Brecktobercross

Sorry for such a late update, I have been crazy busy! Sunday was the much anticipated first cross race of the year. Good and bad all around, had some mechanical issues during the race, but overall had a lot of fun! Corey and I left Denver and made our way up to Breckenridge. Couldn't have asked for better weather, and a better place for a really fun cross course. I went into the race really excited for the first one, but not knowing how my first real race of the year would be, and where I was physically. I felt surprisingly well in the race, but my mechanicals started early and put a damper on my overall result. We determined later that my third eye chain watcher was sitting lower than in normally would in which case it wouldn't do its job correctly. This made for probably a dozen chain drops, which was also a result of how bumpy the course was. Overall it was a good first race, and with cross mechanicals are just part of the game. I bought a double chain ring set up the other night, and that should mean no more chain drops for sure. I know my fitness isn't quite where it should be yet, but I know I will feel better every race. Last year, I was getting lapped pretty quickly, I know that the only reason I was lapped on sunday was because of mechanicals, so nothing but good things ahead hopefully. I'm off to bed, training tomorrow and a long day of work. Thanks for reading,

P.S. I never thought it would happen, but Corey managed to find a rap album that I enjoy. Kanye West's Graduation. Check out my Ipod section as well, its been updated.

Autumn is here, couldn't have come sooner.

Nice crisp morning today, and had one of the better rides that I have had in awhile. Ive found my cross course that I will do my race workouts on near my old middle school not more than a few blocks from my house. I do need to build some porto-barriers to complete it, might be my saturday project.
Above are the new wheels that I finally got the other day...only problem is I can't use them! They are Dura-Ace 7800 hubs, wrapped in a black Mavic Open Pro, with wheelsmith black spokes. Turns out the Dura-Ace hubs only work with 10 speed, and 1o speed only. You can only switch out the free-hub body for one identical to it, because apparently they run an oversize axle shell which only allows that certain free-hub body. I'm trying to decide if I should send these babies back, and start from scratch? Or strip down the rear wheel and get a different hub? Sell them on Craig's List? Its a tough call and I'm not sure what to do, I would love to hear what you all think.

Above is a shot of the hub, and below is a shot of the rim.
If anyone is interested in taking these off of my hands, let me know and we can maybe work something out. Also does anybody have a similar wheelset (32 spokes) that they want to get rid of? Anywho I hope I get some feedback, thanks for reading.

P.S. I was reading Greg's site today and he found an article about the course for Sunday, looks like fun.

Weekend in Ft. Collins

Well I had a weekend out of the ordinary in Ft. Collins. I drove up on Friday night to spend the night at my brothers house in Ft. Collins, so I could have a short drive to my races at Beaver Meadows this weekend. I had a awesome week of training, and was feeling in very top form. My hard workout on Wednesday on the MTB went better than ever and I felt very confident. Somewhere in between Ft. Collins and Beaver Meadows, my father's truck took a nose dive on me and I was stranded with no phone service, and a broken down vehicle. Luckily about 5 minutes after the incident a old man pulled over and helped me out. While we were figuring out what to do, a tow truck driver who was in the same vicinity stopped as well. He said that he was on his way to pick up somebody else and that he would pick me up on the way back. After waiting about an hour, he picked me up and we made our way back to Ft. Collins. I thought that AAA was going to take care of the charges but I was wrong. Apparently I am not a "plus" member of AAA so they don't take care of towing charges after 4 miles. I payed a whopping 93 bucks to get the truck pulled back, how wonderful.
Once I got back to my brothers house, I took a nap for a couple hours and then tried to figure out if I could find a way to the race the next day, or find a way back home. Since my brother was in Grand Lake I couldn't steal his car, so I tried to enlist the help of Dana. He decided to spend time with the wife and kids, instead of go to a bike race. So I basically sat on the couch and didn't do anything the whole weekend. On a brighter note I have my first cross race this weekend in Breckenridge. I'm super pumped for it, and I can't wait. I just got done with a run this morning, and I remember why I like riding my bike a lot more. It sucked and I only ran for like 20 minutes! Anyways, I took the day off of work today to get some stuff taken care of, and try to fight off this cold that I seem to be catching. Hopefully it doesn't get worse. Thanks for reading.

Labor Day Weekend

Hey all, well I made the trek up to the high country this weekend for the final Mountain States Cup race. I stayed up in Edwards with Koch, Jeremy and Allez. I drove up on Friday because I had an early morning on saturday. I got up around 6ish, drove all the way to keystone only to find out that short track regestration was closed and I couldn't get in. I used the time to register for Sunday's XC race, and prerode the XC course for the next day. I found out later I rode the XC course incorrectly during warm up. Anyway later on Saturday we went to Oktoberfest at Beaver Creek drank a couple of beers and hung out. Later that night a few of Matt and Jeremy's friends came up from Nebraska, and also Dana. We went on a little pub crawl on saturday night, ended up coming back pretty late considering I had a race the next morning. I woke up about 6 or so and Dana and I made the Trek down to Keystone from Edwards. We got to the race feeling a little hung over, and morale was low for the race, but I opted to race anyways. The course was nothing short of very difficult. Lots of climbing on fire roads, single track, and very technical descents. The majority of the race was climbing and we actually end up climbing the entire ski mountain. I stayed with the main group for the first climb, and first descent. When we hit the second climb, I blew up and rode solo for the last part of the race. After the second climb, you descend down to the finish, very quickly. I finished, not sure where I did but I was pumped just to finish. After the race I drove home and me and the family went the Yonder Mountain String Band last night. Fun times for sure, check them out. Looks like I will be heading up to Ft. Collins this weekend for the Beaver Meadows MTB race. Then after that its Cross time. Thanks for checking in.

Happy B-day to me

I turned 21 today, it feels good to finally drink legally...I am having my get together tonight at the Old Chicago on Broadway and Mineral tonight at 7ish, would be great if everybody came!

CX Team

Well its official everybody, I am now a member of the Boulder Cycle Sport Cyclocross team. I'm pretty pumped for the season, and can't wait for it to start! Since I am taking a little time off of school, I can work save up some money, and hopefully rip the legs off of my oppenents this season. Anyway big soccer game tonight, thanks for reading, more later.
PS New songs on the the "whats on the pod" section

Looking for a team for cross this season...

Well everyone, cross is almost here and I can't wait. I'm hopefully gonna be building up the steed for this coming season soon and getting some solid training in. I plan on doing a couple of the mountain states cup races in next couple of weeks one in Nederland and one in Keystone. Anyway wondering if any of my faithful readers know of a team that is looking for some riders to add to their squads. I've talked with Rocky Mounts a little bit and its kinda looking bleak. I talked with the Boulder Cycle Sport team about the team that they are putting together for cross and I havn't heard back yet. Anyway if anybody has some advice, or someone to contact, let me know. Thanks for reading

A little break

Sorry for the lack of updates but I'm back for good! I got back from Santa Fe on Monday afternoon for a much needed little vacation. I got to ride quite a bit while I was there, and even had a solid day in the mountains of New Mexico. I rode from my Grandparents house to Santa Fe Ski Area and back which is a grand total of about 50 miles, give or take.

This was my way up the mountain, not that steep but it sure was long, about 14 miles up.

This is when I stopped at a campground to fill up my waterbottles

The Cockpit

Anyway my ride up the mountain got cut short by some bad weather and lightning that rolled in. I was only about a mile from the top, but bad weather made me turn around. When I rolled back through town, I was cruising through the plaza in Santa Fe, when I stopped to watch a guitarist play. It didn't take me long to realize it but it was none other than Esteban, the guy who sells guitars on infomercials. I hung out and watched for awhile and it was awesome!

Saturday night was spent at the Santa Fe opera outside of town. They did a performance of "Platee" which is a story of Greek Mythology but sung in French. It was really interesting for sure and a really nice setting.

Aside from my little vacation not much has been going on, just work, ride, sleep, repeat. My last road race of the season will be Sunday, at the Bannock St. Criterium. I would ask you to come watch but it starts at 7am. Just sleep in I'll tell you about it.

Longmont Criterium and such

Well been a busy guy the past few weeks. After the Firecracker 50 I took a much needed couple of days off, went for a recovery ride 2 days later and still felt horrible. Ive never had such a hard time recovering after a race, I can only imagine what those endurance MTBikers go through. Anywho I have been still riding the mountain bike a lot, and the only time I have been riding my road bike is to work and back and stuff. Ive found the MTB training I have been doing has definately helped my endurance in races, and really giving me more solid base. I went out with a guy from work who is a semi-pro and did about 4.5 hours race pace style training in the foothills near my house. It was hard, really hard, but a good thing for sure.
I raced in the Longmont Crit on Sunday. It didn't go to well, I had a pretty bad position from the start and moving up in that field was a harder task than expected. There were lots of 90 degree turns and not much time to move up if you wanted to. There was a crash about 35 minutes in, that a lot of people were involved in. I had to unclip to avoid it, and decided to use my free lap. I did so, and the pace seemed to be even faster than before the crash. So I finished in a chase group, and that was it. I was pretty dissappointed in myself, but we have good and bad days I suppose.
I hope everybody has been watching the tour, it has been pretty exciting thus far. Its so hard to say who might pull away in this one. I thought Vino had a chance, but its gonna be hard on him for the next few weeks. My wildcard right now is Iban Mayo, he looked super strong yesterday, and he could do it! But who knows, its wide open at this point. Anywho, I'm off to get some sleep, tuesday night crit tomorrow! There are some new songs for all you folk to check out as well, take a look!

Firecracker 50

I knew it was gonna hurt, and it did, really bad. With the combination of lots of climbing technical climbing and really steep elevation, it was a hard race. I had to do 2 laps of a 25 mile course. The first part of the race went really well, and I was feeling better than I ever have in a mountain bike race for sure. Then about 20 miles in I crashed, it wasn't too bad, bike came out from under me a little bit, and I just jumped back on and tried to chase back to the group I was with. I made it back to them then I managed to crash again, this time a little worse. I chased back to the group again, and I could see the lap marker up ahead, in which case we had roughly another 25 to go. Then thats when I crashed really hard, and it wasn't one that I could just get up and keep going. While I was descending on a jeep trail I took a really bad line and ended up over the bars and onto some rocks and gravel. Lets just say I had to sit there and collect myself for a few minutes then I got back on my bike went through the finish line and decided that one lap was enough. I HATE not finishing races, but I knew I needed to throw in the towel. I watched Jay Henry of Tokyo Joe's smoke everybody and finish at least 5 minutes ahead of the second place guy which was Ryan Trebon. Overall it was a fun race and I would totally do it again in a heartbeat. A much longer race probably doesn't suit a rider like myself but, it would be a good workout, and something to work towards. Thanks for checking in...check out the new songs on my pod