Giving Thanks

With Thanksgiving come and gone I took some time to think about what I need to be thankful for. It’s a pretty long list to say the least. But I thought I’d take the opportunity to thank those who make not just bike racing possible for me, but life possible for me.

First is my immediate family. Gosh I love them so much. My parents are always there. Growing up we didn’t always have everything, but my dad always made sure I had a bike and there was always food on the table. What we lacked in things, we made up for in love. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Their support of me now is much the same. Whether it is school, racing or just living, they do what they can to make sure I can succeed. Sometimes it’s a few bucks, sometimes it’s a car on the weekend, but it’s always done with love. They love me so much and are always there when I need them, and when I don’t. Especially my dad, beyond the respect I have for him, I can always tell that he worries about me working too hard, or training too much. He helps me stay sane, and that isn’t always easy.

 And then of course there is my sister. We haven’t always acted like it, but we love each other. One of Ellie’s friends said the other day that we are closer than most siblings. It’s so true. We are two of the biggest goofballs around, and we seriously sometimes think on the same wavelength. Besides that she is usually the one to come pick me up from Madison and bring me home, or drive me to a race. I am amazed at how much she willingly does for me, usually without even being asked. She is a college student just like me and sometimes I wonder how she has the time to help me out as much as she does. She is also trying to make it as a musician. She has the most amazing talent, not just with her voice, but in the way that she sings. Check her out on Youtube! Love you Ellie!

Then of course there is the extended family. On both sides of the family there is a lot of love. On my mom’s side there are the crazies, and I mean that in the best way. They are all so alive and full of love. I don’t see all of them a whole bunch, but when I do it’s like we saw each other the other day because we are just so comfortable. On my dad’s side of the family the story is much the same. They live all over the place so I don’t see them so much, and not nearly as much as I’d like to. But it is the same thing as with my mom’s side, every time we see each other it’s like we hang out every day. They are definitely not as crazy as the other side of family, but I definitely get my work ethic from that side of the family. All my aunts and uncles are busy people on that side and they set a good example of how to work hard, but still make time for those you love and for yourself. Love all you guys!

Then there are my friends. I’ve got a few different circles, but they all share something in common, they are all enthusiastic and extremely supportive. I’ve got my UW cycling friends. Talk about a fun and motivated group of people. I love training with them and racing with all of them. The entire atmosphere at the club is easy going and always playful. I’ve got my friends from Milwaukee too. Robotics friends from high school who are busy people like me, and understand and relate to those pressure I feel every once and a while. Plus they know how to have fun and relieve that stress.

Then finally there is my team, KS Energy Services/Team Wisconsin. I don’t want that to sound like I have to talk about them because although I would either way, it has become more than a team to me throughout the past year. It’s a support system, and a great group of friends that are all there to support one another. Obviously there are the sponsors, most of which are small to large business owners from around the region who love to ride and ride with us. Dennis from KS, Jason from MC2, and a new sponsor this year Brent from Emery’s bike shop along with Trek. It’s these companies that stick there neck out there for us to ride. They put their name on my chest for a reason and I’m proud to ride for them. I’d like to think that it’s a mutual respect because I know that I respect them beyond comprehension. For instance, I remember when I rode in the Make-a-Wish run as the pace rider with Dennis from KS Energy Services. I had a lot of fun riding and hanging out. I was even a little surprised at their speed. With how busy he is, he was still putting the hammer down. But beyond that we spent some time talking about life and things in general. In just a few minutes I learned so much about him and the lessons he has learned. Just invaluable things you can’t learn from a book.

But of course in addition to the sponsors, there are the riders and administration that make it all possible. The MTB boys and my Cat 3 squad are tight. I think we all agree that through racing together we have become great friends and that’s something I’ll cherish forever. Then there is Dave Eckel, the director/president/magician. He does it out of the love for the sport. I had a chance to hang out and talk with him this past weekend at Jingle Cross. He is a really cool guy who puts so much into the team. Again I am proud to ride for the team and Dave because I know that my success is their success and I love to honor that.

With the CX season starting to hit its final leg, I’m starting to look into next year. I’m hoping to do some big things next year, because it my last big shot at something special before I graduate. It’s all really cool and I couldn’t do it without the support of my team, my friends and my family.

Thank you all so much.

Jingle Cross Part 1: Just having fun

This past weekend was Jingle Cross Rock. For those of you who don’t follow cycling, Jingle Cross is a big international race held at the Iowa City county fairground every thanksgiving weekend. It’s a pretty big race and from what I’ve seen and heard, it’s a blast!

Dave Eckel, my team director and good friend suggested that I give it a shot, after many other had done the same. So I registered and packed up Wednesday morning for both Thanksgiving with the family and a weekend full of CX racing. I didn’t get done with work until around 8:30 and got home feeling really beat. I grabbed everything and drove home to Milwaukee with my sister and her friend. My sister came to Madison once again to pick me and I can’t even tell her how much that means to me. She is really awesome. But I got home and was about ready to fall asleep. I got the laundry going and fell asleep hanging out with my mom. The next morning I spent with my dad watching the packers making the Lions look silly. It was a really good time and it helped that the packers killed the lions.

After that we headed out to my aunt’s house for dinner. It was a nice little gathering, just my aunt, my uncle and my immediate family. My family is crazy. After talking with roommates about their Thanksgiving, I realize that they are not criminally insane or scary crazy like most families, but crazy still. But that’s a good thing. I love the time I spent with them. It’s never a dull moment and there is truly love in everything we say and do. It’s like hanging out with you best buds for Thanksgiving. Conversation ranged from funny to not so politically correct but still funny throughout dinner, then ended the night watching old concerts on TV while talking about much the same as we did during dinner.

It was an absolutely relaxing night and the exact thing I needed after what turned into a stressful week of exams, homework and then finally a long day at work. But it was all productive and that gave me a good feeling. I was relieved to lay my head down on the pillow after putting the final load of laundry in the washer Thursday night and get some rest.

That’s all for now. Writing this has given me the motivation to do my homework. I had better strike while the iron is hot.

State Champs

So like I said, state champs were this past weekend. There are a few reasons why this race is hard. The course last year was pretty tough. And from what I understand it’s been similar for a long time. The course has plenty of tight technical sections, but if I had to call out the most defining feature it is definitely the long straightaways. The fact of the matter is that riding across a grass field on a bike is hard. In addition to that, the fact that a jersey is on the line people seem to go harder. This is true from Cat 4 up to the P/1/2. There was an obvious absence of some of the big dogs from Wisco, but I’d like to think that the guys who took the top step could have given even Tristan or Brian a run for their money.

Really love the barrier section in Hales Corners

To start think off I missed my pedal. Something I was really hoping would go away since I switched to Shimano pedals, but besides missing my pedal on the start they are a million times better. That missed pedal got compounded with the two riders in front of me throwing some bows and pitching me back. Things opened up and I think I went into the first corner 10^th or so, no awesome as I like to start ahead of where I finish. But those first two laps were tough. I really would have liked to ride in the front group for a while and see how I measured up, especially because they seemed to be either playing games or not really much faster than I was. But by the time I had a shot to get to them, they were long gone and the gap was huge.

Lionel went back in forth for the first
half of the race

I ended up following Lionel’s wheel from lap 2 to about lap 4. I was able to ride with him, but I don’t think he was putting the full gas on. About half way though he passed and dropped me when I dabbed my foot down. The good news is that while we rode together we passed about 3-4 guys putting him in 6^th and myself in 7^th. Once he got away I had a hard time fully finding my rhythm until I noticed I was getting caught by a Magnus guy and my teammate Mark Norton. I did want to get caught so I focused on keeping the gaps and then tried to reverse it. But They caught me. I rode Mark’s wheel for a lap or 2 and after a little crash I got back around him while the Magnus guys was stuck back. I gassed it hard to open up a gap.

Once the gap was there I tried to maintain the pace. I remembered some breathing exercises that I had done during the week to help open up my chest. So I focused on riding hard and breathing deep. I was able to really pin it a lot harder than I thought I could and was able to hold off the chase. I finished 7^th behind Lionel and one spot out of the money. Solid race, but I really think I learned a lot about how my body work, so a little personal victory for me.

The short sand pit was long enough to
slow you down if you didn't ride the ruts
well. 

Next week I’ll be home for Thanksgiving before heading to Iowa for Jingle CX. This will be the biggest race I’ve done on a cross bike, and I think I have a solid shot at a win in the 2/3 field. That is if I don’t die from overeating Thursday night.

Collegiate CX and State Champs

Not much in the way of biking has been going on around here in the last few weeks. I kind of thought about it and realized I haven’t ridden my bike for training in about 3 weeks. That’s not to say I’m completely off the bike, but nothing with any intensity. Basically I need to get to work. I think the hardest I’ve gone was those few days when I was almost late to work…almost.

I was thinking that it might be dumb to write about what I’ve really been doing because it’s been school. But I guess I don’t really know what boring to read about because I read textbooks for fun. In any event, that’s what I’ve been up to, school. Like I said before, I’ve been working really hard and it doesn’t seem to get any easier. I don’t seem to understand things much better. I have been relaxing a little more though. But I think that’s just the way I’m wired. I work well under pressure. In fact I think I need that pressure to push me to excel. The good news is that I’m starting to find some joy in school and learning again. Reminds me of when I was younger. I used to be so fascinated by everything and I’m getting that back. I’d like to say that I understand everything, but I think it’s more fun when you don’t.

So I’ve been studying my ass off during the week and the last two weeks I’ve been bashing my head in racing. Two weekends ago was the UW-Madison CX race. It was a huge hit as people loved the course and it was really well run thanks to the awesome volunteers and the leadership of Papa Grady. My race however didn’t go as planned. I was really hoping to dominate. Ok, maybe not dominate, but I think I had a win in my legs. But with all the running around and running the race, I didn’t eat much. With 2 laps to go I had a minute gap back to 2^nd. I was feeling awesome and I was dominating. But I bonked, hard. Everything went numb and my vision went bad. I could barely see where I was going. My teammate caught me and got the win. The gap was reversed, but I was able to hold off for second. Tough way to lose, but lesson learned.

The next day was the Silver Lake Boarder Battle. My team KS Energy Services/ Team Wisconsin was putting it on so I skipped the collegiate race in Ripon to show my support. It sounded like the Ripon course was awesome, but so was the Silver Lake course. I had a decent race, things settled out pretty quickly. I filed in for 5^th and was caught mid-way through the race by the two behind me. I couldn’t hold on and finished 7^th. Not a bad finish against a solid field. Overall, I was satisfied with the weekend.

Maybe sometime this week I’ll write about the State Champs, but overall it was really fun. I certainly learned a lot and had a pretty good race. I would have liked to finish up with the leaders more, but I was just off the pace back in 7^th.

Back to homework, these lab reports won’t write themselves. Or can they? Hum, maybe I should work on that instead of the reports.

Burning the Candle at Both Ends

After nationals I took some time to relax and come back down to earth after a long time up in the clouds pretending I was a bike racer. I had a chance to add up my races that I’ve done and I have done 54 races since late February. I don’t really have a good handle on how many is a lot but I feel like this is close. Plus to add on to that I’m still looking forward to CX this winter. But then there is a problem.

Last week I tried to get back into training, it didn’t happen. I’d like to say that I don’t know why, but that’s a lie. I know exactly why. I think I’m tired, I think I need more than a week off. Stack on top of that the fact that school is seriously getting harder and harder each day, The time to ride is just drifting away. The next step for me is to wonder if that is a problem. I still love to ride my bike, don’t get me wrong. That’s the funny thing. All I want to do is ride my bike until I get the chance to, then I find something else to do. I feel strange not training. But it’s not a bad strange, it’s sort of content. But like I said, school is getting harder and harder, or I’m getting dumber. Both are possible.

During the early part of the semester I didn’t study all that much. I spent most of my time just doing the bare minimum on homework and showing up to class. So it made sense when things didn’t always make sense and there were little parts of the material I didn’t fully understand. But in the past 2 weeks I have been studying. I have been doing most of the assigned reading. Not only am I doing the homework, but I’m doing extra problems. So you would think that my grades would improve and the test would be easier; but nope. So I guess I’m saying I’m a little frustrated with it right now. I feel like I was moving through school at a gentle walking pace before, but now that I’m trying to run there is a brick wall in front of me; I’m spinning my wheels if you will. I guess I’ll keep on keeping on and hope that it just takes time for me to catch up and feel like I’m on top of things. Because I still feel like I’m behind.

On top of that, my phone died. Not the end of the world I know, but it’s kind of sucky when you’re social life slows to a crawl when everything else in life gets tougher.

But now I will take some time to reflect. First of all, to reflect on what I’ve written so far. This post wasn’t supposed to be about how tough things are and just me complaining about it all. But rereading it, I think that’s what it is, at least so far.

So what is the lesson in all this? That is after all, what I started this blog to do. I wanted to learn about myself and training by writing things down. I think the lesson is that It is important to remember that we are all human. That there is only so much we can do. And when we put our heart and soul into something we can accomplish some pretty awesome things. But it all cost something. We have to take that into account to make sure that we still enjoy the hard work. And that sometimes we need to take breaks from our focus and spice things up.

About now is the is the time where I would look around the internet for sweet racing pictures, but I didn’t race. So here is a sweet picture of me not racing.

Thanks for reading!

Trance Mix November 2011

Ah, its seems like it's been a while since I've posted. Life really slows down when you're not training and racing all over the place. I've spent the time off listening and mixing. I was a little sad from not riding, but nothing a little uplifting trance can't fix. Seriously, this shit is so fucking uplifting. Hope you enjoy listening to it, I know I enjoyed making it!.

Saturday at nationals: HTFU

After some success on the previous day I headed back to the room and began recovering. I knew that one of the big issues with altitude was recovering so I wanted to make sure I was doing everything I could. I took a warm shower, gave myself a leg massage and put on compression socks. Then I ate a big meal and of course I drank a lot of water. Skip and I did our laundry and prepared for the next day.

The short track course was pretty fun. I woke up early enough to watch the D1 women run their race. It started in the same spot as the XC course and instead of going into the woods for the single track, it kept going up into a pump track that was built into the side of the hill. It just kept going up from there. It was punctuated by a steep little hairpin at the top, then a fast and fun downhill back to the start; simple but effective. I did three warm up laps before heading to start chute for my call up.

I got the same spot on the front row, right where the mud was thick and deep. Same bad start, so I had to fight back from that when the gun went off. I was able to keep good position through the first corner, but once we hit the hill I was completely dead. I can’t describe it any other way, I was completely drained. I started breathing really heavy, but it didn’t matter how many deep breaths I took, I just couldn’t get on top of it. I struggled on the first two laps. Then on the third lap, I started to feel a little better. As if I needed extra motivation, I was told that I was going to get pulled at the end of that lap. Holy crap! I put the hammer down. Not hard though. I gently set the hammer down on a soft surface.

I was pulled after completing only three laps. Ouch, my pride hurts.

Overall I was completely disappointed with my performance. I know there were people who did worse than I did, and I should be proud of my accomplishments. But I was really hoping for more. This was the big goal for the year, the big race that all the hard work boiled down to. I had some great results this year, but it’s disappointing to miss out on the big one. Ended up 48^th in the short track

After flying home and taking some deep breaths (not really, I stayed up all Sunday night finishing homework) I took the time to read some of the race reports and watch some videos. If you look at the results, the top spots were all schools from altitude. In all the post-race interviews, the question came up, do you think altitude played a big role in the racing? The answer in all cases was not really, or maybe a little, it’s not a big deal. I’m sure there were other factors, but I think it is completely the opposite. I think altitude played a huge role. Definitely in the STXC, but still in the XC race. Racers who live and train at altitude have a huge advantage, both at and not at altitude. Again, I’m sure there are other factors, but I think altitude plays a big role. Having said that, is there anything that can be done about it? No, nothing at all. I just have to hope that what the mountain schools gain in fitness, I gain in mental fortitude. I just have to hope that I’m tougher than they could ever be.

And I think there is something to that. If you didn’t read Tristan Schouten’s last blog about the Colorado races, you should probably do that right meow. http://tristanschouten.blogspot.com/2011/11/say-what.html

Tristan is a shining example of the kind of racer that lives in the Midwest. I have looked up to him for a while now, but in the past few months of the CX season, he has really been showing his stuff. He shows that you can work, go to school, whatever it is that you do and still kill it out there against those lucky few who are able to focus on cycling full, or nearly full time. Plus he does this all with a cool head about him. He gets by on just being tough. I think we can all take something from that. Take a page out of Tristan’s book. Don’t worry about what other people have, don’t have, or how you are at a disadvantage, just go out there and let it rip. And don’t forget to be thankful for what you do have, and the people who support you.

Well, thank for reading. That’s all for now. I’ll be taking some time off, but not much. I’ll be out racing CX in the next few weeks, just getting some fitness and bike time in. Look for me out at some WCA cross races; maybe some bigger races like Jingle cross too. But the next big goal is CX nats. Again, big thanks to those who support me. Every text, tweet, and message helps. Huge thanks to my Dad, he’s a man of few words, but each one is incredibly powerful. Also my mom and her most frequent baking ingredient, love. She just gave me a huge batch of cookies. Probably shouldn’t eat them all, but they are just so damn good.