Like a Kid in a Candy Store

This is a photo of one of the orange groves in the back yard of the house. The family said that there is roughly 300 orange trees and each tree can have upwards of 200 oranges. I have been eating so many that my body reeks of citrus.
The house has two types of Avacado trees. The one pictured above grows the ones that are smooth and green. Were as the other Avocado plant looks like a weaping willow tree mixed with a small bush, and that type of plant grows the Avocados that are prongy and dark.
This is the pool house were 5 of the guys on the team are staying. Im on the purple bed near the tv. This family has the right kind of pool house. The kind with a pool table, not the kind thats just propped right next to a pool. The main house is built completely around the pool
This is a photo of the house from the street. Isnt it so authentic looking. They call this style of home "Santa Fe".
The orange grove path down the to the pool house where our rooms are. You can see Big Bear Mountain in the background. I hear that climb is epic.
Apparently the trusses in the home were made from telephone poles that did not pass the test to hold up wires.... makes you wonder how strong the house is... nah their just decoration anyways. Sure looks awesome
The house was built only ten years ago, but our hosts managed to capture this aged rustic atmosphere, while managing to keep the same sturdy clean feeling that you get from a modern home. I cant think of a better place to be while preparing for and recovering during the Redlands Classic.

On a Different note. I have tried almost every allergy medicine that I can get my hands on, and over the past few days I have made several interesting conclusions. All medications have side effects, but while taking allergy meds the side effects have been more severe than simply dealing with the allergies themselves. I woke up each day with a stuffy nose and sometimes got a headache while riding hard. After taking medicine I had watery eyes, dizziness, and drowsiness. The only medicine that works is Sudafed but sadly its banned from competition, so I have to stop taking it in the case that I get drug testing during this weekends race.

In conclusion, I plan on just taking IB profen before each stage and drinking a lot of coffee. That seems to be the only clean, effective way to deal with the pollen and or what ever it is that had been ruining my experience here in California.

The time trial starts tomorrow. I am number 71, I was 70 for San Dimas... weird. The course is really rough, but luckily I got to pre ride it this time. Going easy today I rode it in 13:30 pushing 310 watts. I cant imagine the kind of power past winners have had to put out in order to be sub 9 minutes. More tomorrow.

San Dimas Stage Race

So after Friday I was relatively excited about my form...considering its still march, I am still light years ahead of where I was last season at this time. I spent a lot of time working on climbing over the winter and even though I still not at the level of pure climbers, I'm now competitive with other riders who consider themselves sprinters. In Fridays time trial I placed somewhere around a 100th place, which sounds terrible, but I was still less than two minutes behind the winner.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I received my new power meter the other day and considering I have very bad time trial skills I knew that I needed to use this device to pace myself so that I could ride within my means. Heres a photos of my current bike with my new Quarq power meter! its awesome! (www.quarq.us) I knew that I could hold a 350 watt pace for the 15 minute effort so during the event I basically starred at my power meter the entire time.

This technique was useful for ensuring that I did not blow up to early in the race, but sadly as I found out after yesterdays ride, I did not go as hard as I could on race day. During the race I ended up averaging 342 watts for the race, but yesterday I went to the TT course again and managed to average 356 watts and take almost 50 seconds off my time. Im an idiot! How did I manage to go harder in training than during the race! Enough with talking numbers, this blog isnt suppose to be a nerded out power numbers blog.

Here are some cool photos from on top of the climb that the TT was on. If you look way down the ridge you can see the small cut out of a road that snakes through the valley. That is where the time trial goes, at this point I'm about 2 miles past the time trials finish.

Needless to say, I got dropped on sunday at the road race. It was flippin hard. The course was like a 6 mile crit course. There was only 200 feet of climbing per lap but if you were not on the front you had to be very heavy on the breaks because the course was so crappy. It was definitely the most dangerous race that I have ever done. There were cars on the course, roads were to narrow to accommodate the 170 person field, and there were random concrete islands and dividers littered all over the course. Im not making excuses for getting dropped, I knew where I needed to be in order to race the race, I just was not strong enough.

Its now Monday and Im dealing with some intense allergy/sinus issues. I never have had allergies but Im just going to keep telling myself thats what it is, I dont need to be thinking that Im sick going into another huge stage race this Thursday.

They Should Teach How to Use Public Transport in School

I made it to Pasadena in pretty good time and had no trouble getting a hold of a rental bike to ride for Tuesday and Wednesday, thanks to my excellent hosts. The family that took me in are the same people who have been hosting my long time friend Colin Jascqewitz. I really lucked out.

It was crazy, their house had an orange tree, a lemon tree, and a pecan tree growing in it. literally picked an orange right off the tree and ate it. Hows that for fresh!

The family that I was staying with was Irish, and it was St. Patrick's Day! Naturally the family had a traditional style party.

Sadly I had to opt out of the majority of the festivities (drinking lots of beer), but I was able to get a few sips of Guinness in me before passing out at 8:30 west coast time. Thursday would prove to me not nearly as awesome as the previous.

What a mother F of a "journey" that was! I had to get myself from South Pasadena to Ontario, probably not more than 40 miles, but somehow it took me 5 hours to make the trek. I divulge into the specifics that much but being relatively unfamiliar with public transit, seeing as I'm from New England, I made a lot of rookie mistakes that caused me to zigzag all over the place. I managed to make the 40 mile trip into more like an 80 mile trip. I was so cracked by the time I got to the city of Ontario that I resorted to sweet talking the front desk lady at a Holiday Inn to get get to use their hotels shuttle van to drive me the last 5 miles to the Hilton hotel where I am staying. I have her 3 dollars for her troubles...

I managed to get a photo from the train of the mountains just outside of town. Its kind of blurry, but nevertheless the mountains are amazing.

Today's stage is just a prologue. Its a less than 4 mile uphill time trial (in the same mountains seen in the previous photo... FML!) I will report on how things went as soon as I can. I now have new power meter, Thanks to Quarq, so I will be able to include a little more info rather than simply it was hard.

Going Back To Cali Cali

Jittery Joes does cycling about as good as they do coffee!
So camp is offically over and it is now time to start using this equipment for what it was made to do. Im on route westward to begin my season at San Dimas Stage race this friday, followed by Redlands Stage race next week. I cant express how excited, nervous, and anxious I am to start racing.

I have put so much work into training myself for this season and this will be the first test of my fitness. This is my oppertunity for the taking and this is the year that I have to make a name for myself.

The team is putting so much pressure on me to perform well this season, and even though I like the fact that people have such high hopes for me, I cant help but be scared about the chance in which I do not live up to their expectations.

California will be an interesting trip. Make no mistake, my goals for this trip are clearly to be the best here that I can be, but in my training I have been preparing for speedweek. I fought hard to be put on the California roaster and I am so happy that I am getting the opportunity to be here to support the stage racers on our team, but I understand that this season is very long and a lack of fitness now does not mean that I will not have a successful year. Even though I would really like to win that crit.... keep your fingers crossed

First Tracks at Team Camp

my team bike is sexy! our new team kit is sexy! and our team is going to kick some serious ass this year! theres really no other way of writing it. we have some new additions to the team that will help broaden the programs strengths and help us be as dominant in the NRC as we have been in the USA crits series in 2009.

Today the team got to do a serious training ride in NC that is called "triple hump". the ride consists of a hundred mile loop that spans the three largest climbs in the winston-salem area. We finally got the oppertunity to show off how hard each of us have been training for the past 4 months by racing each other to the summit of each of the three climbs.
I am pretty pleased with my form at this point. I certinaly am not in shape to be leading the team in the races in Cali next week, but I am certain that I will prove to be a useful tool for the GC guys over the course of the two stage races. I really hope that I will be in a position to get a result in either of the crits, but its hard to say how things will pan out. I have yet to do a crit this season, or a field sprint! so we shall see how this winters longer miles and slighly less intense training will have impacted my speed.
Another cool thing was that the team had a photographer driving with us and taking shots of us as we rode. I hope that I can get a few of the pictures to post on my blog.
Right now we are on route from NC to Athens to meet our Georgian sponsers and hopefully find some more pleasent weather. I have been slightly absent from my blog lately, but I assure you that I have much to write and it will be updated soon again.

Picture from when the team got to meet the guys at Mountain Khakis and Edifice Construction