Getting Back to the Game

Man, it has been such a long time since I have last written a post. I want to apologize to the loyal select few who have chosen to read read my blog over the past few months, I've been kinda lazy. Well, there is more to it than just being lazy.

Speed week was a total wash for me personally, and even though I do not speak as a representative for the team, I am pretty sure that as a team we did not live up to every ones expectations. Last season Speed week was my first team race, and our team absolutely crushed the competition, it was really hard for me to deal with having such high expectations for myself and then going to the race and not performing. Clearly there were unforeseen obstacles that limited my performance, but that aside, people only care about results.

I choose to wait a while to write a post about speed week because I am determined to keep my blog from becoming an arena for me to make excuses for under performance, and all I had until now were excuses.

Every race at speedweek had a video summery made that can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/user/USACrits2010 . Id say that they are a little biased against us as I dont think we were ever mentioned in any of the videos, but that is kind of a representation of how the week went. I am preferential to the Athens Video as it does give some mention to the epic chase that our team put on after missing the winning move....

In the end I came out of speedweek with 2nd in the U25 classification, 7th in the Sandy Springs Crit, and 11th overall in the Series. All of these results were far from what I had expected, but there is not enough time to dwell on my shortcoming. I needed pick myself back up and get ready for the next showdown.

After speedweek I had 3 weeks of solid training before my next race in Wilmington Delaware. This was one of the most lonely 20 days of training I have ever done because all but 2 of the rides I did were solo. I did 725 miles by myself in the past 3 weeks, and it totally sucked! I am pretty sure that I now hate the new White Panda - Versus Mixtape, because I listened to it about a hundred times. Dont get me wrong, the tape is awesome and you should download it now (link included!) I'm just sick of it

BJ Basham from Peaks Cycling Group is my coach and he has really put the hammer down on me to work on my 1 to 5 minute power since the California trip, and the extended training block that I just went through really gave him the opportunity to beat me up with intervals without much rest.

Forgive me if this sounds stupid, but training actually works. When you have a coach who can identify your weaknesses and can keep you working on them, you get better. I haven't had that direction before and especially now that I have a power meter it is awesome to be able to see how quickly my body can adapt to handle the types of training I am doing. Makes me feel very confident that with BJ's direction, I can get really really fast.

The one thing that know one seems to be able to help me with is how to win a big race. I feel like I am strong enough now to contest these big races, but for some reason shit always goes wrong.

Wilmington Grand Prix NRC Crit was two days ago and I had more crap happen to me that ruined my chance of contesting the finish. For the first time this season our team races well. I say "well" because for the first time we races like how we did last season, and last season we killed it every day. As we team we stopped waiting for other teams to dictate the race and we went for it from the first lap and initiated almost every breakaway on the day. Sadly, in the races most decisiveness moments it started to rain. Our team had three guys in the top 5 who all ate shit on the down hill because the pavement turned to glass the instant it got wet. I was won of them. Right before I crashed I was preparing to attack because I knew that the rain would cause the field to hesitate some, and the field was already exhausted from the previous hour of hard racing. Anyways, I ate shit along with two other teammates and almost immediately after 2 riders attacked and got away and stayed away until the finish. After getting back into the race I already had lost the race.

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Cycling news captured a photos of my teammate Will Hoffarth falling in the same stretch that so many of us had fallen the previous lap.

I not bitching/making excuses for not performing because I clearly didnt adjust my riding style quick enough to avoid crashing once the pavement got wet. Tons of guys didnt crash... so they were all doing something right. However, I am still really really bummed that my results dont represent the race that I raced. I need to finish the job and get it done.

Luckily I have a ton of races in the next few weeks and if I have the legs now, Ill likely still be fast in these upcoming races. Wednesday we are racing in Basking Ridge NJ, and on Memorial day we are racing in Somerville NJ. Then we are driving back to Winston-Salem for the night and Will Neil and myself are leaving for our All-Star trip to Tulsa Oklahoma for 3 days of Crit racing, competing for a prize purse of over a hundred thousand dollars! Great timing to be coming into some fitness.