, or COMPLAINING ABOUT THE POLLEN. How much pollen is in the air? Well, every field has 20 boxes of bees sitting next to the road, and I have 2 bee-stings to prove it. I'm sorry to report that I have solved the (tragic) sudden bee death problem: its cyclists' faces. That's right angry drivers, I finally found a legitimate reason for you to treat me so terribly. You're welcome, although I know you don't need to be thanked. 

Annnyways...

This is my first race with Sam (@swbassetti). Yesterday he came back from dinner with friends and, without saying anything to me, changed out of his jeans into shorts. Therefore he is an awesome person. Not having TT bikes to ride made the first two stages frustrating, but we kept our spirits high by riding to and from all the stages because I am too lazy to pack up the car every day. Frankie (@Fakiefrankie) has managed to still throw his two cents in via twitter, telling us we are worthless and road bikes in a TT are not an excuse, to which I say he should concentrate on keeping the rest of the team out of the belly of large snakes in Mexico.

Tomorrow we hit up the road race and hopefully America's Best Value Inn and Suites, which I am going to start calling hotel buzzword inn, lets us get back in the room to clean up for our long treks home. (I just sneezed all over this keyboard). Hopefully I get a picture of the wall hanging that depicts a HUGE tsunami wave engulfing the golden gate bridge in the lobby, its a gem.

As for you, reader, keep on coming back. I feel a blogging tailwind on the horizon, and I even put some fun links over there to the right in the sidebar. The goal this year is to win. The other goal is to tell you about it. My third goal is to keep the bee stings to a minimum tomorrow.

That time we went to Spain, Part 1

I'm flipping through pictures from about 25 years (is that enough exaggeration? Go with eons? Ok, eons it is) ahem, 25 eons ago to try and remember the insanity that was going to Spain the day after Redlands for a 3 day stage race called Castilla y Leon (or at least I think thats the name of it, I had no idea what was happening). One thing is for sure, I had no idea what was happening..

Lets start with the first team ride of the trip, for which I slept 1 hour on the plane and woke up at 8:30... in the morning.... again. So, 1 hours of sleep = 2.5 hours of riding and feeling like I would be lost forever at any moment thanks to this kind of thing:

Nope, no idea.

Causing this kind of confusion:

Someone learned how to edit photos!! 

Ending up in us just taking pictures of each other because all the scenery was in Spanish.

Ok, so for the rest of the time, just assume that I have no idea where I am, what anyone is saying, or what time it is. This way I can get going on the rest of the story.

One thing that I found myself doing was looking around and trying to figure out if things were supposed to be important or notable in any way. In America we typically have signs on things that tell you that they are important, and there is a hot dog stand nearby with a guy selling those foam fingers with whatever the special thing is printed on them. I think this shows my traveling naivety, because you are riding along and...

So does this castle sell snickers bars or what?

Speaking of traveling naivety, no matter how slow you speak, or how flamboyant the hand gesture, if a person does not understand English then you are GETTING NOWHERE. Its like this shower stall from our first hotel: 

So this glass door just... ends? Why does it even open?

It doesn't matter how hard you think about it, you will never understand.

One thing that I do understand is food. If someone holds a platter of food to me I just shake my head up and down and they put that food in front of me in scoops until I shake my head left and right. Thankfully Paco gave us a Spanish lesson on the first ride stating "For lunch, pollo y pasta, for dinner, pasta y pollo." This I can handle. It was at the very end of the trip that I received something that I wholly could not have expected:

Jamon! or, Leg of Jamon!

But that was at the end of the trip, details of which will be in part 2, or 3 at the rate this is going.

So with my sleep schedule out of whack, my language not working, and everyone drinking cafe con leche like it is THE ONLY DELICIOUS WAY TO ENJOY COFFEE (incorrect), I would have to say I was having a difficult time integrating into the culture. One positive from this was my unbelievable desire to go to sleep at every second, and I could not tell you what the ceiling of any hotel in Spain looks like because I normally fell asleep on my way to the pillow. That's too bad, because you figure that in other countries they probably have those magic ceilings like in Harry Potter or no ceiling at all. 

Have you ever put red sauce on your rice in the morning? Because I have. Moving on.

So we all got to Spain. We (I) fumbled around a lot. We rode bikes. While riding bikes I noticed something particularly Un-American (because drawing comparisons is the only way I can deal with, well, anything) about Spain, and it was this grassy field:

Its not to say that we don't have some grass, I mean, some people spend more time pampering their lawns than cooking themselves dinner. But what we don't have is unused space. At the very least in America we would have cattle eating that grass so that we could eventually eat them. Optimize! Improve! Better Better BETTER! Efficiency!!!! MAKE THE MONIES! Its particularly American to attempt to take everything up a notch, to capitalize on an opportunity, or somehow take whatever it is and make it better. I noticed that this is particularly not the case in Spain. There is some relaxation taking place. You cant find food before 8:30pm and if you go then, the cook will be angry that he has to start things early. In America there would be a restaurant that was called "you can eat here at 5pm!" There is this grassy field here that just seems to be doing that, being grassy. There is no sign that reads "here lies a grassy field, protected under the grassy field act of 1974." And depending upon which section of the grassy field act this particular grassy field falls, it is either for looking, playing, or AVERT YOUR EYES ITS SECRET. I just thought that was interesting.

That pretty much sums up my time in Spain before the race. As for the race, that will be another blog, but if you want a hint as to how it went:

Computer Homicide, Beauce, and getting our butts kicked.

So I get this great idea to write a blog, and I do, 2 posts in one day even! It may have been my Canada sized boredom, one rainy day too many, or just genuine desire to write that brought me there, but there I was, writing! The next morning Paco ran my computer over with a car, stranding me in Canada with no way to connect to the world and french TV (I did not capitalize french on purpose, because we were in Canada).

Is it a sign? I don't do signs. So no, it was not a sign, it was just a major bummer. BUT, HARK, TECHNOLOGY REIGNS SUPREME ONCE AGAIN IN MY interesting LITTLE LIFE!!

Well, its about time for a picture, and a segue, lets get two birds here:

I had some real interesting conversations with Annie about the existence of podium girls, and I would like to draw your attention to my awkward right hand. Do you know what I do every day? Certainly not get on podiums and practice getting awkwardly kissed for longer than necessary so the photographers get their shot. Case and point, on the first day that I was in the KOM jersey I punched this girl in the face:

So hilarious!!

....annnd awkward left hand this time:

What do I do with my hands?

So you now know two things about me, I don't do signs and I don't do podiums. Moving on to the actual race.

Computer-less, TV-less, and general entertainment-less-ness led me to sneak into the first break of the Tour of Beauce, win the KOM points, and get in the jersey. Its no mystery that this year I have been somewhat abused by Bissell for the KOM competitions, which is fine, and I even told Carter Jones the day before the race that I was done with the damn things. I swear, sometimes I think the only things that ever DO happen are the things I explicitly say WILL NOT happen.

- I will never eat mustard (its all i eat now)

- I will never wear spandex

- I will never shave my legs

- I will never go for another KOM point again

- I will not go get more cake.

So, with the help of my team, I go for the KOM points on the side of doing my job, which is kind of a double duty, but I don't have a computer anymore so what else am i going to do? Everything was going great, I was scoring in every KOM sprint, but like clockwork Pat McCarty of Bissell gets in a break, gets a bunch of points, and I've got yet another Bissell vs. Jim on my hands. I swear man, even when I train on climbs right before I get to the top Chris Baldwin comes from nowhere and pips me at the line. He doesn't even live in Wyoming!  So I decided to live it up while it lasted, and my favorite picture of the year happened:

The local "yout" takes a minute from blowing their whistles to have us write our name on paper.

This day I believe Paco went ahead and got himself in Yellow, after what was I think the most agressive stage of the year, by winning on Mount Megantic. If you didn't know, yellow is more important than dots, so we now fully race for Paco after he holds off the field in the TT. 2 Stages to go! The first one went great, the team rode amazingly, and everyone was smiling afterwards.

The team, riding GREAT

The last stage went, hmm, as I said to the entire Bontrager team including overall race winner Nathan Brown (who is a great guy, but im a great guy too, and I didn't get to win Beauce, so he must be doing something else) "Well, we left it all out there, all the jerseys, all our riders, everything, its all still out there."

Pat McCarty did a great job to get in an early break that we decided to let go and sacrifice the dots in strategic interest of winning the whole race. Which we didn't do. It was a tough day, nobody was smiling, and so began my mid-season break. Its a sour taste that I think we all have in our mouths while we get back to training this week. I've been walking around with a toothbrush for when it gets especially bad. The other teams did a great job of taking our team down to 3 guys to defend Paco from a powerful field on a difficult circuit, and we came up short despite all of our best efforts.

That was Beauce. Yuck.

Im back in Jackson now, and I hope to get to a few good stories from my 3 months racing on the road. For now I leave you with this, which I like to call my answer to why I like living in Jackson:

As I said in the previous post, we've been on the road for a while. We dont get many opportunities to do what we love, which is hang out with people we love or go for training rides, so sometimes you have to pretend that you are having fun being a lobster:

Clearly a fake picture, everyone knows Nate is stronger than me.

Who knew a restaurant with a picture of two dancing lobsters with their faces cut out would manage to charge $20 for a dinner salad. After that, I went to the store, bought, and ate a box of cereal out of a cup. Speaking of eating cereal out of a cup, being on the road inevitably requires you to get creative whilst feeding yourself. Here is my kitchen:

Pretty sure the translation on the box of cereal is "Jim Stemper's Dinner"

We've got plastic silverware, cereal, fruit, a bag of carrots which i will eat continuously until gone and turn orange, a lone can of V8, hotel room coffee which tastes like you'd think it would, and almond milk.  Any combination of these things can fit in a cup, and be eaten on a bed. Hand towels make great place mats to avoid ruining your bed for the night.

At the beginning of the season you have all this energy to apply to other things. Here is how I kept my things at team camp in February:

Ahhhhh yes, organization.

Here they are now:

See what I did there?

Today is the day before the day before the Tour de Beauce. Its raining. Bobby and I are sharing a hotel room, but since hes married i guess we cant share the only bed, sigh. 

My office, kitchen table, couch, bed, closet, foyer, living room, and theater.

I figured that, with the rain and all, I'd take advantage of my versatile hotel room and get my easy ride out of the way:

WHEW! Good one! Aside from all that cooking and riding, Bobby and I have a big day planned. He is eventually going to eat an orange that he took from breakfast this morning, but he's going to wait a while because he just had a banana.

BIG DAY PLANNED TODAY!!!

Truly living the dream.

Being a person who loves to be outside, these days are tough, but you have to think about the 6 day stage race on the horizon and how half way through you could be tired because you got greedy and went for a long ride. Tonight the goal is to not spend $20 on a salad. I might spend $20 on a tiny block of cheese instead and make my teammates feel bad when they eat more than me.