Colorado

Well nats is tommorow, I excited, and nervous. This is my first nationals and there are 50 people in my class. I am pretty much banking on the normal Jr. start and having them bonk half way through. Oh yah I got second last weekend at winter park point to point, I felt good. I didn't bonk and altitude wasn't bad. Here we go.........

Register!!

Register For

The Long Pine Classic!!!!!!!!


The one lap course is going to be awesome. It's michaux what do you expect.

I wanna race

I haven't raced in 2 weeks and I'm starting to loose my mind.


I'm getting tired of rain, really really tired of it.


Maybe a full weekend of racing at marysville will quech my thirst.


At this point I am just counting down the days until a full 3 weeks in Colorado, which I must say I am very very excited about!

This made me laugh

Don't worry he is okay.

I guess I'm a little behind....

It the last 2 weeks a lot has happened. I don't really have much time so I will make this quick. The day before Iron Hill Gunnar and I went up to the PA high school state championships which is part of Zach's Tuesday night series in May. With a small turnout it was only me and Gunnar in the Varsity class, so we decided to save it for Iron Hill and only race 1 out of the 3, 3 mile laps. It was a very slow course with about 24 minute laps, it was more about handling then strength. It had a lot of logs and some really cool creek crossings. But Gunnar got the best of me and we headed home. Now all I had to do was recover for Iron Hill as best I could. On the drive down there were some rain showers and apparently in the morning it had pored. So the course was pretty wet in some spots, which made it very interesting. Off the start I was about 5th into the single track which wasn't very smart because I got stuck behind two slower juniors. I lost some time on the leaders and couldn't make it back up. But I felt strong for it being my first serious XC race back. But the podium was stacked with Cyclesports/Fast Forward Team with Jacob in first, Forest in second, and me in third.

This past weekend was the Hoo-Ha! This is my second time in 3 weeks driving over 5 hours to a race and I'm starting to get used to it. This race was really worth it, not only was it fun but this was my qualifier for nationals. We all prerode a lot of the lap the day before and it was brutal. It was the kind of course that I love, the kind I always ride, go up for a long time, then go down for a long time. Off the mass start I went pretty hard to make sure I didn't make the same mistake I did at Iron Hill. I was in the top 5 or so going into the first single track section. There was a junior right in front of me, I rode his wheel for a while until we got to the climb, I got into a pretty fast tempo and was able to hold on up to the top. There was a lot of traffic right before the downhill which slowed me down a lot. Once I got to the top I turned around and Jacob had made his way up to me.

Cresting the loooooong climb with Jacob right behind me

Now we got to the most technical part of the course, also the most backed up. I had to walk many of section that I could have atleast ran. Once past all this I made alot of passes on the downhill but still couldn't see Jacob. When I made it to the bottom I hammered up what I thought was the last hill, but we didn't preride the whole course and there was still about 3 miles in the course. Luckily I still had enough to keep a good pace. I finished 2nd and most importantly I'm qualified for nationals.

Finally I can race

Well it's been a while since I have filled you in on what happening. I can race, which I am very happy about. My first race of the season was the wilmington grand prix, it was a really really fast race with a scary turn 3. All you need to know is that I got dropped. After the race Jeff came back with us and was going to stay at gunnars for the night. But we ended up doing a night ride at Spring Mount which was fun. Then the next day we went down to wissahickon for a long day which didn't turn out as planned. We were going to do a loop then ride to Cadence, then get lunch, then do another lap which we figured would take about 6 hours. But with flats and a person (who will remain nameless) forgetting all of there riding stuff we got our 6 hours outside but only about 4 hours of riding time. By the end we were all super tired and couldn't wait to get home. Now it was time for recovery with Burn 24 hour challenge coming up. The team in order was Forrest, Jeff, Sam, Me, and Dan. Zach was doing it solo. After the 8 hour ride down we finally got to the hotel and went to bed. The next morning it was time to get to the venue.

The course was amazing, probably one of the best race courses ever. It was super fast, with lots and lots of rootes. I felt pretty good on the first lap, but not my best. When I got back I soon found Brian sprinting back saying Forest flatted (luckily it was about 100 yards away from the transition area and he was allowed to run back) Jeff was abruptly waken up and forced to go out on a lap. Luckily we didn't have anymore problems for the rest of the race.

This was the coolest course at night, you feel like your going so much faster then you were before, I was so excited when I got back from my first night lap. But that didn't happen on my next lap since it was 3:00 am I was to so tired and had to put a wet chamois on, not fun. So we ended up in 6th with 35 laps, each of us doing 7 laps. My garmin said I rode 42 miles, climbed 16591 ft , and total ride time was 4 hours 29 minutes. Now all I wanted to do was sleep I slept for about 5 of the 8 hours back home. Yes those are new bikes too, a good thing about getting hit by a car is you get a new road bike! But I don't suggest doing it.

End of last lap

Mud Fest

This past weekend was Granoque, still no racing thought. The rain seemed like it would never end, which it really hasn't. It has rained here for the past like 9 days. Anyways I don't really think you could call Granoque a race. It was kind of a Try-to-finish-and-not-break-your-bike-and-maybe-you'll-podium kind of race. Basically the only place were you could make up time was the last hill which is pavement and running anywhere you can't ride. From what I heard you were walking/running about 3 out of the 4 miles, and your bike would get so caked with mud that your back wheel would stop spinning. Peoples bikes had wheels that were 3 inches wider than they would be. In other news I can race next weekend, and we have a 24 hour team coming together. So I have a feeling May is going to be way more fun then the last month and a half.