Let it be done...

With four days of hard racing in the Nashtucky, I am home and happy. I finished which is more than I can say for many others. The first three days were hard but no where near as difficult as the last day. Aside from the detour on the wrong road, and high temperatures, the course was tough. I was able to avoid the feed zone mayhem, and stay with the front group until the huge 3 mile climb on the course. It was a really difficult one that didnt really allow you to set much a rhythm until you were too far into to set a rhythm. Either way, i finished and am very happy to complete my first ever stage race so that is done.

Im back home for a day or two before heading back to Oxford. I also start work today so thats fun. Nothing like 4 days of bikes, then coming home to work on bikes!

Thanks to everyone who called me and kept up with the race. The support was nice!
Our start on the final day

Coming up the climb the first time. It hurt.

Keep The Rubber Side Down...

This is why you need to not wreck in 100+ person fields. This is my teammate Allen Morris. ouch!

he actually blistered his hand sliding...

the good wound.


Todays crit was hard, I lost time on the GC... whatever. Ill have pictures up soon when I can get them off my internal memory. tomorrow = 100+ miles. Yaaaaaay

two down and two to go... Nashville pt. duex

Yesterdays events were the normal routine for race day. Waking up bright and early, a little unhappy about my previous night, hotel breakfast, starbucks and on the road for our little transfer to Franklin TN. The course was pretty intense, but nothing suprising for here. It was going to be 66 mi with 10 climbs racking up 1,100 ft. of elevation change per lap. The race started as expected, with the pro guys of Jelly Belly, Jittery Joes, and HEalthnet controlling the field but nothing was going away that early. After a few laps of sitting in, an attack went in from Healthnet that found one of their riders off the front in a mix and match group of pro and strong elite guys. Jittery Joes tried to control, but not luck was on their side today. 4 Laps in, Karl "the beast" Menzies put in a hella hard attack hurting what was left of the main field. I quickly started moving up when the field started to mellow, and got a chance to give it a go. Off the front with 4 others was fun, but once we got things organized jittery joes, and krystal elite was having NONE of it and drove hard to bring us back. In a poor attempt to get something going I attacked our group on a climb only to be caught 4 or so miles away.
The last lap hurt the legs with Jittery joes lining it out right after the feed zone leading up to the long climb. BY this time the field was dwindling and exploded on the last climb. My unlucky break was that I had a badly timed dropped chain that found me getting gapped and trying to chase back on. In the end I lost 46 seconds to the main field with one of the Healthnet riders winning the sprint in the break.

Other news:
1. Teammate Allen Morris found the going get tough putting in a very good finish in the 3's bunch sprint only to clip a roadside cone and find out how pavement feels at 40 mph. not fun seeing a 16 y.o. kid with gnarly road rash and blistered fingers but then again, thats racing for you!
2. Rich Harper from the back home team of A&F almost took a huge with for them at Raleigh Twilight finishing 3rd. Awsome for them.
3. Erik Zabel and Bjarne Riis suck because they take drugs and make our sport look bad. THANKS DICKS!
Loaded and ready to head south!

My lifeblood on the way down, AND in nashville, AND before races AND on the way home after a 100+ mile RR tomorrow!!!! Caffeine!

Nashville oh Nashville... (pt.1)

Firstly, thank GOD for Panera bread. So wonderful, until you look up how many calories you just ate in a suffle and a pumpkin muffie! AHHHHH. I got a chance to go drive the TT course for the Soto Stage race and it's pretty awsome. Some nice technical turns, two climbs, seems like it will be REALLY fast. Im heading out there this morning to ride it and see how it feels on the legs.

Tomorrow is the circuit race running 66 mi. and covering 6,600 ft. of elevation change. Yay!

Sunday is the crit DOWNTOWN in NASHVILLE. I ran into a few people at Borders last night buying my normal race weekend reading and they were saying they knew a lot of people coming to watch, so it sounds like the crowds will come! Exciting.

Monday is the beast 109 mi road race ending on a multi-mile ascent to the finish. I'm feeling pretty motivated and excited, if only my legs felt the same. We'll see how it goes. FInally, I have to say, Brentwood is INSANE in the money aspect of life. My host house is massive, but is dwarft by their neighboring 2.6 million dollar home. WOW!

KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN FOR PICTURES; ill be posting again soon!

Here we go again

Two races in a little more than 12 hours. Yaya! As I previously mentioned, saturday marked the start of the crit season for me as I made it to Lancaster, oh for a lovely little Tym Tyler crit. Basic four corner, not technical, not hard course. Luckly A&F brough 12 riders so needless to say it was not so fun. Given the circumstances, and the addition of a Colavita pro, we were in for a fun night. Tim popped pretty hard early on and I know it was up to me to salvage anything I could from the race. After an hour and a half of racing I found myself rolling in 4th in the bunch behind the A&F 1,2,3. Overall I was pretty happy, I was able to put in some hard efforts and motivate the field a few times. I'm really looking forward to Soto.

As for sunday's race, I again found the wrong side of the pavement in the most negative race I have ever ridden in. A wasted 30 bucks and I was on my way back to Wooster with a full belly of Panera Bread Co. and coffee. Whatever. In all honesty, I think I would have lost my sanity if this race continued the way it had.

So now it's me signing off from Seattles in Wooster to head home for two days then Nashville for Edgar Soto Memorial Stage Race in Nashtucky! Here we GO!

Drillin it into turn 3


Chillin in the field.


I dont reccomend attacking with an open bag of gel in your mouth... it can get messy!

Pretty.... (random!)

Today marks the start of the 2007 crit season for me and my team and im a bit mixed on my feelings. Although I absolutely love crits (nothing like going 25-30 mph for an hour on a pan flat course lots of times!) I am feeling a little indifferent. I'm not actually very good at crits and I find it hard to justify driving two hours to race for one and drive back 2 hours. Especially when it's put on by people who really dont pay out all that much. Anyway, I'll do it, whatever. It's better than not racing I suppose.

Aside from that, Tomorrow I will be heading to chipawa creek to do the hilly, yet supposedly fun race up there. I'm not driving so WHO CARES! I got nothing better to do! I am excited to post some pictures today. I finally got my tubies in and mounted so I took some "real" pictures of the bike. Cyclingnew.com style:

Isn't she pretty?

Conservative with the allow classic bars and 4 axis stem from Ritchey

SRAM

Lot's-o-carbon. The classic bends look nice atop a beefy and decorative headtube and 58 mm deep American Classic Rims!

FSA K-Force keeps the beefy and carbon theme running strong!

Artsy... ahhh yeah!


Foaming Rant:In case we didn't already find ourselves wondering what the hell some pro's (seeming like MOST = SOME) are thinking or doing to the sport of cycling today let's give it up to Floyd Landis to not only (not) inject himself with testosterone, something that would benefit him none, unless he was hoping to persue a career in track cycling after his tour de france victory, but lets give him credit in surrounding himself with such intelligent and responsible people. It seems his now (ex-) manager thought it would be a good idea to call up Mr. Greg LeMond, who we all know can handle criticism and sexually harrass the man who has a bad family history of sexual harrassment. Way to go mr. Geoghegan, way to go. As if riders were already making the sport entertaining enough, now we have spectators involved making it that much more entertaining! awsome. Check out the article here along with some other fun doping stories. Maybe if it keeps up we can see a podium of guys who are all excluded and my boy Kloden and Frank Schlek can be up there.... I'M CROSSING MY FINGERS HERE.

Anywho, off to pack and run to the bike shop and get my skewer back since they failed to do so yesterday when they changed my cassette! Wish me luck for today and tomorrow!

A week away!

SO with no racing this past week it's been training training training for Nashville, TN. Fun times. This week has been a blast, I made it up to Wooster to visit my friend Seth Buckwalter from Miami and some of his friends. Good people, good times. After some hanging out I did get a chance to get out with the local fast guys in the lovely northern Ohio weather that seemed much more Belgian-esk than Ohio, but who really cares. a 20+ mph rainy training ride and putting the wood to some guys felt good. I can't wait to be racing again this weekend. Figured I would throw up some fun ones from this weekend. Enjoy!

Breakfast... sorry, i didnt have patience to take the pic before I ate it! But yes that is a "Daymaker" Large coffee with 3 expresso shots! yummmm


my big legged friend Seth....


The Gammer's bike!


Crit racing starts for me this week so it's back home for a day, Columbus, and heading to cleveland on sunday. Wish me luck.

This is why we can't have nice things...

IF you read my last post I explained the busted bike... this is the outcome. Pretty huh. This one is going to be short, but im heading to Wooster in a few hours to visit the Buckwalter with Kerman, get some golfing in and a good ride and COFFEE at Seattles. ROCK ON!

Happy Momma's Day!

I got a chance to get away from racing for the weekend and head into town to spend the weekend with my momma for mothers day weekend. I know, how cute. After a night spent ripping a bike apart with my coach tim, I got a chance to hit up a graduation party for my cousin and brother. Nothing better than 4 hours on a bike fallowed by a large meal and CAKE! Sunday was mothers day and I stayed off the bike in the morning considering I had no leg warmers with me and it was 40 some degrees. brr. Had a good day at church and then headed to one of the family favorite restraunt The White House for a heck of a salmon dinner with muffins. Yummy. Needless to say, I didn't lose weight this weekend. On a cool note, my cousin is now rockin a BMW M3, which is a helluva fun time to give gas. Thank god I ride bikes now, and dont drive like a maniac.

As for the bike riding, im coming onto form pretty well I think. I get to see this coming weekend with a crit in Lancaster, OH and then im heading up to either cleveland for race at the lakes or Indiana to test the legs in a 40 K tt. It's their state competition and I would love to go out and take the win ahead of them all! Prolly wont do it though. I need to get a little more racing in and the cleveland race sounds like it will be a nice tough field and a fun course. Well see. Less than 2 weeks until Soto Memorial stage race and the field is starting to look impressive. Frank Pipp of Healthnet are coming off some results and Menzies again showed his strong man traits taking a day in the leaders jersey at Joe Martin this past weekend. Oh well. Should be fun getting a fun travel race in with all the guys. As for today, a few hours on the bike and heading up to work on fit stuff with coach Tim on the TT and Road bike. Ill try and get some pics up if they arent top secret wind tunnel pics!


The Women in my life.... Screw relationships.

The BMW... preeeeetty! (kinda fast.haha)

It's all for the kiddies...

Ill be honest, the past few days (weeks more precisely) have been a little up and down. Moving out of the apartment is proving to be a task, relationships suffering, my summer scedule getting all messed up. The normal. Yesterday was a nice release. My team directors and I headed to Troy Elementary for a 6th grade presentation about health, fitness, and cycling. It was a blast. Nothing like answering the amazing and in-comprehendable questions those people can ask. Coupled with the gnarly Creme de Caramel coffee I had at the local shop in town, and a mollasis cookie (dont know if I spelled that right) It was a good day. I am hoping to get some pictures from them, and the newpaper feature we are getting in town there! It's exciting to see the impact we can make on kids just becuase we are "athletes" and ride bikes... if only they knew!

As for now, im off to enjoy the awsome weather we have here and spend 3 hours or so on the bike. Its time to start geering up for Edgar Soto Memorial Stage race (http://www.sotomemorial.org/). Looks like Karl Menzies is going to be there with some teammates so it's time to GET FIT! Kill!

A long drive for this...

To MICHIGAN!

Saturday the Kerman a.k.a Alex headed to Michigan to start the Hell of the North Cone Azalia. It's been a much anticipated race both of us have been looking forward to doing. After getting lost in Milan (where the race was to start) we made it to our hotel, unpacked, and headed into Ann Arbor for the evening. Yes I'm a Buckeye 100% but Ann Arbor is a fun little city. We found some lovely little seafood get up with a patio seat and had a good bowl of shrimp pasta, and enjoyed the "scenery". It was a little weird being the U's graduation weekend AND the local prom, but the town was a buzz so it was pretty cool. After stuffing our faces I had to jump across the street too Kilwin's for a nice cup of coffee and $15 in dark chocolate. Gamm tells me it makes you fast, and considering he's been faster than me, I took his advice. Mission fat and happy: ACCOMPLISHED. The last stop for the evening was the most amazing beer sellar I have ever seen for a six pack for the two of us to enjoy, and barnes and noble for a cycling magazine to read. A good night of a few brews and sports center is hard to top when your stuffed to the gills.

Sunday started well. Up early for a good breakfast of oatmeal, fruit, and a pastry and on the bike by eight to ride the course for the first time. I soon realized why this race is seen as the tough man's race of the midwest. Two long sections of dirt and gravel road cluttered with nice basketball sized potholes and a 30-35 mph wind, meant today was going to hurt. The turnout for the race was great, and considering the weather was 60-70 degrees I can see why. Appearently that doesn't happen much in Michigan this time of year. Anywho, Breezer from RiteAid Pro Cycling was there along size some Priority Health Riders as well as a full squad from A&F and Paul Martin and Kirk Albers from Texas Roadhouse. The race had a decisive move go early but I was happy to make the first chase group and be active. 4 laps in coming through a turn BOOM. No more tire. As I pulled to a stop I looked up just in time to see our fields wheel truck buzz by without seeing me. Race over for me! grr. In the end Greg Christian from Michigan state took the win ahead of breezer with the two roadhouser's coming in a few seconds behind. Sad end to a race where I felt good.

I hope to get some pictures from this weekend if I can, so if I do they will be up ASAP. ALSO congrats to my teammate Justin on his 4th place at Wilkesville, congrats on ur first good 1,2 result! Also congrats to MARK on his overall series win of the US Southeast Criterium Series! FASTEST REDHEAD I KNOW! Remember I have dirt on you if you go pro (the lake/shower) so dont forget me brother!

-dee OUT!-